Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I have listened to the debate on the second reading of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Bill 2008 in a couple of parts over the course of the last hour. There are some things that keep being repeated by those opposite. One is that the current government ended the Investing in Our Schools Program. Of course, the Investing in Our Schools Program was an excellent program. It was an outstanding program. I have attended many launches of initiatives under that program in schools in my own electorate—two in the last week. What comes to you instantly is that it was a quality program. Whenever I get up to speak in front of the kids and the parents and friends associations at whichever school it is, I always refer to the fact that this was a program that was put in place by the former government. It was a good program with some very good outcomes, but it was also closed by the former government in January 2007. It is disingenuous to come into this place and want to take all the good things but to not take the responsibility for the difficult decisions that you made when in government.

We also frequently hear in this place that this bill is the first step in a process that will undermine non-government schools. That position is just as dopey as the position which Mark Latham took to the election in 2004—which people voted against and which will never be resuscitated again by the Labor Party. It is necessary in this place to learn from your mistakes as well as to build on your strengths. Time and time again, what occurs to me is that members opposite are not good at trial and error learning. They are not good at learning from their mistakes. The Investing in Our Schools Program was a great program. Ending that program was the decision of the former government.

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Bill 2008 is an integral component of the Rudd government’s education revolution. It fits into a series of programs which the government has in place that underpins that education revolution. There are tax breaks for families to help them buy computers, to get internet connections and to buy textbooks and schoolbooks. It is about putting computers in schools and it is about vocational training. It is about cooperation with the states. It is a revolution to improve Australia’s education standards, to give parents more confidence in our education system and to better serve the education needs of future generations.

To put this in context, the World Economic Forum report released in 2007 concluded that, when it comes to maths and science teaching, Australia came 29th in the world. The 2007 OECD Education at a glance report found that Australia was spending 4.3 per cent of gross domestic product on all levels of public education, compared with the average of five per cent amongst those nations with whom we would most commonly compare ourselves. It also found that Australian students aged from 12 to 14 spend only 30 per cent of their day on core subjects such as reading, writing, literature, maths, science and foreign languages. So there is a massive amount of work to be done to realign and to refocus our schools on what they do. With students spending so little time on core activities, it was estimated that approximately 50 per cent less time was spent by Australian students on those core subjects than their counterparts in other industrialised nations.

A September 2007 Courier Mail article examined the OECD report and sought academic comment on its findings. Professor Ken Wiltshire of the University of Queensland, a professor of public administration, saw the lack of time being spent on essential core subjects as redefining the need for a national core curriculum that sets out what has to be learnt and how much time should be devoted to the most important subjects. Of course, it is not just the industrialised nations with whom we now need to compare ourselves. As Australia grows in a most dynamic part of our globe we are also seeing our competitors investing in education and producing a generation of highly educated, highly competent young adults who are entering the workforce and driving productivity growth in the countries in our neighbouring environment.

According to 2007 figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there are 9,581 schools in Australia, with 6,853 government schools and 2,728 independent or Catholic schools. In Western Australia there are 1,068 schools, of which 769 are government schools. In my electorate there are 34 schools of all categories. Across Australia there were almost 200,000 year 12 students enrolled in 2007. As you would expect, in Western Australia, having about 10 per cent of the national population, we have more than 20,000 year 12s. Currently there is no way to tell if the 200,000 students who were enrolled in year 12 last year were well served by their school. Currently, there is no way to tell if the parents of those 200,000 students made the right choices in regard to their children’s education. That is why this government, when in opposition, committed to a national curriculum and national standards as part of an education revolution.

This is not new. It is something that has been discussed at great length on all sides of this parliament and over a very long period of time. I pulled up today a speech by former minister for education, John Dawkins, dated May of 1988 and at that time Minister Dawkins was discussing exactly the same issue. What is different is that we have now stopped talking. With an education minister who has the drive and capacity and a Prime Minister who is focused on education as we have today, it is the opportunity, the time and the right place for us to be making these steps to properly assess how our schools operate and how our kids perform.

