Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Schools Assistance Amendment Bill 2011. The bill will amend the act to repeal the current implementation date of 31 January 2012 and substitute a new provision enabling a standing regulation to prescribe a national curriculum and associated implementation time frames. This means that, subject to the passage of this bill, there will no longer be a deadline or due date in legislation from when the national curriculum is required to commence. Instead, to allow for future additions and revisions to the nation curriculum, the government is proposing that any version will need approval by the Council of Australian Governments' Standing Council on School Education and Early Childhood, formerly known as the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs. The implementation time frames will be prescribed as those agreed by the standing council.

This bill before us today is clear evidence that the Labor Party have failed to deliver on their commitment to a nation curriculum. If they had delivered on the national curriculum I would not need to stand here today before the parliament to talk to this bill. The explanatory memorandum of the bill states:

At the time of the Act's drafting in 2008, an implementation deadline of 31 January 2012 was anticipated for the development and rollout of the national curriculum across the school sector. Given the phased approach to developing the national curriculum, the extent of consultations undertaken in its development, and the need for flexibility in implementation, a legislative amendment is necessary to better accommodate this phased curriculum development and implementation process.

The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, originally said in 2008, when she was the Minister for Education, that the curriculum would take three years to develop and be ready to implement by January 2011. The Prime Minister also claimed, before the last federal election, that one of her biggest achievements was delivering a national curriculum. She made statements prior to the federal election such as: 'This nation's talked about national curriculum for 30 years. I delivered it.' The truth is that after nearly four years of Labor the curriculum documents for the first stage of a national curriculum, years K to 10, in the areas of English, maths, science and history still remain in draft and have not been given final approval by each of the states and territories.

Due to the well-documented bungling of a national curriculum the final version has not been approved by the ministerial council to date and most states will not even begin implementation until 2013 or 2014, so the original legislation needed changing. I also helpfully pointed out to the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth earlier this year, when a one-year extension for the current funding arrangements for non-government schools was being considered by this parliament, that he would need to remove the requirement for non-government schools across Australia to implement the curriculum by January 2012. Much to my surprise he appeared to have missed that the 31 January deadline might have been a problem, or perhaps he was, as usual, asleep at the wheel. In an attempt to assist the minister for school education, the coalition sought to fix this for him and remove the 2012 start date, but he did not, inexplicably, support the coalition's amendment.

Obviously the coalition recognises that this needs changing. Schools cannot implement a curriculum that is simply not ready or is still in draft. For this reason we will not oppose the bill. Instead, the government has had to introduce a entire new bill to fix the curriculum oversight rather than simply addressing it earlier in the year by eating humble pie and supporting the coalition's amendment. We find ourselves debating this bill because the Labor government, one of the worst in our nation's history, is incapable of delivering anything on time or on budget.

Schools need funding certainty, and for this reason we will not oppose the bill. Nevertheless, this bill has provided a further opportunity for considering how the government might be able to improve on existing arrangements related to the curriculum process.

The coalition supports a national curriculum in principle. Our concerns are not with the concept but, rather, the direction the curriculum is heading under Labor. I can assure you, Deputy Speaker Slipper, that these concerns are shared across the entire education sector. The Australian Curriculum Coalition recently wrote to me, the minister for school education and all state and territory education ministers outlining a number of concerns about the government's progress, or lack of progress. The government cannot possibly stand here today and suggest that the curriculum is going well. Please do not make us laugh with the claim that it is on schedule.

The Australian Curriculum Coalition comprises 10 peak bodies from both the government and non-government sectors. It includes the Australian Association for Research in Education, the Australian College of Educators, the Australian Council for Educational Leaders, the Australian Curriculum Studies Association, the Australian Education Union, Lutheran Education Australia, the Australian Special Education Principals Association, the Australian Professional Teachers Association, the Australian Secondary Principals Association and the Independent Education Union of Australia—not a group that you would normally see gathering together to oppose a government measure. The statement opened by saying:

The Australian Curriculum Coalition (ACC) believes that it is imperative at this midpoint in the development of the Australian Curriculum that thoughtful and considered deliberation be given to implementation of critical elements of the proposed curriculum.

It has become evident to members of the ACC that underpinning principles of the national curriculum have not been given adequate regard or sufficient resources committed to their development and that federal, state and territory governments are on the verge of endorsing a curriculum that does not meet the objective of the Australian government of: delivering a world class education system to ensure Australians are armed with the knowledge and skills to meet the demands of the 21st Century.

The letter then goes on in detail to describe each of the activities that the ministerial council promised to address last year, when the draft curriculum was being considered.

Final approval was not given to the national curriculum, as was originally planned by the government last year, due to a number of deficiencies with it. But do not just take my word for it. I will read an extract of the council's communique from December last year to make my point here, because I have noticed that the minister for school education in recent interviews on this subject has been very misleading. The council wrote:

So far from the curriculum being historically endorsed, as the minister for education would try to lead you to believe, what actually happened last year was that all ministers agreed that a whole lot more work needs to be done before the curriculum can even think of being approved.

Have any of these issues been addressed nearly nine months later? Apparently not, according to the Australian Curriculum Coalition, and it will come as a shock to members of the House to discover that nine months later virtually nothing has been achieved. The Australian Curriculum Coalition made the observation:

Disappointingly neither time, resources nor political will has seen these matters seriously addressed.

