Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is about developing standards. The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Bill 2008 is another historic Labor initiative. I spoke in the House the other day about a number of initiatives over the years, understanding and remembering that back in the Keating era the establishment of ANTA, the Australian National Training Authority, was very much about our push as a Labor government to increase and improve the social infrastructure in this country—our view and understanding of education, the importance of education, and certainly the establishment of a standards committee, of an authority, to then manage this process of curriculum development around the country.

Certainly the Rudd initiative, creating the vision for the education revolution, is very much a part of the Labor vision. I have said before in this House that the opposition do not quite understand what we as a government mean when we talk about a vision and a future. Nation building is not just infrastructure; it is also the soft infrastructure that we put in place. So when you look at building frameworks, particularly in education, it is about establishing the standards, providing resources and supporting the professional development of staff—teachers out in our communities in different states at different times doing different things but having some common understanding of where curriculum should be placed, certainly as a national approach to curriculum development.

It is interesting that a few members who have already spoken from the other side have suggested that it is all simply terminology—that we are beating our chests with throwaway lines. The reality is, of course, that Labor governments have a history of building and developing social infrastructure, particularly in education. All of us would remember the Whitlam era. The Whitlam government in a very short period of time in government introduced free university education. In that era no more than three per cent of our community ever got the opportunity to go to university. In this day and age over 35 per cent get fairly easy and direct access to university. In some states up to 95 per cent of people have post-secondary educational opportunities, whether it is in university, vocational education and training or other areas of skills development.

This is not something new. We have not just thought this up as something that might fit the time and have some political outcome. This is really a continuation of what Labor governments have established in the past. In the Whitlam era there was not only access to university education. People may or may not remember Myer Kangan and the Kangan report of 1974. Most people would understand and know a lot about the TAFE—technical and further education—system. Mr Speaker, you would probably be aware that it was the Kangan report to then Minister Beazley, Kim Beazley Sr, as Minister for Education, that developed our modern understanding of the TAFE system. Thirty-four years later and the TAFE system is still strong, albeit in the last 12 years coming under threat from the former Howard government. I will talk a little bit about that shortly, but the reality is that we started with major reforms in the Whitlam era in education, certainly at the tertiary education level with vocational education and training and the establishment of the TAFE system. If we take that into the Hawke era it was very much about skills and productivity linked to industrial rewards. It was all about people gaining more skills, better curricula, a better approach to training in a structured way and linked to the opportunity to not only enhance skills but get proper remuneration for those skills.

We go forward—and I have already spoken about this—into the Keating era and the establishment in 1992 of what was ANTA, the Australian National Training Authority. That was the next step in the development across the country of the TAFE system, the technical and further education system. I gave examples previously of what happened before the establishment of ANTA and of national training standards. I will make linkages with our secondary school system and the need for a national approach to curriculum development. I used the example of people in trades. An electrical contractor working in Queensland—that is, who had the skills and the licensing—could not work in Victoria simply because a national approach did not exist. ANTA established and reformed our whole approach to vocational education and training.

In the nearly 12 years between the Keating period and the Rudd government coming to power and into the position of being able to roll out our education revolution, we saw what was essentially the dismantling of the TAFE system. We saw the establishment of the New Apprenticeships system and the weakening of the TAFE system. We can link the standards put in place by previous governments and to the Rudd government’s education revolution. It is not just about computers; it is not just about physical resources. It is a philosophy and an ideology. It is about all of those things coming together to change the way that we understand our training and our training future and how that should be rolled out.

This is about empowering teachers. I will talk more about that and about the conversations that I have had with members of the teaching fraternity in my electorate. Change is always met with concern. I have had lots of conversations with teacher groups about the need for a national approach to curriculum. A lot of teachers are concerned. After 12 years of the previous government, they are suspicious of change. They are suspicious that fiddling around with the processes will mean they are going to lose something. I would like to assure the House—and I understand curriculum development, having been an educator and having done a lot of work in curriculum development, particularly in the vocational education and training sector—that this can only mean good things for our country. I will continue to work with and talk to those teachers. This authority will be set up for the purpose of transparency. It is about the ability of all people—that is, those in the education sector and others who have linkages to industry—to come together to work out and understand what the education standards in this country should be.

We talk about the education revolution and we talk about better resourcing. If we do not have a road map for rolling out the resources, if we simply throw funds at individual schools, at individual systems or at individual states without an understanding of how we tie all this together, then it simply will not work. The establishment of this authority is an absolutely necessary first step in taking our education revolution forward and in rolling out and achieving the outcomes we want for our kids around the nation.

The wonderful thing about a national curriculum is that we will get over that problem experienced by people who move around our country—people in some of the government services or in our military—of different education systems. That has been a problem for families who have moved from Queensland to Victoria to Western Australia. There is no commonality. It is very hard to link a student who has travelled around from different states into the appropriate level of syllabus or curriculum. It is essential in finally overcoming the differences between the states. We have a model. We have the ANTA model. A national curriculum was rolled out from 1992 to 1996. The continuation of the national approach, albeit underresourced through those 12 years, has meant that we have some very good national standards in the vocational education sector.

I have spoken to our local teachers about their ability to engage in the process. Members in this House, and certainly those members who have an interest in education—and I presume that is all of us—can actively engage their local constituency and the teachers and educators in their community. I want to pay tribute to a number of people in my electorate—principals and teaching staff—who actively involve their schools in so many activities. There is the argument about what is curriculum and what is extracurricular. This is not about a tick-and-flick list. It is about understanding the core of a curriculum and making sure that people have access to many opportunities within the education system. Whether a school is private or publicly funded should not matter. If our curriculum is the basis of the way we all progress and gain our skills, then all the other skills and extracurricular activity that can be written into programs are acceptable.

I would like to pay tribute to a number of principals: Suzanne Jolly from Eagleby State School, Mike O’Connor from the Eagleby South State School and Marilyn Moballe from Beenleigh State High School. In fact, the Prime Minister back in September visited the Beenleigh High School, and I know he was very impressed with the way that school is progressing, particularly in what are at times very difficult circumstances. I also pay tribute to Alison Crane from Loganlea State High School. Alison’s school has a very high percentage of students with a learning disability. The practices in that school are very good. A national approach to curriculum would allow schools in the nation to gain information about how other schools are dealing with particular problems. That is one example. In Queensland, areas are broken up into regions, and regional directors and regional assistant directors manage the school communities. I would like to pay tribute to Samantha Knowles, who is an assistant executive director, and Glen Hoepner. I have worked closely with them in bringing their community together. I would also like to pay tribute to Michael Shyne, from the Tamborine Mountain State School. He is a very hands-on principal who understands the value of curriculum development. In fact, I know he will be leading the charge to ensure that all of the teaching fraternity within my community come together to talk about the opportunities that the education revolution will bring.

I want to pay special tribute to John Hammond from St Bernard State School on Tamborine Mountain. After a long career of teaching John is retiring. As excited as he is about a national approach to curriculum, he has decided to bow out after a long career. But I know that people like John will remain in our community and be very much part of our P&C and P&F network so that we can bring together their expertise.

I talk to many in our community about opportunities. They understand the record that Labor governments have from the Whitlam era through Hawke and Keating and now with the Rudd government—with that sad 12-year gap in between where we saw dismantled, essentially, lots of the opportunity that was there before 1996. The teachers who I talk to—and, being an educator, they certainly have some trust in where I am taking this—are fearful of change simply because of the experiences of the last 12 years. They are concerned that change does not mean good things. I can say to them that the education revolution of this government is about driving education forward. It is about not only the hard, physical resources but also building new social infrastructure. We talk about nation building certainly in physical infrastructure, but nation building is also about bringing communities, infrastructure and resources together to make Australia a better country. I believe that this is the first step in establishing what will be a national approach to skills development, certainly in the secondary schools sector. We have done it with TAFE—we created TAFE when in government. I believe this is the final chapter in our establishment of the education revolution.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I understand the honourable member for Forde said that this was the final chapter in the education revolution. Educational improvements are of course ongoing and a work in progress. I suspect that as long as this country exists we will be constantly endeavouring to improve our education system and to better our curriculum to make sure that young people, who are our nation’s future, do in fact receive the education which will fit them out to be good citizens and will also enable them to get a job and make a productive contribution towards the future of Australia.

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Bill 2008 enjoys the support of both sides of the House in principle. Many honourable members would have heard me talk over the years about the importance of a solid education for giving young Australians the very best start on their life’s journey. There is no doubt that the aim of a national curriculum is desirable, and this was a policy initiative of the former Howard-Costello government. It is a policy initiative which I am pleased to see the current government adopting. It is particularly important that young people have a sound education and that that education includes an understanding of the three Rs because there is an undeniable link between being able to read, write and count and obtaining job and being a productive member of the Australian workforce.

Over the years we have had discussion concerning differences in curriculum and education programs from state to state. Most honourable members, like me, have had approaches from people who have moved from one part of Australia to another complaining about the fact that one education system appears to be half a year ahead or behind that in another state. We have seen young people disadvantaged by being put into a class where they are behind or losing a year by being kept back. The former government endeavoured to forge a national curriculum, but in a federation it is always difficult to get everyone to agree. The situation seemed to be that the states agreed in principle that there ought to be a national curriculum but felt that their curriculum was the best curriculum and should be the one adopted right across the nation. The Labor Party was not particularly cooperative at state level when we were in government in helping to bring about a national curriculum and I am hopeful that the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Bill 2008 might break that logjam and move the debate forward because, let us face it, the education of our young people is far too important to be a matter of party politics.

One of the legacies of the former government will be that we brought about for more Australian families the economic opportunity to choose the school and education that is most suited to their children. In Australia, we have always had non-government schools and government schools and parents have had a legal right to be able to choose the school that is best for their individual children. But, given the cost of some private schools, many parents do not have that economic choice. What the former Howard-Costello government did was to bring within the economic reach of so many more people the opportunity to choose either a government education or a non-government education—a Catholic education or other independent school education. It is really good that people are able to choose the right school for their children.

On the Sunshine Coast—which, Mr Speaker, you would be aware is the most desirable part of Australia in which to live—we have a range of government and non-government schools. I must say that we have good government schools and good non-government schools. I do not think we really have a bad school of any sort on the Sunshine Coast. Parents are able to vote with their feet and choose the education which is right for their children, and that is fair and appropriate in a democracy in 2008. I mentioned before that there are substantial differences in the educational curriculum and programs in the various states. I think it is just so vital that we put aside all of the differences of the past and that we move forward with this national curriculum.

It may well be that in 1901, when the colonies federated to form the Commonwealth of Australia, people were not terribly mobile. People were born in a particular part of Australia and for generations their families lived in that part of Australia. But increasingly we are part of a global village; people are moving to countries throughout the world. And, more and more, it is common for people to move from one state or territory to another state or territory, and it is only fair and reasonable that their children should not be disadvantaged as a result of what is in many cases quite a natural move from one part of this country to another. Often parents who move from one jurisdiction to another do have the dilemma of a child having to go up to the next grade or go down to the previous one, and it really is unfortunate that so often their children are disadvantaged. And, when the parents move back to where they came from, as often happens, they again have that dilemma to consider.

This bill creates a new government body, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, that has among its tasks the development of a common curriculum across all of the states, which will hopefully put to an end once and for all the situation where children in different states receive different educational programs. This body will also be responsible for the administration and collation of data at a nationwide level as well as setting achievement standards for students, collating and publishing comparative data on schools, providing resources and support for the teaching profession and so on. The idea of a national curriculum is of course, as I mentioned before, something that the previous government initiated.

