Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Bill 2008. I do it with great pleasure. I have spoken before in this House on a range of education related matters and bills. In particular, I am very proud that it is the Rudd Labor government that has stepped into the breach, into that yawning gap that existed for so long in this country where we needed a substantial and credible education revolution—exactly what we are providing. What we have before us today is part of that revolution and part of what will be a substantial move forward in the level and quality of education provided in this country.

Yesterday, Rupert Murdoch gave a very frank assessment of public education in Australia when he spoke at the Boyer Lecture. He said:

The unvarnished truth is that in countries such as Australia, Britain and particularly the United States our public education systems are a disgrace. Despite spending more and more money, our children seem to be learning less and less—especially for those who are most vulnerable in our society.

Today the global economy is raising the bar for success. The need is urgent: countries like Finland and Korea and Singapore are leaving us behind when it comes to education. We need to reform our public education system—and make our schools internationally competitive with the best of them.

He went on to say:

The truth is this: a public school system that does not serve the least of society betrays its mission. The failure of these schools is more than a waste of human promise, and a drain on our future workforce. It is a moral scandal that no one should tolerate. A basic education—and the hope for a better life that it brings—ought to be the first civil right of any decent society.

I could not have put it better myself—but perhaps with just one small change: rather than just say our ‘public school system’, I would say ‘our schools’. I think that is the extent to which work is needed in Australia. It involves all of our schools. We all need to lift the bar and lift the standard.

There is no question that what has happened certainly over the last decade but also over a longer period of time is that more and more money has been pumped into our education system, with fewer and fewer outcomes. That is something I do believe. I think we see that in the results when assessments and other measurements are taken. It is a sad indictment. There are many reasons for that being the case. Perhaps today, in a much more sophisticated and fast paced world where learning is different, where the amount of information available is beyond count, where the pressure on young children to perform is enormous, where the amount of information that can be taught is sometimes attempted to be taught and where the resources drain on our schools, be they independent or government, there is an enormous challenge for all of us. That is why something major had to be done—something serious, something that would break the nexus of what we had just seen in the past and something that would take us on a new road in educating all of our children. I believe that is what we are now doing. I believe that is the road we have taken.

It is really simple to put it in context—that is, if we just kept going on the road that we were travelling on at least for the past decade, nothing at all was going to change. It would be the same old arguments and the same tired old debates about public versus private—that dragged out, politicised and completely meaningless betrayal of our children. That useless debate that we saw from the former government was an absolute betrayal of young minds and of parents. That debate about the percentage of funding versus the percentage of kids that go to certain schools in certain areas is an absolute crock. It is just simply garbage. It is made up to confuse people about the reality and the core value of what education is meant to be and what education is all about.

It is about all of our children equally. It is about every single young person in this country having an opportunity to realise their best potential and to obtain the best possible education that they can from the school they attend in the region they live in and not just simply being blinded and fooled by the rhetoric and the politicised, poll driven views about what makes people instantly gratified—‘I am a taxpayer and I should get more back just in my school.’ It is very simplistic. I find it a very rude approach to what education policies should be in this country.

If we are meaning to make a difference to young people in this country, if we are to lift the standard, if we are to bring about a real educational change, if we are to deliver something substantial and real, if we want to compete with our neighbours, we have got the message. The real test for us as a country is: are we lifting our standard to meet the international standards of our nearest neighbours and competitors? Unfortunately, the answer to that would be: not enough. We have not been good enough. We have been good to a certain level, but soon that will not be enough, so we need to make a major change. That change is contained, in part, in the bill that we have before us. It is about doing something at the national level—something difficult but something real—about measuring and assessment for the right reasons. It is not about some simplistic table where you just rank everybody from one to 100 and, if you are at the top, you are good and, if you are at the bottom, you are bad. That is not what it is about. If anyone truly looks closely at what the drive and the motivation is in trying to provide a better system across this whole country then they will understand that, if you use data correctly with the right motivation, it can be of assistance and helpful. That is exactly what this is all about.

