Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the member for Sturt in this motion. Let me say from the outset that I support the concept of a national curriculum, and many would say that in this country it is long overdue. The problem is that, while the national curriculum is a good idea, every indicator we have at the moment is telling us that this national curriculum is underdone and runs a high risk of being damaged in the long term because of its ill-preparedness. The president of the Victorian Association of State Secondary Principals, Brian Burgess, says:

We haven’t had a national curriculum in this country for 120 years; another six months to get it right is not going to disadvantage anyone.

There was a motion passed in this place last week exhorting members to go out and consult their electorates, something any half-reasonable member should be doing as a matter of course and certainly something I do as an integral part of my job. On the matter of the national curriculum, I have been consulting my electorate and I can tell you that the teachers at the coalface are feeling like a box of mushrooms: in the dark and isolated. They are being told they will deliver this curriculum next year but have little idea of what it will encompass and how they are supposed to deliver the syllabus and are far from convinced that it is an advancement in education. If the government does not have the teachers and the schools on board, the national curriculum will fail. Minister Garrett is saying the curriculum will be ready in December and expects schools to start delivering the syllabus in six to eight weeks. Surely even he can see that this is an impossible deadline.

School leaders are telling me that, while they are supportive of the concept, they have simply had a lack of information and no support for training and implementation. One leader of a subject area in a large secondary school told me they had no chance of doing anything at all in this area next year. As a member of the school’s curriculum committee, he said the school was focused on the implementation of the new South Australian Certificate of Education—which has had its own difficulties which I am sure you are aware of, Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas, including the widespread criticism of dumbing down of requirements. He said:

We haven’t even considered it yet. We’ve had no support, no money for teacher training and no chance of starting next year.

Those who have had more than a cursory glance at the curriculum are not happy with the overly prescriptive levels of content and doubt they will be able to deliver anything more than rote learning. One principal in my electorate told me:

I am really concerned we will be focused more on content than process.

This comment is supported by Brian Burgess, who said:

In this day and age we need to be encouraging people to learn how to learn; just drowning them in content is an absolute waste of time.

Content in the world is growing exponentially, and schools have been trying to teach children how to learn rather than commit to memory a string of facts. While we need a national focus, we should not want a national curriculum to be so prescriptive as to discourage the development of learning skills. One principal told me that from what she had seen of the curriculum in her area:

… we will have to do a fair bit to sex this up, it’s dead boring and we’ll lose the kids before we start.

Criticism is widespread. John Rice, executive director of the Australian Council of Deans of Science, told the Melbourne Age that there was ‘a failure to articulate major scientific ideas about how the natural world worked, biodiversity, planetary history and processes and the atomic structure of matter’. Both the New South Wales Teachers Federation and the Victorian Association of State Secondary Principals have raised serious concerns about content and quality. Art Education Australia President Marian Strong has said:

I just think it’s unteachable. This would be really dumbing down each art form rather than providing any depth of learning.

This motion is not about destroying a national curriculum. A national curriculum has our support and should be pursued. The motion is about getting the format right and, most importantly, about taking with us the most important link in the system, the teachers. To treat them as bystanders in this process will lead to failure.

Minister Garrett, of all ministers in this government, should understand the risks of trying to rush a program before the ground has been prepared and before the training process and information systems are in place. It seems that once again we are at risk of being consumed with a time line to enable the government to say, ‘We’ve delivered on something—anything.’ But if the consequence is widespread failure then nothing will be achieved. This motion asks the minister to pause the process and get the foundations in place so that a national curriculum is a net benefit to the nation and not another point of ridicule and failure.

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