I just want to digress briefly, Mr Speaker—not in a way that will incur your wrath—to place on record my admiration for the teaching profession and my regret that teachers do not seem to be remunerated anywhere near the level they should be remunerated at given the important role that they play in helping to create productive young Australians. In my own family, I have two brothers-in-law, Mr Jon Hall and Mr Michael Hall, who did various things until their early 30s, when they elected to do teacher training. One has just graduated. This is very important, because it is also vital that we try to encourage more men into teaching, particularly into primary school teaching. With so many families, sadly, confronting family breakdown, often there is the absence of a male role model. If we could encourage more men into teaching, that would be very desirable. I know that that is a view that is shared by both sides of politics. I thank you, Mr Speaker, for your indulgence in allowing me to place on the record my admiration for teachers and the fact that I believe that efforts should be made by governments around the country to encourage more men to go into teaching.

The national curriculum aims to bring all students in line in a number of key educational streams: English, mathematics, history and science. This one, common curriculum will help do away with the problems of measuring the relative success and achievements of the states. All of us know about these national testing arrangements and how difficult it is at times to compare results in one part of Australia with results in another. I suppose some might suggest that a national curriculum is one step away from a federal system insofar as we are removing from the individual states the opportunity to determine curricula within that particular state. However, as time goes on we increasingly appreciate it is important to have the same rules right across the nation, and I do not see that anyone could seriously suggest that a national education curriculum would sound the death knell for the Federation. It ought to be recognised, however, that the national curriculum will shift the responsibility for educational programs away from each of the states and onto a central body. The establishment of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority will also ensure that data is generated that will have relevance and value for all states.

As you would be aware, Mr Speaker, this bill does enjoy—as do many other bills debated in the parliament—the support of both sides of the House, but there are some concerns on the part of the opposition that there is no requirement that there be anyone with actual teaching experience on the board of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority or involved in the process of drafting the national curriculum. I would just ask the minister that when she is making appointments she look very closely at the need for there to be people with actual teaching experience. It is important that those who understand what it is like to be in a classroom, what it is like to teach an existing curriculum, have input into what will be the national curriculum right across the country. Such a person, who has in fact had experience at the coalface, would be eminently suitable for working out what changes ought to be made, what ought to be adopted and, indeed, what ought to be rejected for the national curriculum.

There is also concern about the requirement for schools to provide information—to be collected and used in the creation of the curriculum, the drafting of policy and the collating and the processing of data and statistics—including information relating to funding sources. It would certainly be wrong, and I believe most honourable members would accept this, for a school that works hard to generate additional funding to be penalised when it came to the allocation of government funds.

There is also concern in the private school sector that they are in fact being coerced into this national curriculum without actually knowing what it will include. I would like to commend to the House an editorial on page 20 of the West Australian of 20 November 2008 which is headlined ‘Schools are entitled to resist coercion’. It says:

Private schools are perfectly entitled to resist the bullying demand made on them by the Rudd Government to sign up to its so-called education revolution until they know its detail.

By making acceptance of the proposed national curriculum a condition of $28 billion in grants for such schools, the Government has shown its ideological hostility to them.

Details of the national curriculum are still being worked out and private schools do not know what they are being told to accept and how it would affect what they taught and how.

The Government should stop this coercion and accept that schools are entitled to know what’s in the curriculum before they agree to it.

I certainly support that editorial and I consider that there ought to be some flexibility to preserve the diversity we have in the educational marketplace.

In summing up, it is absolutely true that the creation of a national curriculum for schools Australia-wide is a positive move. It will have enormous advantages. The former Liberal-National government had the foresight to initiate the process and create the move towards a standard curriculum. This bill introduces the body responsible for that curriculum and I am very pleased to commend this bill to the chamber.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Could I just correct the record on something the member for Fisher said earlier: while the Sunshine Coast is a wonderful place to visit, obviously the electorate of Moreton is the best place in Australia to live. But I do thank him for his contribution. I also mention the earlier contribution by the member for Forde, especially the spotlight he put on to TAFE and higher education. My background is in teaching in high schools, so it was great to hear his comments about TAFE and higher education. My background is in teaching English, geography, history, religion and even science.

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Bill 2008 does signal a new era in Australia’s education system. For those listening who have a thesaurus in front of them, another word for a new era is a revolution. The Macquarie Dictionary defines ‘revolution’ as ‘a complete or marked change in something’ and that is certainly what we are seeing here today. The education revolution by the Rudd government is about raising the quality of teaching in our schools, it is about ensuring that all students, especially those in disadvantaged areas, benefit from schooling and it is about improving transparency in, and the accountability of, all our schools.

There is agreement on all sides of the House that quality education is a basic right for all children. Only a fool would argue otherwise. Thankfully, the class wars and arguments about funding for religious schools and the like are long over. All children deserve access to the same education opportunities regardless of their parents’ bank balance, where they live or their faith. Education provides young people with the tools and know-how to enter adulthood, succeed in life and then contribute to society.

Next Sunday, 30 November, will be exactly 11 years since I taught in public and private schools, where I taught for 11 years. I also worked as an organiser with the Queensland Independent Education Union for five years and since being elected I have visited many schools in my electorate. I do know a lot about schools and spend a lot of time in schools. I spend a lot of my time teaching civic lessons, and as a former teacher it is great to go into schools now, teach a lesson and not have to mark anything. It is a great way to maintain my love of teaching. I also participate in tuckshop duties throughout my electorate.

When it comes to curriculum I am not as experienced as many others, but I have found in my dealings with our education system that on the whole it is very effective and our schools are places of great learning and great opportunity. Certainly, if we look around this side of the House, there are many people that only got their break in life not because of their parents’ bank balances but because of the education provided to them by the state or private systems. The overwhelming majority of students are performing at a high level in our schools, and our teachers and the rest of the staff in schools, parents and other volunteers work very hard to make that happen. Nevertheless, the reality is that there are still children who are left behind, who struggle to rise above their circumstances and complete their education on par with their peers. This tells us that more can be done to ensure a quality education for all and to ensure that no child is left behind. This bill will ensure, for the first time in the 107 years that the federated states of Australia have existed, that we have a national curriculum. It follows the historic COAG agreement last month to establish the new national education authority. The horse-and-buggy approach that applied at the time of Federation is over.

It reminds me of the poem by Judith Wright, Bullocky. Judith Wright was a much-loved poet in Australia. I think she was born in Sydney but, being a Queenslander, I note that she spent much of her formative years in Brisbane and I think her first book of poetry was actually published while she worked at my alma mater, the University of Queensland. Much of her poetry was written when she lived at Mount Tamborine in Queensland, and I think she was even a founding member and President of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland. I note that shortly before she died Judith Wright marched for reconciliation here in Canberra as an 85-year-old—she must have lived in this vicinity. She was certainly a passionate character, as well as a great poet. I will read a part of Bullocky that indicates how much things have changed—this was from someone who was born in 1915:

Grass is across the wagon-tracks,

and plough strikes bone across the grass,

and vineyards cover all the slopes

where the dead teams were used to pass.

O vine, grow close upon that bone

and hold it with your rooted hand.

The prophet Moses feeds the grape,

and fruitful is the Promised Land.

The days of Bullocky are long over and the days of the horse and buggy are long gone. We are now in the digital age and teaching has changed significantly. Back when bullockies were around teachers had a completely different role. They were called the sage on the stage. They had all the knowledge and they tested people’s ability to retain that knowledge. It was almost like they flipped their students heads back and poured knowledge into the students. Now teaching has changed significantly. Even in the 11 years since I taught, instead of being the sage on the stage teachers are much more like a guide on the side helping people learn through the internet and the like.

I am sure that all Australians are pleased to see their state and federal governments working together and getting on with the job to improve the quality of education around the country. The people who would especially appreciate it are the 80,000 students or more who move interstate each and every year. Imagine that—80,000 people. It would be like moving every single person in Toowoomba every year. Those people will benefit from us having a national curriculum. It has been too long coming.

State and territory governments will also benefit from reduced duplication and improved efficiency in education governance. The taxpayer dollar will obviously travel further and there will be many other efficiencies that come with having a national body. As its name suggests, the authority will develop and implement the national curriculum and establish a framework for assessing and reporting student and school performance. The authority will drive common national priorities in education from kindergarten through to year 12. Its first order of business will be to revamp the important subjects of English, mathematics, science and history.

Whilst I taught science for one year, my passion has always been English. I gained a bit of notoriety recently for one of the books that I have written, but there is one benefit that comes from having my name known for writing. That is, people that I did not know will now come and talk about literature with me. At touch football in the morning, where there are all sorts of people from different political parties, it is almost like there is now a secret handshake. They will come up and talk about literature even though it is not something that they would normally do publicly. It is great to have added this silver lining to my writing endeavours.

It is not for governments to impress their own agenda and ideology on a national curriculum. That is why the authority will be established as an independent statutory authority under the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997. We saw during the Howard-Costello reign how governments can try to tinker with our schools. This is a very dangerous precedent. I think it is best that we leave education and the curriculum to the educators, not to governments and their political agendas. The independent statutory authority will ensure that there is fierce independence from the Commonwealth and appropriate performance and financial accountability to the state and territory education ministers. The national curriculum will be available from January 2011 and all schools will be required to sign up to it by 2012.

A national curriculum will drive substantial improvements in our children’s education. It will put an end to the confusion experienced by students who move interstate and have to deal with changing subject matter. They would mainly be New South Wales people and Victorians coming to beautiful Queensland, but that is our contribution to the rest of the Commonwealth! The national curriculum will also ensure that all students, no matter where they are, are learning similar material—as I said, there are over 80,000 students a year who move between school systems. It will also help teachers by giving them a clear idea about what is to be covered, but with the flexibility to adapt the curriculum to local context.

To paraphrase former shadow minister Bourke on the national curriculum, we will have a national dish but it will still have local flavours. There will be a national curriculum but around the country we will be able to have distinct local flavours. As a prac student when I was studying teaching, everyone in geography studied the wheat and sheep belt on the Darling Downs. I do not want to upset the agriculture minister and I am not taking anything away from agricultural endeavours like this, but the people on the Darling Downs obviously might not want to study the wheat and sheep belt on the Darling Downs. They might want to learn about something else, such as Victorian agricultural endeavours or the like. It is important that we maintain the national dish but have the local flavours so that schools can adapt to their environment when deciding what people need to learn.

The national curriculum will also give parents a better idea about what their children should be learning at each stage of their education and about the skills that they should be acquiring. It will do this by developing a national assessments program and managing data relating to schools and comparative school performance. For the first time, this will give parents and school communities throughout Australia a clearer picture about how their local school is performing. I stress that much of this data is already available, especially in my local state schools. Anyone moving around Australia can go on the web and look and see much of this data, especially in state schools, although not necessarily for private schools. As the Deputy Prime Minister said, if she has the data, why can’t we trust parents to also access this data? There should be no presumption that parents, the people who are most responsible for and care about these children, should not have access to the data about how their school is performing.

The national assessment and reporting framework will also enable governments to identify where resources are needed to improve school performance. For the first time, we will be able to make informed decisions about comparable school achievements and target resources to schools that need it most. As well as leading to improved performance across the board, these new reporting measures will ensure greater transparency and lift public confidence in education spending.

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Bill is not about naming and shaming underperforming schools. I know this is a concern raised by many teachers—certainly in my electorate—and by many of the teacher unions, but it is not about naming and shaming underperforming schools, and neither is it about league tables or grading schools. However, it is about ensuring that no student is left behind. It is about supporting our teachers, our teacher aides and all the other support staff, school volunteers and parents who slog their guts out to ensure that our kids get a quality education. It is about ensuring that schools can overcome disadvantage to give their students the best possible education. The authority will also provide resources and assistance to teachers and schools to help them improve school performance.