The former government, under education ministers Vanstone and Kemp as well as the member for Bradfield and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, delivered very little in 12 long years. They did commission 24 reports resulting in 220 recommendations, but they failed to act like the government before it. In spite of the Prime Minister’s support for a national curriculum and national teaching standards, education ministers from the coalition government did not deliver it for him. International reports slated Australia’s education system. A 2006 OECD study demonstrated that reading literacy had declined from 2003 to 2006. At a time when nations that compete with us for economic opportunities were turning out large numbers of highly competent and highly educated graduates, our numbers in Australia were effectively going backwards. In terms of scientific literacy, 40 per cent of Indigenous students, 27 per cent of remote students and 23 per cent of lower socioeconomic students performed below the OECD baseline. Year 12 completion had reached a plateau of around 75 per cent in 1992, after significant increases in the 1980s and early 1990s. Again, I went back to John Dawkins’s speech of 1988. At that time, he was plotting a course in school retention rates that had risen from the low 30 per cents for boys and girls to the middle 50s and low 60s for boys and girls as the 1980s ended. As the early 1990s started, that share rose again to 75 per cent and it is sad that it did not continue to rise from there.

Figures and facts like these are a large part of the Rudd government’s rationale for committing to an education revolution. Speaking in early 2007, the Prime Minister stated:

…when it comes to Australia’s economic future, our economy needs an education revolution in the quantity of public investment in education, and the quality of the education outcomes we’ve produced.

The then shadow minister for education and training and the now Minister for Foreign Affairs stated when becoming the education spokesman that he strongly supported moves to a national curriculum. Speaking in February of last year, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, then the education shadow minister, made this point:

We are now a much more mobile workforce nation and as a consequence a much more mobile education nation. People are entitled as they move from state to state for employment purposes, to see their children being taught the same things in our primary schools and in our secondary schools.

And he is right. The principal city in my electorate of Brand is Rockingham, which is a Navy base. The people who serve that Navy and serve our nation at HMAS Stirling often carry their kids from school to school around our nation. Getting alignment of curriculum and content is important to giving those parents the comfort and the certainty that their children are being educated in a way that matches national standards and in a way that is the best possible education for children of mobile parents.

The Rudd government’s first budget delivered a $19.3 billion boost in education initiatives over the next four years, including $1.2 billion for the digital education revolution, a $2.5 billion trades training centre program, guaranteed funding to government and non-government schools, national curricula in English, maths sciences and history, and tax incentives for the purchase of computers.

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Bill 2008 delivers on a 2007 election commitment. It will create an independent statutory authority. The authority will develop and administer a national school curriculum, including content and achievement standards—satisfying the needs of the men and women who serve Australia’s national interest at HMAS Stirlingand develop and administer national assessments, allowing parents wherever they are in the country to understand more clearly where their child sits within their own school population and where their school sits within the school populations both in the states and across the nation. They will collect, manage and analyse student assessment data and other data relating to schools and comparative school performances. It will facilitate information sharing between Australian government bodies in relation to the collection, management and analysis of school data. It will make public information relating to school education, including information relating to school performance, and provide school curriculum resource services, education research services and other related services. It will provide information, resources, support and guidance to the teaching profession. The authority will consist of a 13-person board of directors appointed by the states and territories, the Commonwealth and the Catholic and independent sectors. It will have a chief executive office and staff for the authority.

This bill will create unprecedented transparency in schooling. For the first time, parents and the community can know what is happening in our schools and how it relates to an agreed set of standards. The bill is about collaborative national reform—that is, working with the states, schools and communities. There are considerable benefits in centralising the management of curriculum. The opportunity to reduce duplication of resources and costs and the resulting greater effectiveness will allow financial efficiency. The states and territories will benefit from a streamlined, simplified and shared national structure through which all Australian governments can drive forward education priorities. This will not remove the state and territory governments’ responsibility for curriculum arrangements. The states and territories will be able to provide nominations to, and endorsed membership of, the authority’s board of directors. Ministers will retain sole responsibility to direct the authority through the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs.