I have always had the view that, if you have more than one system, they might be good but one of them will not be as good as the others. This is the problem we have had in Australia. We have too many different systems of education—difference in funding models and complications in how we determine what school gets what and which child gets what percentage of funding. In the end, it really ought to be turned on its head and we should all ask ourselves, ‘How can we best serve the young people of this country to give them the best opportunity?’ I believe that everybody in this place has the same belief. That belief is as simple as this: all of us have opportunities through education and, in the end, it really does not matter where you are born and where you come from as long as you get a great shot at education because that is your meal ticket for life, that is your passport not only to freedom but to a future, to changing your own family history and to success.

The evidence is all around us. It is in any country on the face of the planet. It is around us here in Australia. When you give disadvantaged kids an opportunity, they succeed. When you give Indigenous communities an opportunity, they succeed. When you give young people from so-called low socioeconomic areas and the so-called wrong side of the tracks great opportunities, great things come out of that. I think we have seen that in a whole range of areas. There are hundreds of people we can point to who have had those opportunities and done great things.

It does not matter which country you come from but I want to particularly focus here on Australia and I want to set the scene. If we truly want to make a difference, we have to make some hard decisions. That is what we are doing through our education revolution and through this bill today. Across the nation there are thousands of hardworking, underappreciated public school teachers and non-public school teachers striving to give our school children the very best start in life that they can. But the best efforts of those teachers in this country have been, I believe, undermined and torn apart by the tired old debates that I referred to earlier. It is not a competition between government and teachers. It is not a competition between state and state. The competition is in providing the best possible educational outcomes for all of our kids, every single one of them, wherever they live. It is about understanding that the central importance of educating people is giving them a better opportunity in life.

It is a disgrace, but the blame for things that have happened in the past need not be as important as the things that we need to do in the future. But I do want to make this remark: it is not so much about blame as about missed opportunity. You will hear a number of speakers on this bill criticise the government. They will criticise the government about the actions and the forward movement that we are taking to get education right in this country—although maybe not the opposition member over there nodding his head. But the opposition are standing up and criticising every single bit of education reform in the tough decisions we are taking. But they are doing it in a funny way. They are doing it in that old two-step—one foot on one side of the street and one foot on the other. None of what we are doing is good enough but yet, funnily enough, they are saying that we have copied most of it and that it really is just their old policies.

I think they have got it wrong on both counts because our policy is actually good enough and we will build into the future and it is not their old policy. It may appear if you skim the surface that there are similarities in certain parts, but when you scratch below the surface and you look at the work that has been put into delivering this bill and the other bills we are putting forward in the education revolution then you will understand the full depth of what we are trying to achieve. It is about reward. It is about ensuring assessment. It is about bringing out the best in people. It is about ensuring measurement. It is about making sure that funding goes to the schools that need it the most first. It is about ensuring that the kids who need a hand up get that hand up.

It is not just about a league table; it is not just about which school is a Christian school, a Muslim school, an independent school or a state school. I do not care which school it is. I do not care. I do not care if it is a Catholic school, an Anglican school or a Muslim school. To me they are all valuable. All of those schools are equally valuable. They all contribute to educating our children. They all contribute to the wellbeing of this nation and to the economy of this nation. Why should we in this place discriminate in the way we provide resources to those schools? We heard from speakers on the other side the argument over percentages. They said that parents work very hard to send their kids to independent schools. That is true. They do. And so do parents who send their kids to government schools. They all work very hard. It is not as if one parent necessarily works harder than another. Parents do the very best they can. They do what they can with what they have.

What we in this place ought to do is make sure that, wherever parents send their children to school—whether they send them to a school they choose or whether they have no choice—that school is properly funded and resourced by the Commonwealth, by the states, by local government, by the school community, by the larger community, by fundraising efforts and by whatever other mechanisms those schools have available to them. We in this place are all clever enough to understand that not every school community, be it independent or government, has the same availability of resources or capacity for fundraising. You need to be able to fund schools based on need. That is at the core of this. That is at the core of what we are trying to achieve and will achieve with this bill.