As I mentioned earlier, I spent five years as a union organiser—a union thug, I guess I would be called—in the private schools, those radical workplaces like the Catholic schools, grammar schools, Christian schools et cetera. In that role I had a lot to do with teachers who also happened to be union members, from both the state school system and the private school system. My union, the Independent Education Union, looked after all schools that were not state schools. What many people do not realise when they hear the word ‘union’ is how much these unions devote their resources to lifting the professional standards of teaching. So many people are passionate about their union because they look after professional standards, and that is what many people opposite would not realise.

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority is a key part of the Rudd government’s education revolution. Firstly, this revolution will see a half-billion dollar investment in early childhood preliteracy and prenumeracy. Whereas the damage was done by the time they got to me in high school, now we will be investing the money where the dollar will go furthest. Secondly, we will have HECS halved for those who are studying maths and science at university and then halved again if they choose to pursue a career teaching or working in maths and science. As a former English teacher I commend this initiative, and certainly maths and science subjects are good for commerce and the economy, but I would stress that English teachers provide another role, which is that we nourish the soul, and that makes for a much healthier community. Thirdly, we will have a new National Action Plan on Literacy and Numeracy. Fourthly, there will be a $2.4 billion education tax refund. That fantastic policy puts the focus back on parents looking after their kids. It puts education in the spotlight, and it has certainly been very well received by the parents of primary and secondary school students in my electorate of Moreton. Fifthly, the Rudd government will bring in a $1.2 billion digital education revolution to give every year 9 to 12 student in Australia access to a computer. Sixthly, there will be a $30 million boost to education for remote Indigenous children, including a trial linking family and welfare payments to school attendance. These are great initiatives. These six initiatives are not just ideas that the Rudd government has run up the flagpole; they are actual policies that will help kids in classrooms, some of them right now, where those computers are already on desks in many schools around Australia. We have moved from talk to chalk, or nowadays, I suppose, to be a bit more modern, we have moved from speak to squeak—that is, with whiteboards.

This side of the House has a real commitment to education, whereas the other side of the House, the Liberal Party and the National Party, seems to have a fundamentally different approach to education. I guess I would say as a former teacher that, if we approached those opposite as teachers, they would only teach to the top of the class. That is very rewarding and fantastic, especially for the people in the top of the class, but unfortunately there is also a great middle and occasionally a tail, and good teachers try to bring the whole class forward. If I look back over the last 11½ years and look for the great educational ideas that came out of those opposite, what ideas did they run up the flagpole? I would commend one: the chaplains initiative, which is certainly one that has led to the great chaplains whom I have met in my electorate. I do commend those opposite for that initiative. No. 2 is some aspects of the Investing in Our Schools Program. If they had maintained funding for the states properly then it would not have been necessary, but there are some aspects of that. The third one is flagpoles. That was a great initiative. Fantastic! In terms of that education revolution, you have flagpoles. That is fantastic! But, thankfully, this side of the House does have a much deeper commitment to education. So in closing I want to congratulate the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and all the state and territory governments for making student outcomes the top priority, rather than just flagpoles. I commend the bill to the House and look forward to seeing the national curriculum rolled out in schools from 2011.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support this Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Bill 2008. It further evolves the work which the coalition did and has done over a great many years, and it further evolves the whole educational structure and form in Australia over the last 100 or so years since Federation. Of course, I am the member for Murray, and as the name suggests we are on the border of two states, Victoria and New South Wales, with the Murray River running along—not running so hard at the moment, but certainly separating us from our fellows interstate. So for us the issue of a national curriculum is of critical concern. We have what we call twin communities right along the Murray, like Echuca-Moama, Yarrawonga-Mulwala and Kerang and other communities across the river, where students and families readily move. There are some 80,000 school-age students moving interstate each year right across Australia, and it has long been a problem with different rules about ages of students, commencing school, leaving school and curriculum content. The ways that school students can move and slot easily into similar class levels have been so problematic that some children have really been handicapped because they have had to be moved interstate. That is quite clearly a nonsense in a country like ours, where mobility has always been the way for families generation after generation.

In regard to my own background, I have spent a lot of years of my professional life developing curriculum for schools, particularly in secondary schools, and in particular relation to Australia’s social history and race relations. I spent a lot of time training teachers, too, particularly in early childhood education. We still have a very long way to go in Australia. This bill, as I say, is a further step in the right direction; it is an evolution. It is not a revolution and it leaves a lot of work still undone. For example, there is no point having a national history curriculum if that curriculum is a dud or if it is so contentious that teachers refuse, in different parts of the system, to teach it, because the unions have had their way, saying you cannot talk about, for example, early pastoral history or our early evolution of labour law in this country.

We have had a nonsense in Australia where ideologues have dominated curriculum development, dumbing down what is taught in schools to the point where, I have to say, I have employers absolutely amazed to find year 12 graduates—this is the final school year in Victoria—coming to them to take up an apprenticeship and they cannot read and write. They have been passed right through the system and have apparently attended school often enough but they do not have basic literacy or numeracy, they certainly have no knowledge whatsoever of Australia’s history and their science background is simply nonexistent. This is a great shame because these young men and women wanting to set out in their careers are stymied and handicapped because the school system has failed them.

I think there is a real need to address excellence in education in a way which is not intimidating to teaching staff who themselves have often been poorly educated in teacher training. I will never forget being amazed to find a faculty of teacher training had to teach remedial English to their first-year intake of teacher trainees. It is not the teachers’ fault necessarily that the curric-ul-um has been dumbed down but it is the teachers’ fault when they simply give up too often and retreat from being energetic, enthusiastic, innovative teachers who do their very best for their students even though they themselves might have been deprived of a proper framework in which to shape their own lessons or even deprived, initially, of decent teacher education back in their universities.

In terms of where we go in the future with Australia’s education, I am particularly concerned about early childhood education. Each state, as we know, still clings tenaciously to ownership of early childhood education. It varies from being compulsory to being absolutely not compulsory in a state like Victoria, with fees charged to parents and with volunteering of parents to help the preschool teacher almost the only means for that the preschool to raise money for toys and educational aids, to prepare milk and to cut up fruit for the children’s morning teas. You have a nonsense in Victoria where early childhood only goes for a small slot in the morning—from, say, nine to 11 o’clock—so a working parent or couple has no chance of being able to drop off and collect their child in a two-hour slot.

In an electorate like mine in Murray, which is in its seventh year of severe drought, where there is enormous poverty and financial distress across the electorate and where, of course, the piping of the water to Melbourne is going to be the last straw, permanently droughting that area, families have two options: they can find over $100 per term to send their child to preschool or they can keep their child in fully subsidised family day care where their three- or four-year-old does not receive early childhood education and then misses out on that first year of education and, very significantly, in that early socialisation to a classroom milieu. They do not get the early preparation with their reading or with their colours and numbers work. But that is what is happening across my electorate of Murray in response to bad state government early childhood policy and poverty.

Quite self-evidently, we need to have a national system of early childhood education as well which slots seamlessly into the earliest years of primary education and which is compulsory and free and which it is not, at the end of the day, accessible only to the better off or those with a parent at home. That should not be the determinant of whether or not a child has early childhood education access.

I am also concerned that a bill like this—which is, as I say, an important evolution—still will not be addressing issues like poor teacher training and of course the poor motivation for some of our brightest and best to enter the teaching profession itself. That, too, needs a lot of serious thinking and a revolution, not just more evolution.

We also have to address issues like single-sex classes for teenagers in our schools across Australia. We know that students do best in their teenage years when they can learn in girls classes and boys classes. They may be in the same school for other social interaction, sport and so on but certainly single-sex classes for the essential subjects of English, maths, science and history should be seriously contemplated and provisions made for them.

We also have to make sure that there is lifelong learning and that there is adult education built into our sense of new purpose in relation to national curriculum, assessment and reporting frameworks. A lot of younger people, especially from rural and regional backgrounds, missed out on their education and were forced to leave school early. This particularly applies if they were Indigenous children. I am also concerned about how our new-look schools system is going to make it more possible for what may be classified as a mature age person re-entering the system, not necessarily at the TAFE level but even back in the secondary school system because often TAFE is not accessible in rural and regional areas either.

As shadow minister for immigration I am concerned about our refugees. We have numbers of refugees who have no literacy and numeracy background in their home languages and whose own education has been completely interrupted by war. I refer particularly to those from African countries, people like our Sierra Leoneans, our Sudanese, our Congolese. They come to Australia with a desperate need to be given urgent education so that they can take advantage of the opportunities for employment, social integration, and better enjoy the peace and tolerance offered in a nation as great as ours. Unfortunately, too often when our refugees arrive they are already older than the school system is ready to recognise for schooling. And too often we put these students into classes for English language learning which are not good enough, with no real assistance being offered, although it is recognised that they need to start from a very basic level and might need culturally appropriate learning in the first instance.

I am also saddened about one of the changes that is being made to the citizenship test which the coalition introduced some time ago. This test will still be offered in English, which is the only sensible way to go, given that English language speaking is essential to take full advantage of and participate in our economy and our society. So I am very pleased that the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Minister Evans, understood that it was essential to retain the citizenship test in English. What I am concerned about is the removal of the history component of the test questions that the coalition introduced. Any relationship or reference to history is to be dropped from the test, and I think that is a real shame. On the one hand we are saying that history is an important and essential part of the new national curriculum, but when it comes to our new citizens we are not expecting them to have any idea of how our democracy was formed, of how our governance arrangements work, of how we come to be at peace now—the history of how our fighting men and women participated in the world wars and are now participating in peacekeeping. None of that is to be tested in the new citizenship test. I wonder why not and I think it is a great shame. I would like to think that perhaps our new citizens will volunteer themselves to learn about Australian history and in that way will come to better understand the culture of our country. If new arrivals are of Asian background, for example, they may come to know how Australia has already had in its history, some 150 years ago, an enormous Asian population on the goldfields and so they are not entirely the newcomers in this country facing for the first time Australian cultural experiences.

I am very concerned that this government is still not addressing the problem of rural and regional students who are increasingly less able to take up any offers of tertiary education. In my electorate—which I have already explained is in the worst drought on record; we are up to our seventh year—families have had to face the fact that they can hardly afford to put food on the table. I want to thank Heinz and their food factory in Echuca for donating, just two days ago, a huge volume of their food products and baby food to give to my farming families who are having trouble putting food on the table. I restate that the despair that is coming with the drought is exacerbated by the north-south pipeline which is to be built to take our remaining water to Melbourne, which has other options, and which will put them in drought permanently. One of the outcomes of this extreme economic distress in northern Victoria, once one of the most affluent agricultural regions in Australia, is that the number of school leavers taking up university offers or attending university has dropped by 50 per cent. This is extraordinarily serious. It means that the drought is not only causing the loss of third- and fourth-generation investment in farm properties, it is destroying their futures and their chances of taking up agribusiness. If students cannot afford to take up university places, which typically require them to live away from home, in Melbourne, Bendigo or Wodonga, a lifelong deficit will result, caused by this government not understanding that we need more than just access to rent assistance or Austudy for rural school leavers. I have to tell you that the rural Liberal members in this House have been very seriously looking at a policy for a fund, which may not necessarily be based on means testing because the family farm asset often knocks out the opportunity for these families to be specially supported. It will address how far rural, regional and remote students have to go to get their tertiary education and the costs that are needed for their accommodation, travel and communication to back home. Our policy would deliver them sufficient to live on so that they can take up offers of tertiary education.

It is one of the tragedies of the economic decline in rural and regional Australia that there is a contraction in the number of rural students able to take up tertiary education. And I have to say the situation is not much better when it comes to apprenticeships or traineeships. This is an issue that is not addressed at all in this Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Bill, but I beg the government to turn their attention urgently to this problem. It is about investing in human capital. It is about being able to have our own skilled workforce developed here at home. Not only do we have this human tragedy of individuals not being able to develop their own personal full potential; the nation is missing out on the full potential of our human capital.