All Australian schools need to be more transparent and more accountable. That benefits parents, teachers and, most importantly, pupils. There is currently no accurate, comprehensive information that would allow rigorous analysis of what schools and students are achieving. As a parent I find that a significant lack in our system. I am pleased that in Western Australia under the WALNA system I get an insight into both the performance of my schools and the performance of my children, but it would be better to have that information on a national database, matched against national standards and not simply local and state standards.

Individual school performance reporting will have three key benefits for Australian students: it will enable analysis and evaluation of school performance, allow a great level of accountability to the public and lead to better resource allocation. For the first time the government will be able to identify schools with particular needs and identify high-performing schools, allowing their best practices and innovations to become visible, understood and then copied. Publicly available information about schools’ performances will encourage schools to be accountable for the public funding they receive. This same information can then be used to identify where resources are most needed to lift the performance of schools.

The debate over schools’ performance invariably includes a discussion of league tables. The government has made it clear that publishing raw test results of individual schools is simplistic and unfair, and it is wrong to evaluate school performance in that way. However, it should be noted that raw league tables are published now in Western Australia through the TEE score publications each January. The government’s approach aims to be comprehensive and sophisticated by comparing like schools. Comparing like schools that serve similar student groups and communities will be a major boost to educational quality and quantity. I have a school on my patch in Mandurah where the student population turns over once every three years. In any given year 30 per cent of that school population can expect to have moved in and moved out. It is a phenomenal turnover rate. A capacity to understand the educational attainment of children in that kind of environment and for teachers to understand what a good and what an outstanding teaching performance look like in that environment will be extremely valuable.

This bill provides the foundation for much of what the education revolution is aimed at delivering. If we are to identify where there is a greater need for educational support, we need a basis for fair, consistent and accurate analysis of how different schools are doing. Comprehensive and accurate information on schools’ and students’ performance informs teachers, parents, principals and governments of what needs to be done. League tables are simply too simplistic. They do not take into account differing socioeconomic status or the numbers of Indigenous kids, children from non-English-speaking backgrounds, children with disabilities and children from highly mobile backgrounds. The information that this bill will facilitate will allow government to look at comparable schools and their results to understand different patterns of disadvantage, to share best practice and innovation and to target support where it is most needed. It is about evidence based policy, evidence based public policy outcomes and applying the best research tools to understand what happens in schools and what best we can do to optimise that for our kids.

There are many new initiatives that we have announced in this place over the course of the last 12 months. We have announced our trades training in schools initiative of $2.5 billion over 10 years, our $1.2 billion digital education revolution, a $62.5 million Local Schools Working Together package and also significant tax deductions and incentives for families to invest in computers, internet, textbooks and educational materials to support their children’s education and acquisition of technology, with a maximum refund of $375 per child in primary school and $750 per child in secondary school. The government is not simply talking the talk. We are walking the walk, and we are putting resources behind this significant need.

I will conclude by saying it is clearly the case and has been identified time and time again by educational research that early childhood education is a critical area of need. We have heard in this place on many occasions over the course of the last 10 months that children in their first five years have the greatest capacity to learn. It makes sense, therefore, that investing at this time in a child’s life and in their education brings the biggest impact for dollars invested. It is why the education revolution stands with a commitment of 15 hours per week for preschool for all kids. In a zero to four program that I attended recently at Warnbro Primary School, I was delighted to see not just the number of kids coming along to enjoy the school environment but most importantly the number of mothers attending too—young mums who were able to talk to other mums from the suburbs nearby to start putting in place the logistics to get their kids to school for the coming year and also to start to understand the role of parents in education, reading books, encouraging attendance and ensuring that kids have a good breakfast before they start school.

All of these programs come together in a way that our government hopes—and I am sure the other side of this House also hopes—is a serious attempt to get our education right, to help our kids as best as we possibly can and to give them a great start for the future. I commend the bill to the House.

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