For the first time in this country we will draw together a national curriculum, a national assessment scheme and a national reporting scheme. It will be at arm’s length from government and it will be removed far enough to be able to make independent judgements and assessments. The board will be made up of people appointed by government and others who are independent and who have the right experience. It will be a strong collection of people who can make core value judgements based on a policy framework that we have put forward. It will ensure not only that resource allocation is right but that the quality and standard of teaching in this country is raised and that the outcomes for children in this country are raised higher. You must do that in cooperation with the states, with the schools, with the parents and with the community. That is exactly what we have done. We have more than just policy and an educational framework; we have done more than just talk the talk. We heard it before, but we are actually walking the walk as well and that means putting cash on the table.

The only way you can achieve what we are setting about to achieve is if you properly resource schools, if you properly resource the states to play their role and if you properly resource parents. We are doing all of that. We are putting computers in schools. We have heard the criticisms. But the criticisms are a little bit hollow. It is pretty hard to complain if your school is one of those schools getting computers. I have not seen too many schools knocking them back. I understand there are some issues about infrastructure and maintenance funding, but they are issues we will work through in the future. Right now the priority is to get those resources into those schools.

We are for the first time giving parents the ability to claim back through the tax system educational expenses. The opposition will cry all sorts of tears, but the reality is that the opposition had 12 years to take some action and 12 years to turn things around. They had 12 years to go to the parents they supposedly supported—particularly with respect to independent schools—but what did they actually do for them? Did they give them a tax break? Did they give them opportunities? Did they better resource them to provide better outcomes? Did they work with teachers? Did they sit down with the teaching community in this country? No. They fought them head on. No matter what the opposition think of teachers—and we know what they think because it is on the record—in the end they are the people who teach our children. They are the ones we entrust. Those teachers probably spend more time with our children than most of us do—and that is particularly felt in this place. They are highly influential people. Shouldn’t we invest in them as well? Shouldn’t we provide those we entrust with the education of our children with the greatest tools available to ensure they are best suited and best trained? Shouldn’t we lift the bar for teaching standards in this country and work with them?

That was not the approach we saw. We did not see that approach from the opposition when in government for 12 years. We saw them fight teachers, fight state governments and fight state schools. They wanted a battle—a battle with no point and no end; a battle that did not seek an outcome about kids, about children; a battle that in the end was about their politics, not about our children’s future and our children’s education. That is the stark difference. That is the gaping chasm, which I referred to at the start, between where we on this side of the House stand and where the opposition now sit.

People understand that. I think it has taken a while for all of us to get to the point where we in this country have some sophistication and a core understanding of what it is about. It is about children. It is about education. It is about making sure that we have the right mechanisms in place. This bill will provide that. This bill will provide a national curriculum focus. It will mean that the standard that we set, the high bar that we set, will be the same across Australia. Regardless of which state or territory you come from, you will have the same opportunities. In the end, that is what government should facilitate. It should facilitate the provision of opportunities. It should not squabble over what percentage the Commonwealth believes it should or should not put into a particular school sector compared to what the state puts in. In the end, regardless of who says how much the percentage is, it comes out of the same bucket of money—that is, taxpayers’ money. That is the bottom line.

If we are going to be true to the taxpayer and true to the parents who want the best possible outcome for their kids then we have to do the right thing. This bill sets the government and this country on that path. This is about an education revolution. We will deliver on everything that we have promised. This bill sets the groundwork. There is a lot more work to be done. But this bill in the end will be part of how we manage and increase resources for every single child in this country, to give them the best possible education with the best possible teachers. It will be part of how we remain internationally competitive, how we lift the standard in this country and how we make sure that funding and resources are provided to schools and kids based on need, not on where or who they are. I commend the bill to the House.

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