We also have to look at what people do and not just what they say. Parents in their droves are walking away from state school systems at the moment and paying fees to have their children attend private schools. That has to be a loud warning siren for this government. Of course, independent schools or private schools—they are named differently in different states—will not come under their new reporting regime. These schools will be quite independent of the various moves that are being made to make sure that parents have information about the ranking of their schools and so on. I think it is very important for this government to watch whether or not there will be an even further clamour for private school education when families look at data about their local state schools, which might show that they are having a bit of a struggle, and make their final decision to exit the system altogether.

I want to commend the government for taking education seriously, as we did. Quite clearly we have a huge disparity in the performance of students and schools across the nation. We have a public disgrace in the form of the quality of schooling offered to many of our Indigenous communities, particularly in remoter areas. The school retention rates in those places and the fact that students cannot even speak, read or write in English, condemns them to unemployment and marginalises them for life. A lot has to be sheeted home to the Northern Territory government in particular, which has chronically neglected infrastructure investment in those remote Indigenous schools. The Northern Territory has also allowed the Commonwealth to pay their teaching staff through CDEP by allowing teachers’ aides—Indigenous women, largely—to do the teaching in those schools even though those women often do not have any English language facility.

So I am afraid that, while this bill is a further evolution—and I commend it—there is a lot of work to be done. We have to have in Australia, world best education. We have to have education that looks our history in the face and teaches it accurately and fearlessly so that our multicultural, rural and urban populations can understand where we have come from and, therefore, the potential for where we can go. Our English, maths and science teaching, as we know, has to be so much better. We are in despair about our paucity of maths and science achievements across the board. We have some stars in schools but across the board our maths and science teaching leaves an enormous amount to be desired.

As I began by saying, too many employers are shocked at the poor English language understanding and the ability to communicate effectively or even to use effective grammar, in students who have just completed 13 years of formal education. So I support this bill but there is a lot more work to be done. I request this government to address those issues that I outlined as outstanding and very serious when it comes to equality of opportunity for education in this country.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call the member for Lyons, I notice that we have, in the gallery, a school visiting Parliament House. I am sure they would have listened with great interest to the debate. I rather feel that it may even be a school from my electorate, the South Burnett College. I can see that it is the South Burnett College; I could not join them for hospitality.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a shame that the previous speaker is leaving the chamber. I was going to say that that side of the House never understands education very well. Blaming teachers, teachers unions and state governments is not the solution to finding the answers. Of course the employers that the previous speaker spoke about now demand a higher standard of literacy and numeracy. There are higher standards because the world needs higher skills, and our workforce needs to meet those same standards.

So, with regard to people who have literacy and numeracy issues, there are not the holes that there used to be for people in this community and in our country. So we do need to work harder—I agree with the member for Murray, and she did get the issue about refugees spot on. We need to make sure that we have a learning capacity for those people who come to our country. Adult education and lifelong learning need to be high on our agenda.

The purpose of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Bill 2008 is to establish the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, ACARA. ACARA will be an independent statutory authority. It will manage the creation and implementation of the national curriculum, national student assessment and reporting of school education outcomes. Specific functions, as provided in section 6 of the bill, will include developing and administering a national school curriculum, including content of the curriculum and achievement standards for school subjects as specified in its charter; developing and administering national assessments; collecting, managing and analysing student assessment data and other data relating to schools and comparative school performance; facilitating information-sharing arrangements between Australian and state and territory government bodies in relation to the collection, management and analysis of school data; publishing information relating to school education, including comparative school performance; providing school curriculum resource services, educational research services and other related services; and providing information, resources, support and guidance for the teaching profession.

ACARA goes back a long way. It is the accumulation of a long period of policy debate which dates back to the eighties. Yesterday John Dawkins, a previous Treasurer and member for Fremantle, was in the gallery here and was acknowledged by the House and the Speaker. When he was the Minister for Employment, Education and Training he called for a common curriculum framework that would set out the major areas of knowledge and the most appropriate mix of skills and experiences for students in all their years of schooling. So it has been a long time to get this bill into the House.

Education is so important to the development of a nation. It cannot be left to the individual states and departments to set the syllabus for each state, as they may all be different. With the population being so mobile in today’s world, children from one state can often end up in another state, either in front or behind in their education pathway.

There has been much discussion about the way subjects are taught and about how there must be flexibility in schools, catering for different groups of students to achieve these standards in different ways. I think it is perfectly possible to maintain flexibility while keeping to standards of education that reflect the needs of the nation.

Other concerns include the system of reporting to parents, in which schools are required to provide parents with their children’s national literacy and numeracy test results against national benchmarks, showing how they are rated relative to their peer group in their school. I do not believe this is for purposes other than for parents to see how their child is progressing and as an early warning system to alert the school when a child is falling behind and needs some special attention. For too long, children managed to get all the way through the education system without meeting any benchmarks, because they were not identified. If they manage to get through primary and secondary school, they then have difficulty in picking up enough skills for work purposes. As the current Minister for Education and Deputy Prime Minister said:

… to lift performance and direct new resources to where they will make most difference, we need unprecedented rigour and openness in the collection and publication of schools data.

We also need to ensure that we have a basis for fair, consistent and accurate analysis of how different schools are doing. This allows resources to flow to those schools that need the most assistance. Rupert Murdoch, in the recent Boyer lectures, put his finger fairly and squarely—sadly, I believe—on our problem. We need to set high standards for our students, teachers and schools. We pride ourselves on our passion for equity. But, as Murdoch says:

… it is getting harder and harder to square Australian pride in equality with the realities of the Australian system of public education.

While there has been some criticism of the outlaying of computers to schools, it allows students to access the tools of the 21st century to undertake their work now. But this should not be seen as the only thing they learn. Basic literacy and numeracy are vital to making the tool work properly for the student. Murdoch says:

… the best path to success is through an education that will allow us to fulfill our potential. That begins by setting high expectations, adhering to real standards, and ensuring that when you do leave school, you leave with the tools that will help you get ahead in life.

My interest, too, has been in the early learning years which, in my mind, are the most critical in the learning processes. They can set the foundations for the rest of life learning. I have been following the work of Professor Fraser Mustard, who has recently been working in South Australia. He said in his report Investing in the early years: closing the gap between what we know and what we do:

To achieve reasonable equity in the competence, capabilities, coping skills, health and wellbeing of populations will require societies to apply the new understanding of how experience in the early years of life affects the development of the brain and related biological pathways that set trajectories that affect health (physical and mental), learning, and behaviour throughout the life cycle and can contribute to social and economic inequities and violence in societies.

At a seminar some years ago, held here in Parliament House, Professor Mustard spoke of education delivery being like a river. The kids who manage the scheme well swim strongly up the middle of the river. The kids who are finding school difficult for various reasons are clinging to the bank and progressing very slowly while some of them are slipping off the bank and some of them are treading water. Some of them get swept backwards, never to catch up to where the cycle should be. Professor Mustard was attempting to show us that children learn at different levels and at different rates and that our scheme is geared very much for the ones that cope the best, the strong swimmers. Although it is relatively easy to measure these groups, it becomes more complex when one is trying to measure the other groups, as so many different factors come into play for all of them. These factors include social and economic background, health and wellbeing, an ability to mix and all sorts of other factors.

So, whatever scheme we put in place for assessment of students around the country, there needs to be some ability to check in a positive way how to keep children encouraged to continue learning, even if they are not at the front of the line. It may require programs that reflect the natural abilities of individual students, including hands-on type abilities as well as academic varieties. Both are equally valid in the workplace. Often it is more a question of approach, of how to deal with an individual’s capacity to take in information. Sometimes this requires innovative ways to stimulate the student. Going back to Murdoch’s Boyer lecture on education, he points this out in a different sort of way by explaining:

Talent and skills and judgment are part of what economists call human capital. Human capital is a broad term. It includes formal skills—for example, a degree in computer science or the ability to speak a foreign language. But human capital is much more than this. It also includes such things as good work habits, the judgment that comes from experience, a sense of creativity, a curiosity about the world, and the ability to think for oneself. Free societies succeed because the people who have these skills are free to use them to advance themselves, their enterprises, and society.

These are not easily taught, but still part of the learning process and need to be included in any program of learning. I know that many teachers have concerns about the changes that are taking place in education. In my own area, some are very concerned with the constant reporting changes. In Tasmania there have been some unfortunate circumstances in that area and they are rebelling in various ways. It is hard to incorporate change while you are busily trying to achieve the best you can in the present system with the tools that you have in your school. But life is changing very fast and so what we know now is not what we might need to know in the future. All we can really do is to open the pathways to change to make it as easy as possible. We need to provide schools with the tools, with the spaces and with the best teachers possible to ensure that our children can keep up with the pace of change.

This bill provides the broad framework within which the development of the national curriculum, the collection and analysis of student assessment data and the reporting of school performance will occur. As is noted in accompanying papers to this bill, there is considerable work to be done not only in developing and implementing the national curriculum and determining the methodology for collecting, reporting and comparing student and school performance but also in achieving stakeholder consensus about these matters. Still remaining and underpinning the success of the goals towards which the bill’s main measures are directed—that of raising the educational performance of all students regardless of where they are located and their socioeconomic background—are the critical issues of teacher supply and teacher quality. It is well accepted, and supported by research, that teacher quality is the paramount factor influencing student outcomes. Typical of this research is that conducted by Michael Barber, former adviser to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. His research into why the world’s best-performing school systems outdo other school systems concluded that the three most important factors were getting the right people to become teachers, developing them into effective instructors and ensuring that they deliver consistently for every child. Ultimately, ‘the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers’. This is a big ask in any job description, but the future of our children depends on the effectiveness of their teachers and we have to value them as we have valued them in the past.

There are going to be opportunities to contribute further to this debate as it proceeds, but from my point of view in Lyons we have suffered from the state’s way in the past of moving teachers around and saying that teachers are rewarded when they have done their time in the country by going back to city schools. This has to become a thing of the past now. Teachers must become part of their communities, live in their communities and be the role model for their charges. Pay, conditions and promotions of teachers should reflect the greater importance of our rural and regional educational facilities and they should be on a par with their city counterparts. I want to see teachers clamouring to go into the country and be part of the development of regional areas, because the rewards both financially and emotionally are so much greater.

Perhaps it is wishful thinking, but with this electronic age it is possible to participate in all those educational upgrading processes while living in more isolated areas. Other professions are doing it. Why not the teachers? Tertiary education should not mean a big upheaval for families at often difficult times. It should be part of post-school learning and we should use the underutilised school infrastructure to provide it. It might mean some time changes, but we are in a new world and we should face those changes.

I also believe that we should find ways of bringing the work of many academics, education thinkers and writers do together and have a way to make that easily accessible for classroom teachers. There seems to have been very good work done over many years which never really gets down to where it can influence and help teachers improve their own teaching opportunities. There is also the issue of young teachers starting their early teaching life. They need time to reflect and time to observe other teachers in the process. They need to have mentors work with them to assist the learning process. Not having this is not only unfair on those younger teachers whom we put into the schools but unfair on some students as well.

There are many things to do, but the Minister for Education and the Labor government have gone on and succeeded. I have spent some 15 or 16 years now in this House, and I have heard conservative ministers for education blame teachers, state governments and everybody else and never really achieve anything in tackling some of the real problems. This bill does go towards finding some of the answers. It sets national goals and performance standards. As the Acting Prime Minister said about bringing in rigour, it is rigour that will drive a better education system. That has to be done fairly and decently, and I am sure that we can do that.

I have used some lengthy quotes in my speech. I thank the Parliamentary Library for their assistance. This is a very complex subject and requires a lot of consideration. It is probably one of the most important parts of our society. Education gives people great opportunities. I commend the bill to the House.

Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Bill 2008. I concur with the previous speaker in the debate, the member for Lyons, that this is a very complex bill. It affects students currently in the Australian education systems, both public and private, and also the future of all of our children—and, indeed, our parents and grandparents. Anybody who is interested in education would most certainly be interested in this bill. I have discovered that enormous numbers of people are interested in the bill, and there has been a campaign of continual letter writing by a variety of people that has concentrated on the need to fund public education in a more significant way. I am a strong supporter of the public education system. I educated my children in the public education system, as have been my grandchildren, and I was educated in the public education system myself. Public education is of enormous concern to me, and the way it is funded, both by the states and by the Commonwealth, has always been one of my priorities.

I will run through some of the areas that I consider have been abandoned by this bill and where it fails miserably the people I represent in the Riverina. I go first to the issue of the axing of the Investing in Our Schools Program. The Investing in Our Schools Program was hard fought for by backbenchers in the previous government. To their credit, the former Minister for Education, Science and Training and the former Prime Minister, Mr Howard, listened to their backbenchers to understand the issues that were confronting the mums and dads in the P&Cs and the school communities across our region. It was then that the Investing in Our Schools Program was established, and it was enormously successful. In fact, the Investing in Our Schools Program delivered over $11 million to public education and about $1.2 million to private education in my electorate of Riverina. This was an enormously popular program—so popular that I note that the Labor members who opposed it when the previous government implemented it are now gung-ho to go out into their electorates, have their names put on the plaques and take all the credit for the money that is being delivered into schools. They stand in front of you and you think about all the hard work that you have put in as the local member with the school community and the P&Cs.

When the Howard government brought in the program, we applied for much needed funding, which was a process of working cooperatively with teachers, headmasters, P&Cs and community leaders—and that funding was delivered. The program was, of course, opposed by the current government, formerly the opposition. But, as I said, now they take great delight in talking about ‘their funding’ that has delivered ‘these benefits’ to communities.

In speaking on this bill in the House today I want to highlight what I believe are its deficiencies. The deficiencies include the fact that the Investing in our Schools Program has been abolished. I have had contact with many in the public education system, including the teachers, and their complaints about this bill have been extremely scathing. In the past, they launched scathing attacks on the Howard government, the role that I played as a member of the coalition in the Howard government years and the way in which we handled education, but they have now concluded their attacks on the former minister. With the new government, educators believe they have been promised much and have been delivered little. They thought that there would be a change in focus and direction from a new Labor government. They said that they went out in droves to man the polling booths in the last election in order that there could be a change of government and of education policy. But the complaints that I am getting now are that there is no difference between the policies of the past government and those of the current government. These are legitimate concerns that have been raised with me and that I have raised with the current Minister for Education.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Have you had a look at the bill? You’ll discuss the bill, will you?

Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Riverina has the call and she is addressing the bill very eloquently.

Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have had numerous meetings. I am certainly not going to mention the name of the person who came in to see me in case he would be dealt a savage blow for commenting as he has. I have recently met with this local teacher, who has discussed various issues in relation to education, and I believe that the teacher has communicated his thoughts and made some very valid points. I want to pass these on to the minister.

The teacher felt that there is a funding parity required for public education, and I am certainly always in support of that. The teacher went on to say that it is not an education revolution if Australia copies a failing system and that the government needs to look at systems that are actually working. The teacher identified areas such as Finland. He said that the government needed to remove high-stakes tests, school comparisons, performance based pay and the view that testing equals achievement. In addition, the teacher said that he had worked in the UK system, which has a national curriculum, and this meant no freedom for individuality. He felt that structuring time is counterproductive and students only apply themselves to their interests. He believed that curricula needed to have space to move to accommodate various issues.

These are the kinds of disturbing comments that we had apportioned to us in our terms in government, but it is interesting to note that the prospect of this education revolution brought out teachers en masse to support the election of a new government. Now the very same people who were standing handing out pamphlets against me at polling booths are in my office complaining that the revolution simply did not happen. I find it ironic and I believe it is worthwhile to point that out in relation to this bill, which is very relevant to the issues that the teachers have raised.

I will go back to the coalition’s Investing in Our Schools Program that has been removed in order to accommodate this bill. In order to accommodate the ideas within this bill, some very good policy was destroyed for no other reason than political gain and political point-scoring, with no thought given as to how important this program was. It will lapse on 31 December this year, and I am sure that in the meantime dozens of Labor MPs and senators will be running around electorates right across Australia taking enormous credit for the enormous amounts of money that have been delivered in both public and private schools for these very important projects like air conditioning, shade and grass for kids to be able to play on rather than dusty bowls and grounds.

Due to the funding from the Investing in Our Schools Program that is still current until 31 December 2008, this coming summer there will be more schools in my electorate of Riverina where, in 45 degree heat, the children will have the comfort of air conditioning and shadecloths to do their learning. In addition, they will have their covered outdoor learning areas to protect them from the skin cancers and the problems that the sun presents across the Riverina, and when it rains they will collect the water that will run off the roofs of those covered outdoor learning areas into the drains down into tanks that we got from the community water grants. It was such a boost to these communities because, before this, the P&C mums and dads had to fund this.

In my electorate, South Wagga Public School had been trying to save for their covered outdoor learning area for around 30 years, and I think they had around $30,000 in their account. They ended up with $150,000 for their covered outdoor learning area and water tanks from the community water grants, and they thought it was Christmas. So I think that the minister has erred most particularly in ensuring that she vetoed what was an absolutely sensational program, no matter who brought it in. I believe that if anyone, whether government or opposition, has a good idea then it is worthy of support.

There are issues that I would like to raise in reference to the public education system. In the last election it was my personal mission to fight for added resources, particularly for public education for the education and advancement of disabled students in the disability sector. It is a fact that we have increasing disabilities in Australia. With the emergence of new technology, the increasing ability to save lives and the ability to save babies at 20 and 21 weeks of gestation who have ongoing issues in the future, we will continue to have an emergence of a variety of special needs in the education system. Quite rightly, mums and dads, families and students want to enter into mainstream education. When they enter into mainstream education, at times private schools have the option of accepting or rejecting a person with special needs if they do not have the resources to offer that child their full potential in learning. In the public education system that is simply not doable. Every child is accepted and every school should have the role of accepting children and providing them with an education in all its forms.

I am terribly concerned that in the public education system there are not the resources or the money available to educate our students with special needs to their full potential. That is an indictment of our society because that is picking and choosing. I believe that parents, students and families, teachers and headmasters deserve better attention to the way in which they inevitably have to deal with these issues when they are underresourced.

I cannot see anything in this bill that includes an education revolution for all Australian students, including those with disabilities. I cannot see anything in this bill that gives intent for all Australian children, because if that were the case you would have clearly identified and put in place a program of funding that enables resources to be applied for children with special needs. Not only do the children with special needs deserve this program but every child deserves this program. What we have now is teachers struggling with children with special needs and spending the majority of their time trying to fulfil their obligation and role, because they have a need and a desire to have all of their students reaching their potential. The danger of having no resources—and this is certainly not the fault of teachers, schools or children with special needs—is that the other children are left to fend and manage for themselves. If there were a true intention to have an education revolution, the revolution would recognise students with special needs and succinctly hive out money to ensure that their full potential is able to be reached and enhanced through their education programs. It is proven that, through early intervention in schools, students with special needs go on to achieve great things in their community. It is an absolute indictment that this bill does not include many of Australia’s children who are also entitled to have an education.

I will go on to talk about the issues regarding the Australian history unit, that have been raised with respect to the bill. I believe that there has to be an option for Australian history to be taught. When I was at school I knew nothing about Australian history except for the fact that Captain Cook landed. I knew all about American history, I knew all about American presidents, but Australian history was not taught in my little Guyra Central School. I really feel that that diminished my ability to understand the issues about Australia. We all know that history repeats itself, as we see right now in many of the things that are happening across Australia. I think that we need to ensure that there is a separate unit of Australian history, particularly the history since Federation in 1901. There certainly must be an identified and complete unit so that all Australians can be proud of their history, can recognise their history and are accomplished to speak about our history and nation building when they represent this country, or at any given time, so that they understand their place and the way Australia has been shaped and formed. I am quite concerned about any move away from the central focus of Australian history. We need to have an intelligent balance between both our Indigenous heritage and the history of our European settlement. I hope that the history curriculum will encourage this to continue. I feel it is very important to maintain the history unit and ensure that it is ramped up rather than dumbed down.

As we move into our education revolution, which is part of the bill, we talk about the rolling out of computers. I am in New South Wales. New South Wales has pulled out of the computer rollout. Right from the beginning, during the election campaign, school principals were saying, ‘This simply can’t work because we don’t have the resources for the on-costs.’ The capital rollout was going to be the least expensive part; it is the on-costs that they were going to be left with. It was again going to be mums, dads and principals who were left to pick up the shortfall. I cannot see how this revolution has revealed anything other than failure. (Time expired)

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I just remind the member for Riverina of two things. She is leaving the chamber. That is bad manners. I listened to her as much as I could. Firstly, the Investing in Our Schools Program, as she well knows, was terminated in public by the former Prime Minister in 2007 and was not part of the coalition’s education or financial policy. Secondly, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Bill 2008 is not a financial bill. This bill is for the creation of a new education authority. If she had actually read the bill and then discussed it for the public record and for her electors in Riverina, we might have been a bit more enlightened.

In my humble way, I will try to enlighten the House on this very important piece of legislation. This legislation, like most legislation in this House, is a direct result of an election commitment given by the Labor government. For the record, on 2 October 2008 the Council of Australian Governments, COAG, made a very important decision. That was to establish a national education authority. The bill that we are discussing, which the member for Riverina totally ignored, gives effect to this historic recommendation. The new National Education Authority will bring together for the first time the important functions of curriculum development, assessment and reporting at the national level. It is a common-sense policy for the 21st century to bring some form of continuity, consistency and conformity to our nation’s various education systems.

The bill establishes the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, ACARA, as an independent statutory authority under the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997. It is important to remember that this governance model is consistent with agreements reached by the Ministerial Council on Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs, MCEETYA, on 12 September 2008. It is in effect the result of cooperative federalism—and over many years people in this place have sought to have our federal and state governments genuinely cooperate to achieve important national outcomes. This is one such attempt to do that. So, contrary to the member for Riverina’s comments, this is part of a revolution. A revolution starts small and will build and gather momentum. This is about producing good educational outcomes for all students throughout Australia. It is an attempt to provide a means to promote, measure and support that.

The bill establishes some very important functions for the authority which will operate under the following principles. The authority will be responsible for the coordination of curriculum, assessment and reporting, including the management and analysis of school data at a national level. The authority will have its policy direction set by education ministers through MCEETYA, not through the federal government. Some of the functions include developing and administering a national school curriculum, including content of the curriculum and achievement standards for school subjects specified in the charter, and I would like to return to that later; developing and administering national assessments; collecting, managing and analysing student assessment data and other data relating to schools and comparative school performance; and a number of other functions, particularly in relation to the sharing and storage of this information amongst relevant parties.

The authority is accountable to the Commonwealth and the states and territories through MCEETYA. MCEETYA will be responsible for setting the authority’s work program, in line with the functions that I just outlined, through a charter. The authority must perform its functions and exercise its powers in accordance with the charter, not the whims of whoever may be the current government. The charter will set out the authority’s annual work program in relation to discharging the core functions set out in the bill. The bill sets out the core functions for the authority. The charter will give MCEETYA the ability to confer additional functions so long as they are in relation to the core functions of the authority set out in the bill.