They called on the federal, state and territory education ministers to immediately commit to the priority work needed to develop a genuinely 21st century curriculum by addressing the matters of concern raised by the sector and fulfil the intent on the resolution of that important MCEECDYA meeting last year. They noted:

Without this resolve, Australia is in danger of producing and adopting a national curriculum that is little more than a 'content revamp' of mid-twentieth century curricula.

There is, however, an example of at least one minister who has acted since the Australian Curriculum Coalition's scathing letter and does have the resolve to see these issues addressed. Just last week the Hon. Adrian Piccoli, the Minister for Education in New South Wales, announced the New South Wales state government's decision to delay the introduction of the new Australian curriculum by at least a year until 2014. He acted upon the expert advice provided by the New South Wales Board of Studies that the curriculum is not yet of a high enough standard to be introduced into New South Wales. He has also suggested that federal resources for teacher professional development are needed before the curriculum can be adequately rolled out in New South Wales.

His decision has been met with widespread support from education stakeholders in New South Wales, including the NSW Teachers Federation—not know to be a friend of the coalition—and non-government school sector bodies in that state. Even the NSW Teachers Federation President, Bob Lipscombe, who has had much to say about the perceived inadequacies of the coalition over the years, has said:

The Australian curriculum's not ready to be implemented in NSW. We must be careful to ensure that when we do implement it we don't do it in a way that undermines the already high curriculum standards in this state. There are issues around the overarching framework it fits in and importantly there are also issues around the resourcing that will be put in place to support its implementation. Until these questions are addressed by the Federal Government, then a delay is quite appropriate.

The Federal President of the Australian Education Union, Angelo Gavrielatos, while charming, is not known to be a supporter of the coalition's policies in education. Even he said:

We still have a series of concerns with respect to the development of the national curriculum … we're also seriously worried by the absence of any funding to support the implementation.

So the coalition and the Australian Education Union are on a unity ticket opposing the implementation of a national curriculum that is neither ready for nor married with the required resources to ensure that it can be introduced successfully. The Independent Education Union President, Chris Watt, said:

We've been saying for a long time that getting the content right is important and it looks like we might be getting towards an end point, although teachers still have not seen the final documents …

It appears the only person who does not have any concern about the national curriculum process is the hapless Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth.

If a national curriculum is to serve the learning needs of our children, the implementation process must not be hurried in the manner of the minister for school education's Home Insulation Program, or the Prime Minister's bungled schools hall program. This is just too important to get wrong. I would have thought the member for Kingston would have thought that it was time for the minister for school education to get a policy right rather than to get it in. The minister for school education was so determined to implement his pink batts program that he was prepared to do so without the necessary protections being in place for householders to ensure that they did not face burning ceilings or even the tragic deaths that eventuated out of the implementation of the minister for school's disastrous pink batts program. That program will live in infamy as one of the most unsuccessful programs in the history of this place since Federation, and yet again the minister for school education is doing the same thing with the national curriculum.

Experts agree that the content will overwhelm teachers with no funding or support for the necessary training for the rollout to succeed. And doesn't that sound familiar? They are the criticisms that the national electrical organisations made back when the minister for school education was the minister responsible for the pink batts program. They warned the minister that there was not sufficient implementation funding and that there was not sufficient training and of course we saw the tragic results that the minister for schools presided over. While he did not lose his scalp over his disastrous performance as a minister, it certainly contributed to the axing of the former Prime Minister, the member for Griffith, on that infamous day last year.

For these reasons, and because we want to try to help the government in spite of its hopeless approach, the coalition will move two amendments. The first relates to the importance of ensuring that schools are provided with appropriate support and assistance to implement the Australian curriculum. That amendment states:

(1) Schedule 1, item 1, page 3 (lines 8 to 11), omit all the words from and including "require" to the end of subsection 22(1), substitute:

(a) require the relevant authority for the school or system to ensure that the school, or each school in the system, implements the national curriculum prescribed by the regulations in accordance with the regulations; and

(b) provide such funding as is necessary to ensure that each teacher in the school or system has received professional development in the implementation of the national curriculum in accordance with a nationally consistent professional development program.

Currently there is no nationally agreed or consistent approach across jurisdictions to ensure that all schools are receiving the support in the area of teacher professional learning to be able to implement the Australian Curriculum. This point was made by the Independent Schools Council of Australia's submission to the inquiry into this bill. They said:

ISCA would like to highlight the importance of ensuring that schools are provided with appropriate support and assistance to implement the Australian Curriculum. Currently there is no agreed or consistent approach across or within jurisdictions to ensure that all schools are receiving the support required to implement the Australian Curriculum, particularly in the area of teacher professional learning.

Again, Deputy Speaker D'Ath, you do not need to take my word for it that this issue is only relevant to non-government schools. Unions representing teachers in government schools in Queensland and South Australia, from where the member for Kingston comes—and, in fact, from where the member for Brisbane comes—have now added their voices to the concerns of New South Wales that the necessary training and support required to implement the curriculum are not in place. Perhaps the member for Kingston, having observed the redistributed boundaries for South Australia, now believes that she is so untouchable in her seat of Kingston that she no longer has to listen to government school teachers or government school principals or the parents of children in government schools.

Ms Rishworth interjecting—

Maybe she, like the Prime Minister, has adopted the Marie Antoinette approach to politics—which is to say, 'Let them eat cake!'—when they cannot ensure that their teachers have the adequate training and professional development. Perhaps she has adopted the approach of wondering why these people are unable to—

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