Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women's Issues) Share this | Hansard source

member for Jagajaga would now raise this with such high dudgeon. Of course, last week we had the shadow shadow minister—the member for Rankin—sitting up there calling for it to be compulsory for every child to be required to complete year 12. Mind you, the member for Jagajaga is so bereft of policy ideas that the member for Rankin has taken it upon himself to become the shadow shadow minister and is publicly pitching for her job. And all the member for Jagajaga can do is sit there and watch her position as shadow minister erode before her eyes.

Let me turn to schools. Recently there was an unprecedented event in education circles: Australia’s representative on the executive of the United Nations education body, UNESCO, Professor Kenneth Wiltshire, made a significant attack—through the media—on state and territory governments for their failure to monitor the quality of teaching in their education systems. Professor Wiltshire pointed out that state Labor governments, who are under the influence of the teachers unions, are unable to achieve any significant reforms to improve educational quality. Professor Wiltshire’s criticisms underscore the reality that any government that is unwilling or incapable of standing up to the teachers unions will be unable to put students and education standards first.

The Howard government are committed to raising academic standards across the nation. We are committed to achieving greater national consistency between state and territory school systems so that students who move between states are not disadvantaged. We are committed to ensuring that state and territory curricula are more accountable so that parents have confidence that schools are focused on teaching their children the essential and fundamental skills that will allow them to be well-informed citizens of the future. Parents are concerned about failing standards in our schools, and they are turning to the Australian government to focus on literacy and numeracy and get the state and territory education ministers to raise those standards.

The member for Jagajaga says, ‘Oh, we’re not doing too badly.’ I am sorry; that is not good enough. We accept nothing less than the highest possible standards, and there are numerous examples of failure on the part of state and territory education authorities. You just have to read the recent reports in the media. The Australian Defence Force Academy will force almost half of its tertiary engineering students to sit remedial maths courses to bring them up to university standard. A Queensland university has to require more than half its first-year science and engineering students to undertake remedial maths classes. Law lecturers in a number of law schools around the country are having to give their students remedial English classes. One of Australia’s best science research institutes, the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, has had to employ a lecturer from the University of Queensland to run remedial English classes for PhD students—these are meant to be our best and brightest.

Across Australia, universities are having to direct valuable resources to remedial English and maths classes for tertiary students. This is because the states and territories, who set the curricula, have failed to ensure that students are getting the basics right. You just have to talk to employers, businesses and industry across the country to realise how concerned they are about the standards in our schools. International benchmarking shows some 30 per cent of Australian students did not reach the standard of literacy that would be required to meet the demands of lifelong learning—30 per cent; that is not good enough. The Labor Party is prepared to accept that 30 per cent of students should be condemned to a low literacy standard; we are not. This is a failure of the states and territories, and the Labor Party knows it.

Parents have also got a right to know what is being taught in their children’s classrooms and that their children are getting the necessary skills to perform at university and in the workplace. There has to be greater accountability for what is being taught in our classrooms, with schools not being used to politically indoctrinate children.

There are over 80,000 young people who move between states each year—it is probably closer to 90,000—and they should not be disadvantaged by the fragmented, inconsistent approach of the states and territories to schooling. We owe it to our Defence Force families and other families who are prepared to move interstate—and their numbers will only increase with our mobile workforce—to ensure that the education of their children is not disrupted beyond that which is necessary. What the states and territories and the federal opposition have failed to recognise is that parents are calling for educational reform, they are calling for a greater focus on teacher quality and they want more accountability and transparency in the development of curricula. The shadow minister, Ms Macklin, is unable to make any contribution to the debate about lifting educational standards because she is beholden to the teachers unions.

Research both in Australia and overseas concludes that the critical factor in determining a student’s achievement at school is the quality of the teacher. That is why, to promote teacher quality, we are focusing on the need to start giving teachers performance based pay and the need to develop a nationally consistent and rigorous approach to compulsory professional development. We recognise that of course there are outstanding teachers in this country, and they need to be identified and encouraged and rewarded. We need to provide teachers with incentives to lift their standards and to aspire to delivering better results for students. We have got to improve the quality of what is being taught in our schools.

There is widespread community concern about the content of curricula being developed by state government education authorities. Just take the debacle in Western Australia with the implementation of the outcomes based education system. Who suffers from this debacle? Not the education authorities, not the state government but the students, the teachers and the parents. That system has now been junked, and the students and parents are waiting to hear what the next fad is for the Western Australian government.

The member for Jagajaga mentioned Australian history. Well, yes, there has been considerable concern expressed about the downgrading of Australian history in our schools. And, over recent weeks, we have had professional geographers calling for the strengthening of their discipline in our schools, expressing their concern about the politicisation of geography, of all subjects. There is a need for the Commonwealth to take a leadership role in a fight for a back-to-basics approach across curricula. We have to work to ensure that we have consistently high standards across the country.

The failure of state governments to protect the interests of young Australians from trendy educational fads has led to the community turning to the federal government to take action. And let us open the lid on what is being taught in our schools; let us have a debate on what can be taught in schools and how and why. We should have curricula that are not hijacked by those who want to inject their politics into courses. History, English and geography classes should not be allowed to slide into political science courses by another name. The only way to do this is to lift the lid on the development of curricula and ensure that there is public accountability for what is going on.

The community are demanding an end to fads. They want a return to a commonsense curriculum with agreed core subjects like Australian history. They want a renewed focus on literacy and numeracy. Of course the curriculum must be challenging and aim for the very highest standards, not the lowest common denominator. We must not lower the educational bar to make sure everyone gets over it; we should be raising the educational bar across Australia and striving for excellence. Why can’t we identify the highest standards across the nation, adopt them nationally, focus on best practice in each state and channel the savings back into ensuring that every student, wherever they attend school in Australia, receives a high-quality education from high-quality teachers in a high-quality environment? Think of the duplication and the waste of resources that come from eight separate education authorities each developing a separate curriculum for every subject for every year from K to 12. The states and territories collectively spend more than $180 million each year just to run their boards of studies—each developing curricula, each developing curriculum documents and, in many cases, developing the same or at least similar curricula.

Getting our schools back to the fundamentals will have a positive flow-on effect for students and parents across the nation both in government and non-government schools. It is an educational agenda worth pursuing. Labor are entirely disingenuous in their concerns. If they were so concerned about the future of schools, they would have got onto their state and territory colleagues and they would have initiated reform. But they are slaves to the teacher unions and unable to put the best interests of Australian students first. Turning to higher education, the government have invested more in higher education than any other government at any time. As a result of our reforms to higher education this sector will be $2.6 billion better off over five years and $11 billion better off over the next decade.

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