The bill also outlines provisions covering the composition of the authority, which will be made up of 13 persons as a board of directors. The authority will have a chief executive officer and staff. The board of directors will consist of a chair, a deputy chair, one member nominated by the Commonwealth minister, one member nominated by the National Catholic Education Commission, one member nominated by the Independent Schools Council of Australia and eight other members, with each state and territory education minister nominating one each. The CEO will be responsible for the day-to-day management of the authority.

I notice that some members opposite have made the point that they hope that there will be teacher representation on the board of directors. I, too, would expect that. I could not see that, where the charter asks for persons who are adequately and properly trained to give advice to the authority, they would not have an educational background. I would find that very unusual. I would join with those opposite if they were genuinely interested in that side of the argument.

The board members will be appointed by the Commonwealth Minister for Education. Board members will be appointed to their positions on a part-time basis for a maximum period of six years. MCEETYA, I would add, must agree to all board appointments and be satisfied that there is a balance of professional expertise in the membership of the board across a whole range of issues, including matters relating to school curriculum, school assessment and data management, analysing and reporting in relation to school performance, financial and commercial matters, the management of educational organisations and corporate governance matters. Finally, the bill provides that the authority will report on its functions to all Australian education ministers through MCEETYA. It must report in particular on its activities during that year to the extent that they relate to the charter and it must provide any other information relating to the discharge of its functions that MCEETYA directs.

The Australian government has committed $37.2 million over the next four years to support the work of the quality schools authority. This will also be complemented by state contributors. We made a commitment during the last election campaign, which is given effect in this legislation, to bring about and develop a world-class national curriculum from kindergarten to year 12, starting with the key learning areas of English, mathematics, the sciences and history. In April this year, the government set up the independent National Curriculum Board to take on the challenge of developing Australia’s first national curriculum in the areas that I have just mentioned, headed by the ‘two macs’: Barry McGaw and Tony Mackay. The view is for the new national curriculum to be implemented by 2011.

The new national curriculum is being developed collaboratively between the government and non-government education authorities, teachers, students, academics, professional organisations and business groups. Framing papers on the new English, maths, science and history curricula were released earlier this year. The consultation period for these framing papers opened just recently and will continue through until February 2009. In establishing each framing paper, the National Curriculum Board recruited a writer, who worked with a small advisory group to draft an advice paper that provides a rationale for students studying the curriculum and a broad-scope sequence of material to cover the years from kindergarten to year 12. Discussions on these framing papers were held last month at a series of national forums and about 200 people attended each of these forums. It is anticipated that the National Curriculum Board will post its final recommendations on its website in early 2009.

The national education agreement will also be established through COAG before the end of this year—hopefully this weekend. This agreement will establish for the first time the shared national targets, outcomes and policy directions that we need to achieve a world-class school system serving the needs of every Australian student. Following the current consultation period, the National Curriculum Board will determine its final recommendations and post them on its website in term 1 of 2009. By March 2009, the board will develop detailed writing briefs for the writers it will recruit to develop the detailed curriculum documents. The board will organise extensive consultation during the development phase—particularly with practising teachers—and will recruit a panel of schools across the country in which to trial material being developed. By the end of 2010, the board is to develop a national K-12 curriculum in English, maths, the sciences and history.

To bring about curriculum development and change in our country is a very comprehensive process—and I find it absolutely fascinating and exciting. However, what I find disappointing is that many on the other side have actually attacked some of the people, and one in particular, chosen to develop the curriculum. I note the member for Sturt in his contribution to this debate attacked Professor Stuart Macintyre and his competence. I find it extraordinary that one would single out an individual who has been invited in a group to put together a curriculum for this country. I note that the Australian, as it always does in its development, nurturing and continuation of the culture wars in this country, was happy to run the headlines of those opposite attacking the character of some of the individuals involved because it did not suit their agenda. Professor Macintyre has never suited their agenda. I found it very disappointing.

They have chosen Dr John Hirst as one of their champions in the history and culture wars and in the right of history teaching. I am happy to read Dr Hirst. I have got his many articles on Australian history by my bedside at the moment. I thought it was terrific that he, who is part of the development group associated with the history curriculum, came out in response to the comment of the Australian in its continuation of the cultural wars and said:

The appointment of Stuart Macintyre to draw up the history section of the national curriculum should not re-ignite the history wars … I have seen his first draft and can assure you that the fears expressed in your pages about his appointment are misplaced.

This slur should belong in history, but it is resurrected and then trotted out in template papers given out to members opposite for something to say on this bill. It was indeed alluded to by the member for Riverina. Let me assure members that the history curriculum that is being developed will be rigorous, inclusive, demanding and representative of our origins, of where we are in the 21st century and of all those forces that have been at work to bring this great country about. I have no hesitation in arguing that it will be a fair and balanced process. It is not the work of one man but the work of many. As a former history teacher, I am really pleased to see that history will take its proud place in the curriculum again as a subject, as a discipline and as a very important component in education.

A second area associated with this bill, and certainly one which has raised a good deal of controversy and ire, is the whole question of transparency in reporting. The whole basis of this is to achieve better educational outcomes for our kids no matter where they are or what school they go to. The basis of this is that the data collected should be used to improve educational outcomes. We need the data at a national level—that is, data collected in a consistent and comprehensive manner from all schools, whether they be public or private. The principle behind that is not only will it have good educational outcomes—certainly that is the intention—but also that any school receiving public money should be accountable for what goes on in it. There is nothing to fear in that at all, but we have to be open about it and say it as it is.

No teacher in our schools should feel threatened by this measure, and nor should any principal or school community. The intention behind it is to gather the data necessary to determine what factors can improve a school and what factors may be at work holding that school back. That is the intention of it. I can assure you that many educators that I know, many former colleagues, want to know this information. I can tell you that the great majority of parents in Australia want to know this material. They are not scared of it. We need to use this material carefully and selectively and to compare like with like.

I draw the attention of those who might like to follow this further to a Treasury paper authored by Andrew Leigh and Hector Thompson, which I believe was released this year. They were looking at the factors at work in Western Australia, particularly trying to determine whether socioeconomic factors were the main factor in determining student outcomes in schools or whether there were other factors at play. I found it really interesting and will share it with the House, because I think it goes to the heart of what we are trying to do here. Their conclusion says:

… 20 per cent of Western Australia government schools outperform those of a similar socioeconomic status by more than 5 percentage points.

That is quite considerable. It goes on:

Assuming that these schools would otherwise have been at the state average, this means that in these schools, at least one-third of students who would otherwise not have made the benchmark, do meet the benchmark. This highlights that for students who are at risk of not meeting the benchmark, being in a better performing school can make a difference.

We want the information to identify better performing and underperforming schools so that we can direct our resources to those schools that are underperforming. We need to know.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I note with interest that the Deputy Prime Minister, when she introduced the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Bill 2008 in her second reading speech, said:

This bill is yet another illustration of how this government is getting on with the job of delivering an education revolution to Australia.

I suggest this education revolution might as well be dashed on the Bay of Pigs for all that it will achieve for the nation. When looking forward we must look back at where we have come from before discussing education going forward. Look at what the coalition achieved. It increased funding for state schools in every budget, delivering a funding increase of 70 per cent in real terms between 1996 and 2007. It put the interests of children and parents ahead of bureaucrats and teachers unions. It enhanced the capacity of parents to choose between public and private schools. It established better formulas for schools to get funding from the federal government. It ended the Keating government’s new schools policy, which placed severe restrictions on establishing new non-government schools. I guess Labor does not like private education. The coalition also attached conditions to Commonwealth education funding to the states, which enabled the introduction of literacy and numeracy tests for all students, and testing trials were also introduced for year 9 students in 2007.

Labor promised an education revolution. Interestingly, it has also promised 11 wars on everything from unemployment to food and fuel this year. There is something about war and revolution that a Marxist based party seems to enjoy. Labor promised to deliver an education revolution that would increase productivity and provide better outcomes for all children. Yet the Prime Minister’s education revolution is unfortunately creating losers as well as winners, particularly in private schools, where Labor has cut funding by abandoning the coalition’s $1.2 billion Investing in Our Schools Program. I was recently at the Coombabah State School where the headmaster lauded the Investing in Our Schools Program for giving much-needed funds to put in place the infrastructure that the state was not providing—in this case, a range of dongas that were used for students to learn in, because the state would not provide established classrooms. The Investing in Our Schools Program also provided the funds, the means and the capability to provide internet connectivity in those classrooms.

Labor says it will divert almost all of the $1.2 billion from the Investing in Our Schools Program into trade training centres, and of course that huge failure of a white elephant, the computers in our schools program, yet these programs benefit secondary schools only. Only $800,000 goes to primary schools, who clearly are the biggest losers. Despite the claim of an education revolution, in its first budget Labor cut almost $400 million in specific programs targeted at improving standards in literacy and numeracy. The $700 Even Start tuition vouchers for students who failed to meet minimum standards have been scrapped. The $70 million summer school program has been scrapped. The $50,000 in rewards for schools that improve literacy and numeracy has been scrapped. Far from bringing an education revolution, Labor has increased spending on education by less than one per cent. Cracker of a revolution, boys—well done! Labor has simply replaced successful and very popular Howard government programs with new bureaucracies delivering the failed computers in schools and trade training centres programs.

Let us look at our computers in schools as we are discussing the wide range of education. The Prime Minister, at the ALP campaign launch, said:

… Labor will undertake a groundbreaking reform by providing for every Australian secondary school student in Years 9 to 12 access to their own computer at school.

So how has Mr Rudd gone on this central education policy that is primary to the education revolution? He has abandoned the promise to provide every year 9 to year 12 student with access to their own computer at school. Now they will have access to a computer for every two students. Less than 10 per cent of public schools have benefited from the program; less than 10 per cent of the total computers have been delivered. Yet we are a third of the way through the government’s term. State and federal governments are yet to agree on who pays the something like $3 billion for installing and maintaining computers, software, networking and all of the ancillary air conditioning and infrastructure that go with it. By not meeting these costs, the Prime Minister is providing only 20 to 25 per cent of the funds needed to pay for his election promise, insisting that parents pick up the rest. A fabulous revolution, I say! Round 2 of the computer program closed on 9 October this year, with 1,900 schools invited to apply. Many schools indicated that they will not be applying, and it appears that the New South Wales government, that great pinnacle of democracy, has instructed its schools not to apply. A fabulous revolution! You can be truly proud of that great revolution and where it is going!

Labor promised not to alter the Howard government’s SES funding model in the 2009 to 2012 funding period, yet the Schools Assistance Bill currently before the Senate inquiry gives extra powers to a minister to stop or delay government funding for a range of what can only be construed as spurious reasons. It mandates that schools comply strictly with a national curriculum, putting funding to Steiner, Montessori, special needs, faith based and International Baccalaureate schools under some degree of threat. It introduces new disclosure requirements that will discourage fundraising. Currently, all external sources of revenue that a school raises are disclosed to the minister but not to the general public. Labor has now changed the bill to say that they must all be disclosed to the public. Why? What interest do I have in what the fundraising regimes of a private school in Tasmania are? The answer is none. But I have asked the wrong question. As I look at the former secretary of the ACTU across the table, the question should be, ‘What interest does the teachers union have in getting information about fundraising and sources of funding for private schools?’ Labor has announced plans to review school funding in 2010. On the evidence, it appears clear that they intend to return to the politics of envy and class warfare and to the policy of Mark Latham’s private school hit list. Why? Perhaps Labor does not like private schools.

Let us move on to Labor’s trade training centres. It promised new trade centres built in all of Australia’s 2,650 secondary schools, part of its 2007 election policy. The reality is that, because the funding is only $900,000 to each school on average, schools are forced to pool their funds to build something that resembles a trade training centre. In the first round, just 34 projects were successful.

If we move into the higher education space, the coalition increased funding to the higher education sector from $4.2 billion in 1995-96 to $6.7 billion in the 2007-08 year, a 13 per cent increase in real terms. It increased the higher education loan repayment threshold. Additional funding for universities was provided. There were new loan schemes and boosted funding for regional campuses. It presided over a 58 per cent increase in the number of students. Thankfully, it introduced voluntary student unionism and established the $6 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund.

Now let us look at what Labor promised with respect to voluntary student unionism. The current Minister for Foreign Affairs, Stephen Smith, said at a doorstop:

I’m not considering a compulsory HECS-style arrangement and the whole basis of the approach is one of a voluntary approach so I’m not contemplating a compulsory amenities fee.

That is what he said—a senior member of the Labor cabinet and frontbench. The Deputy Prime Minister said in the Sydney Morning Herald on 11 August:

We committed before the election that we would not reintroduce compulsory student unionism.

Those are two definitive statements that are unequivocal: there will be no compulsory amenity fee and there will be no compulsory student unionism. But let us look at the facts, because they are always a little bit more telling than the rhetoric. The government announced on 3 November this year that it would introduce a $250 service fee for Australian university students to be compulsorily paid by a deferred HECS-style arrangement. That is the height of duplicity. The Deputy Prime Minister and the current foreign minister were both unequivocal in their statements that they would not introduce compulsory fees, and here they are. Indeed, the Deputy Prime Minister, only three months earlier, said, ‘We committed that we would not introduce compulsory student unionism,’ and three months later—less than 100 days later—there it is: a compulsory fee. It is a betrayal. It is looking the Australian people in the eye, saying one thing and blatantly doing another. I guess that was not in Labor’s 70-page glossy brochure paid for by taxpayers’ dollars to celebrate the first 12 months of the failed Labor Rudd government.

So that is the past; that is where we have come from. We have come from duplicity, broken promises and farce. Let us have a look at where we are going. The current bill is establishing a new Commonwealth body, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, ACARA, to develop and implement the new national curriculum and to collect data and provide analysis and research to governments. The government had initially committed separate funding to develop a new National Curriculum Board and a new independent National Schools Assessment and Data Centre. This bill aggregates that funding and incorporates both bodies into ACARA.

The development of a national curriculum began under the Howard government and had its obvious support. However, the opposition has expressed reservations about the direction that the curriculum has now taken under a Labor government. Minister Gillard appointed an interim National Curriculum Board to work on its development as this legislation was being prepared, and that board included working groups in each of the four subject areas being covered by the curriculum: mathematics, English, science and history. The development of the history curriculum, in particular, has caused a little concern.

The new authority, ACARA, will assume powers over curriculum and assessment that are currently with state governments and it will further be empowered by its secondary role as the primary data analysis and research centre. ACARA’s clearest role, though, is the development of a national curriculum. We support that; we support a national curriculum. It certainly makes sense. We are concerned, though, that, should it be anything other than a useful framework, the national curriculum may be hijacked. We are concerned there is a danger of a national curriculum being taken and straddled with left-wing ideological views.

It would be a disaster for Australian students if the Labor Party and its left-wing friends used the national curriculum as an opportunity to skew and hijack schooling in Australia. We will take the Labor government on its word—which we have done a few times this year, which has only led to catastrophic failure. But we will take them on their word that ACARA will do the right thing and will develop a class curriculum that is free from ideological bias, with a strong foundation in the basics. We will take them on their word that that will be achieved.

We are concerned about any move away from the basics, any move away from literacy and numeracy and any move away from Australian history that incorporates an intelligent balance between our Aboriginal heritage, the history of European settlement and modern Australian history. We are concerned that balance is provided in the curriculum. We will closely monitor the establishment of the curriculum, we will encourage wide consultation and we will not allow perspectives to be captured by a small group of ideologues.

We have seen in the Schools Assistance Bill that the Labor Party wishes to mandate the introduction of the national curriculum before the end of the funding quadrennium in non-government schools as a condition for non-government schools to receive funding from 1 January, even though we have little idea what the national curriculum may actually look like. The Deputy Prime Minister has refused to confirm that schools currently delivering alternative recognised curricula will be able to continue to do so. This makes it very difficult for a range of high-achieving students, special students and those with different educational philosophies to continue, with some faith, going forward. It puts at risk those faith based schools who teach faith based components within their schooling. The Deputy Prime Minister’s refusal to provide comfort to these schools by accepting the opposition’s amendment to the Schools Assistance Bill to remove the mandatory application of the unwritten national curriculum has certainly not helped matters.

In a speech on 10 November 2008, the Deputy Prime Minister deferred any decision about whether alternative curriculum based schools will be able to continue under ACARA. This means that, under the current government, ACARA will have the final say as to whether the following curricula are allowed: Jewish, Islamic and Christian schools; the unique Steiner schools, of which I have one in my electorate, based in Nerang; the Montessori schools; the University of Cambridge International Examination; and the International Baccalaureate. Government has moved away from its responsibility to provide guidance and support for those curricula and is allowing ACARA to decide if they should continue.

I would contend that, for a national curriculum to succeed, ACARA and the government will need to be able to convince all of the state education departments, all the state governments and the non-government sector that the national curriculum will not interfere in those aspects of the present curriculum of which they are most proud, which differentiate their schooling and which mean that parents know full well what the students are being taught and accept that by virtue of placing their child into a school like Steiner or Montessori. Members may draw their own conclusion as to how the government will be successful in this endeavour. But the opposition will watch carefully and will not allow the national curriculum to be hijacked by left-wing ideologues for their own purpose. We are looking for a balanced curriculum, a curriculum that meets the needs of all Australians. The opposition will hold the government strongly accountable if anything other than that is delivered.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Bill 2008, which brings in the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. I do so because this is good public policy. It is one of a series of measures which forms the Rudd government’s education revolution beginning with an investment of $19.3 billion in education in the May budget, an investment that is central to building a stronger future for Australia and a fairer Australia and preparing Australia for future challenges.

I will not waste my time responding to the comments and the paranoia of the member for Fadden but what I want to do is respond to one of the allegations and comments that is continually made by members opposite in respect of the Investing in Our Schools Program and how this government supposedly ended that program. The program, as other speakers on this side have pointed out, was ended by the previous coalition government. What I have before me, which quite clearly spells that out, is some press statements put out by the coalition government about 12 months ago and in the lead-up to the last federal election. I want to quote from a press release put out by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, who at the time said:

Details of the continued support for the Investing in Our Schools Programme will be announced in due course.

That was on 28 August 2007. More than a year later, we are still waiting for those details. But more importantly and more specifically, subsequent to that press release from the Liberal Party’s website where they talked about their policies in the lead-up to the last federal election, they listed 10 objectives that they would commit to if they were elected. Not one of them talks about the continuation of the Investing in Our Schools Program. So if they want to come in here and talk about that policy ending then they ought to turn around and look behind them and look to the people who in fact did end that program and not accuse this government of having done so.

Australia is now ranked 20th amongst the OECD countries for the percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds who have completed upper secondary education or its equivalent. Access Economics estimates that young people who leave school before year 12 are six times more likely to make a poor transition to post-school activities than those who complete senior schooling. I note that each year of schooling is associated with an increase of around 10 per cent in earnings. I also note that a study published by the Dusseldorp Skills Forum and the Business Council of Australia estimated that a 10 per cent increase in year 12 or apprenticeship completion by 2010 would boost annual GDP by 1.1 per cent by 2040 as a result of increased labour force participation and improved workforce productivity. Those are some of the benefits that come from better education. When members come into this chamber and talk about the so-called proud record of the coalition for its commitment to education, perhaps they need to look at some of those statistics which in fact paint a very damning picture of what happened to education in this country under the watch of the coalition government.

I said earlier that the Rudd Labor government has committed $19.3 billion to education in its first budget. That includes $1.2 billion for the digital education revolution, and as part of that spending the government is providing $11.5 million to support professional development for teachers in information and communications technology and $32.6 million over two years to supply students and teachers with online curriculum tools and resources. I also point out that $116 million has already been provided to 896 schools across Australia to fund 116,820 new computers. So the program is being rolled out, contrary to what other speakers have said, and it is being taken up by schools around Australia. I have yet to find a school that does not want new computers. The $19.3 billion also includes $2.5 billion for trade training centres in secondary schools, and $90 million of that has already been provided to 34 lead schools across the country. There will be $62.4 million over the next three years, commencing in the 2008-09 year, for the National Asian Languages and Studies in Schools Program. This is important, given that our strong trading partners in the years ahead will be Asian countries. There will be $625.8 million over three years, commencing in 2008-09, to reduce HECS rates for maths and science students. New maths and science graduates will also be eligible for a 50 per cent reduction in their HECS if they pursue a career in those fields, including in teaching.

To add to my earlier points about the need for the policies included in the education revolution, it is the aim of the government to ensure that by the year 2020 the percentage of Australians aged between 20 and 64 without qualifications at the certificate III level and above will be halved. It is the aim of the government to ensure that by 2020 the number of diploma and advanced diploma completions will have doubled. And it is also the aim of the government to ensure that by the year 2013 there will be universal access to early learning for all children. I also note that there are nearly 6.5 million Australians who have no post-school qualifications and that every year some 45,000 to 50,000 early school leavers do not go into full-time work, full-time learning or a combination of work and learning.

To return to the substance of the bill, we live in a global community where people not only travel frequently to places around the world but take up employment and career paths in different parts of the world. As we all know, transnational corporations set up businesses in many countries with the same job specifications and professional training requirements for the staff they recruit, wherever they are to be based. That is even more the case with respect to employment opportunities and qualification requirements within Australia. It makes little sense to have education providers around Australia setting individual standards and curriculum in each state and territory. The Rudd government recognises that, and the state and territory governments recognise that. That is why, on 2 October, there was a historic COAG decision to establish the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority as an independent statutory authority that will bring together the functions of curriculum assessment and reporting at the national level. I believe this decision will be welcomed by families and industry around Australia. The Rudd government has highlighted time and again the significance of education to future prosperity and opportunity for individuals and future prosperity for our nation. A good education is dependent on a number of factors, and curriculum setting and assessing form part of those factors. This bill is a long overdue measure and I welcome the intention to commence this process on 1 January 2009.

The bill also provides for a national assessment of student performance. Knowing how students compare with other students around the country is important for students, parents, employers and the teaching profession. Importantly, it is essential knowledge for governments because it will assist them in the allocation of education and social spending and in the provision of targeted funding. It is widely accepted that education outcomes are not simplistically determined by the school environment or the quality of teachers; other social factors can and do determine education outcomes. It is very important for governments to know how students from different communities are performing by assessing them against the same curriculum. Governments can then identify underlying social issues which may need addressing. In that context I want to refer to a report entitled How young people are faring 2008, prepared by the Foundation for Young Australians and released earlier this year. I referred to this report in a previous address on education, but this statement in the report is absolutely relevant to the point I am making at the moment:

Social disadvantage promotes lower rates of attainment among some groups of young Australians … 19 year-olds from low SES backgrounds attain Year 12 or its equivalent at a rate 26.1 percentage points lower than that of those from high SES origins.

At age 24, well over one-third of those from low SES backgrounds have not completed Year 12 or equivalent, compared to about one in seven of those from high SES backgrounds.

This is the important paragraph:

Achievement levels in school also affect attainment, and since school achievement is highly correlated with social background, policies developed to target improvements in Year 12 completion will need to address the issue of social disadvantage.

That is the critical comment made in that report, and it is the critical point of this bill. If the government can provide those assessments and those comparisons of how students are performing in different parts of the country it will enable the government to target specific spending, because quite often those performance levels are not directly related to the school, to the teachers or to the subjects that are being studied, but to other factors which also need addressing.

Of course, a national assessment will increase the level of accountability on both schools and teachers. The important issue here is to ensure that all relevant factors are taken into account when drawing conclusions about student performance and, therefore, school performance. I link that with the previous comments I made. You cannot judge a school by its performance if you simply take into account the performance of the students. You have to make a judgement on the basis of other, external factors as well. That applies if you are going to make judgements about the teachers who are teaching in those schools. I am sure that those matters are well understood by the minister.

The COAG agreement which underpins the implementation of this bill will also address a critical decision for families when they consider moving from one state to another. Each year about 340,000 Australians move interstate, and I would expect those figures to rise in the years ahead. About one-quarter of those 340,000 Australians are students.

Not having uniformity in the school system across Australia raises two matters of concern. Firstly, parents sometimes reject a worthwhile opportunity to move from one state to another because of the impact on their children’s education. They will make a conscious decision, perhaps, not to take up a better position for themselves because they do not want to disrupt their children’s education. They put the children’s education first. Secondly, for those who do move, considerable readjustment is required for children still at school. If a child has to go from one school to another, sometimes in another state, it disrupts them to the point where it might affect their social wellbeing. Importantly, they may have to pick up months of learning as part of the adjustment process in the new school. Because of that they may not perform as well as they might otherwise have performed. It does have an impact on their children’s schooling so I can understand why parents are sometimes reluctant to move from one area to another.

In my own state I have known of parents who have moved from one part of the City of Adelaide to another part—or even out into the country—but have continued to send their children to the same school, even if there is considerable cost, just so that they will not disrupt their children’s schooling. Having a national curriculum overcomes many of the difficulties associated with relocating from one school to another. For that reason alone it is an important bill.

In recent weeks I have attended end-of-year ceremonies at many of the schools in my electorate. I am always impressed by the extraordinary talents I see in young people throughout our community. I am equally impressed by the commitment of so many of the teachers in those schools, and how they, in turn, always find innovative ways to make school life more meaningful and more interesting. I want to take this opportunity to speak about one such example. I refer to the Banksia Park International High School. I attended their end-of-year presentation a week ago, but some three weeks earlier I attended the launch of a very special program. The program is referred to as the Banksia Park International High School international football program. This is a brand new concept. It is a concept that was put together by the school as a response to a need from within the school community. It goes a long way, I believe, to providing real opportunities for young people, not only in their school but in schools across Australia.

Banksia Park International High School, as the name says, is a school that has students from all around the world. The most common sport that all of those students can identify with is soccer. That is why they focused on soccer as the basis for this program. There are opportunities for students from year 8 to year 12 to get involved in the program as part of their school curriculum. This is not just a recreation or a hobby program; this forms part of the school curriculum right through from years 8 and 9 to years 10, 11 and 12. The details of the program, particularly with respect to years 11 and 12, are still being finalised but they have already launched the program and it is underway. It is available to both girls and boys in the school.

You may well ask: how does this fit in with the school curriculum? Soccer is an international sport. In order to get the program up and running the school has been working with the South Australian Football Federation and with Adelaide United soccer club, which is the dominant soccer club in our state—and which, I might say, if I can digress, has performed exceptionally well this last season—and they are working with the local soccer club, Modbury Soccer Club. They are also working with the person who sponsors the Adelaide United soccer club, Mr Nick Bianco. The whole concept is about getting students involved from the early stages of the game right through to the end. It teaches the children about refereeing, coaching, sports training, administration and, if they want to pursue it as an individual, even becoming a player.

All of those areas today provide opportunities for employment later on. All of those are career opportunities. In fact, when you consider how dominant and important sport has become in our daily lives, it really is a huge employment sector. If you want to get work in that sector, there is no better way than to devise a course that enables a pathway into sports administration, sports coaching, sports participation or refereeing. All of those areas provide opportunities for our young people. They are being pursued, but quite often they are being pursued without the proper training.

I commend this program because, as someone who has always supported sports participation in the community, I know there are benefits that go far beyond just education. Young people who get involved in sports and in this kind of program learn about leadership. They learn about taking responsibility. They learn about being committed. It is a healthy activity that they get involved in. They learn to work as a team and in conjunction with other people. It makes better people of the young people who get involved. I have seen it time and time again in those who participate in sports, even just at local sports club level. To see a school pick up all of those pieces, put them together in the form of a curriculum and then offer it to its students is commendable. I certainly look forward to working with the school in the years ahead as it rolls out the program. I understand that in the first couple of years the program will run only for a few weeks but as students move on through years 10, 11 and 12 it will become a full semester activity. As I said, it actually forms part of their school curriculum and they will be assessed accordingly.

As I said at the outset, this is part of the series of measures that the Rudd government has introduced as part of the education revolution. It is an important part and one that I believe will make a real difference to the opportunities for young people in this country. I commend the bill to the House.

Maxine McKew (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Early Childhood Education and Child Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank all of those who spoke on the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Bill 2008. Certainly, the level of debate shows the very strong interest that we all have in ensuring that all young Australians have the best education and the best start in life. I think it is healthy that the foundations of the education of all young Australians are being vigorously and openly debated not only here within the parliament but also in the media, in schools and in local communities. The Rudd Labor government came to office knowing that world-class education is the foundation of a competitive economy. We are committed to delivering an education revolution. The government is making new investments in schooling and building a modern high-quality education system which will ensure that all young Australians achieve their potential and have the skills to participate actively in society. We are investing up to $1½ million per high school to create trade training centres in all of Australia’s 2,650 secondary schools and $1.2 billion in the digital education revolution and computers for secondary schools, supported by digital content resources, professional development and broadband connections.

On the matter of investment, I want to correct some of the misleading statements made by the opposition regarding the Investing in Our Schools Program—the IOSP. That was an initiative of the previous government. On 19 February 2007, the former Prime Minister issued a press release noting a fourth and final round of funding. The former government decided that there would be no further funding for the IOSP and even returned $26 million of funding for government schools to the surplus, as they claimed there was insufficient demand. Then, on 28 August 2007, Julie Bishop announced that the Howard government would continue support for the IOSP and that details of the continued support would be announced in due course. Despite this promise, the coalition stayed silent on that continued support during the election campaign, and no additional funding was ever allocated to that program. But, as I have outlined, this government is investing $2½ billion over 10 years for trade training centres, $1 billion over four years in the digital education revolution and $62 million over four years under Local Schools Working Together. But simply spending more, of course, will never be enough. Our investments will be underpinned by stronger emphasis on equity, on excellence, on transparency and on cooperation. Together with state and territory governments, we have embraced a new national vision for Australia to become the most educated country and the best skilled economy, with the best trade workforce.

This bill establishes the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. It presents a significant and systematic advance to our education system that replaces the ad hoc and part-time approach over the last 12 years of the Howard government. It ensures that all governments—state, territory and Commonwealth—will work together to improve education throughout the country. It is a real example of collaborative federalism working at its best. As the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister have said, we want nothing short of transformational change in our schools. We must continue to work together to improve the quality of teaching, to ensure every child benefits and to mandate transparency and accountability. The new authority will play a crucial role in delivering on all of these goals. It will be responsible for delivering the national curriculum and the transparency and performance-reporting agenda at the national level. It will build on the significant work that has already been achieved by the Interim National Curriculum Board.

When we came into office, the Australian government committed to the development of a rigorous world-class national curriculum from kindergarten to year 12, starting with the key learning areas of English, mathematics, the sciences and history. For 30 years Australia has needed a single, high-quality national curriculum. The national curriculum will benefit teachers by giving them a very clear understanding of what needs to be covered in each subject and in each phase of schooling. It will also bring benefits to parents by giving them a clear and explicit agreement about what it is that young people should know and be able to do. And it will also allow teachers the flexibility to shape their classes around the curriculum in a way that is meaningful and engaging for students.

On the matter of teachers, I was very interested to hear members of the opposition come out and support the interests of teachers. Of course it is a bit too little too late after over a decade of neglect of the teaching profession. Unlike the opposition in government, this government has the greatest respect for the many talented and hardworking teachers in our schools and we are backing up that respect with greater support for them and their profession. That is why on Monday the Acting Prime Minister announced that the Rudd government is prepared to invest half a billion dollars in a national partnership between the government and the states and territories. This investment will ensure that teachers are supported to ensure that all young Australians get the very best education.

But teaching, a critical part of the story, is only part of the story. We need a rigorous curriculum with the right level of flexibility. And we need to ensure that the curriculum leads to depth of understanding. There has been debate in this House about the dangers of the national curriculum being influenced by certain ideological positions. I want to be clear on this matter: the task to develop the curriculum is a matter for the experts. It is not for politicians. The Interim National Curriculum Board has gone about its work to develop the national curriculum in an open and transparent manner and has drawn on expertise as it sees fit. And they are to be commended for their efforts to date. There will always be debate regarding this area and what is in and what is not. This government welcomes and encourages that debate. Through the processes the Interim National Curriculum Board has been using, all Australians can contribute their ideas online about the national curriculum.

There has been significant debate on the dangers of the national curriculum stifling creativity and flexibility and restricting choice. The national curriculum, once agreed and completed, will be compulsory. But let me be clear on this point: this does not mean that every school will be required to teach the same subjects, line by line, in the same way. It means that there will be determined content and achievement standards in the learning areas of English, mathematics, the sciences and history. By content, I mean what it is that students are able to know and to do—the knowledge, the understandings and the skills. By achievement standards, I mean how well achievement is measured and reported.

The national curriculum will not mandate the practices that schools or teachers use to deliver that content and the achievement standards. Schools and teachers will continue to use their own professional judgement about what to cover and in what sequence and how best to reflect local and regional circumstances, different philosophies and different learning environments.

As the Acting Prime Minister stated a bit earlier, she recognises that some schools use a specialised curriculum, such as the International Baccalaureate, and that some, such as Steiner and Montessori schools, have particular educational philosophies—quite prized educational philosophies—which involve different approaches and different ways to deliver the curriculum. Clearly, there are a number of approaches that are internationally and educationally recognised and used by schools that can show their approach to curriculum is well structured and of high quality.

One of the key tasks of this new authority will be to advise on the most effective method for confirming the recognition of well-established alternative curriculum frameworks in line with the existing curriculum accreditation arrangements that operate within the states and territories. It will do this by working in collaboration with the states and territories, which have constitutional responsibility for curriculum offerings in their jurisdictions. It will make sure that, for the first time, there is a national recognition process that delivers transparency about the curriculum that is being delivered across Australia and one that is not overly burdensome.

The new authority will also play a key role in implementing improved transparency and public accountability of school outcomes through the introduction of a nationally agreed reporting framework to identify school needs and achievements. That includes moving to a new level of transparency in the reporting of student and school performance. Lack of transparency can hide failure. It feeds a culture where all the adults involved—the teachers, the principals, the community leaders and the members of parliament—avoid accountability. And lack of transparency prevents us from identifying where greater effort and investment are needed.

Importantly, transparency and accountability are overwhelmingly supported by parents. Last month, the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, with input from the Australian Council of State School Organisations, conducted a major survey of parents’ attitudes about the information they want from schools. The results are striking, with 83.2 per cent of parents in all school systems agreeing that important information relating to school activities and performance should be made public. Parents are hungry for information about how they can help their own children to learn better, both at home and at school. And they understand the importance of information for producing systematic school improvement. And it would certainly appear from the debate in the House on this bill that most members on both sides understand the importance of the right kind of information.

Real progress has already been made in working with state and territory governments to develop a framework for publishing consistent, accurate and appropriate information. But there is much more that can be done through this new authority. We will be insisting on comprehensive information, which will be put in its proper context. Specifically, we will be comparing how the performance of a school compares to that of other like schools serving similar student groups. The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority will be at the forefront of the government’s commitment to provide all young Australians with better opportunities and the best start in life. It will be the engine room of reform and a key driver of our education revolution. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.