Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Few issues are more important to the future of our country than the education of our children. Education is, figuratively, a nation's heart and soul. But it is also literally every nation's future. Australia is no exception. So the latest Programme for International Student Assessment or PISA results should be a cause for concern and a call to action.

The results are the worst for Australia since testing began and show that we are falling further behind our regional neighbours. If you look at the trend lines, we have decreased: from 15th to 19th in mathematical literacy; from 10th to 16th in scientific literacy; and from ninth to 14th in reading literacy. In my home state of Tasmania this issue is doubly important, given we have the lowest retention rates into years 11 and 12 in Australia. We also have the lowest adult literacy rates in the country, highlighting that those left behind in the classroom suffer those consequences into adulthood. We on this side of the House believe that all students deserve our support, regardless of the choice parents make for their education. Better educational results today support a smarter and more competitive nation tomorrow. But there is so much to be done.

Despite billions more for education during the last decade, education results have declined. During the last six years we have listened to grand promises about an education revolution and then an even grander-sounding 'education crusade'. But what have we gained from this six-year revolution and crusade?

We have seen overpriced school halls, overpromising of computers in schools and overblown rhetoric about 'catching up with Shanghai kids', yet student outcomes have declined.

Statistics over 10, 20 and 40 years are instructive. Ten years ago, eight per cent of year 3 children did not achieve minimum national benchmarks. A decade later in 2013, NAPLAN results revealed that this had jumped by 50 per cent, with almost 12 per cent of children in year 3 achieving a very low rating, or below, for reading. That is despite an almost 50 per cent funding increase.

In the last 20 years educational funding has doubled to $40 billion per year, yet our student results in national and international tests have fallen. Research from the member for Fraser confirms that over the last 40 years, despite an almost 260 per cent increase in school spending, literacy and numeracy outcomes have declined. Standards have not improved, despite more dollars, smaller class sizes, $16 billion in new buildings and a laptop spending spree. There is simply no logic in the arguments put forward by those opposite and highly politicised teachers unions that just more dollars is the answer. Labor's fistful of dollars approach to education clearly has more to do with politics and ideology than it does with evidence.

We have to start talking more about standards than dollars. We should be discussing how to help teachers whose own literacy skills impede their ability to teach reading effectively. The final report of the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy in 2005, for example, revealed that less than 10 per cent of compulsory units in primary teaching degrees were allocated to reading instruction. Then Minister for Education, Science and Training Brendan Nelson welcomed the inquiry's recommendations and said that we simply must prepare teachers better to teach reading as their key focus.

The inquiry's literature review found that quality of teaching has the largest impact on a child's learning to read. It is a factor of far greater importance than a child's background or their family circumstances. The inquiry found that, in the first three years of school and beyond if necessary, all children learn to read most effectively through an approach to reading that emphasises phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary knowledge and text comprehension. The report highlighted repeatedly that teacher quality was the most valuable resource in making a difference in classrooms.

What does that mean? Quite simply it means that scarce taxpayer dollars must be applied to the key factors that determine better educational outcomes: improving teacher quality, greater autonomy in decision-making by principals and parent-teacher organisations, parental engagement and a quality curriculum. I recall former Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth Peter Garrett talking about a 'decade of neglect' and how schools were failing our children. Those opposite were in government for six years, and state Labor governments have controlled public education in every state for most of the last decade. In my home state of Tasmania, for example, Labor has been in power for 16 long years and over half of Tasmania's $5 billion is spent on health and education, yet the state of our hospitals and educational outcomes is a distant last on national benchmarks.

Watching the Lateline television program on 19 February, I listened with a heavy heart as Dr Ben Jensen of the Grattan Institute suggested that the literacy crisis in Tasmania could become unmanageable in the next decade. I know the member for Franklin and other members here this morning will be worried about some of the statistics when we consider how our population is going with their reading, writing and progress in schools. At least half of Tasmania's population cannot read or write properly. More than half of the state's students fell below the national baseline for maths, compared to 42 per cent nationally. Forty-seven per cent failed the minimum standard of English, compared to 36 per cent nationally. This is despite Tasmania's teacher-student ratios being nine per cent higher than those on the mainland.

In his 1955 book Why Johnny Can't Read Rudolf Flesch pinpointed quality of instruction as the decisive factor in delivering better educational outcomes. He was right then and he is right now. We must attract high-quality teachers with a vocational commitment to their profession. That requires better selection, better entry standards and ensuring that the professional development of teachers continues throughout their career. Enough time must be devoted in core teaching units to prepare teachers to manage classes and to deliver effective reading instruction. This requires a change in emphasis within university faculties and government education departments. We need much more of a focus on academic rigour and core disciplines that improve literacy and numeracy and less of the left-wing, socially progressive fillers that currently dominate the national curriculum. We must put more emphasis on teaching students how to write effectively and to master the numeracy requirements they need in their everyday lives and future careers.

The current overcrowded, rigid curriculum must be streamlined. That is why the coalition has appointed Professor Ken Wiltshire and Dr Kevin Donnelly to review the national curriculum. Their recommendations to government in mid-2014 will help ensure that the national curriculum puts students first in the government's education policies.

Schools deserve greater independence from the authoritarian command-and-control model that those opposite champion. We need less control from governments, bureaucrats and unions and more from school boards and councils. In conjunction with the above, parents must accept their role in their children's learning and behaviour. This requires parents to do more at home to encourage a learning culture, discipline and cooperative social interaction.

Our collective actions, both federal and state, on education will either help Australian students grab future opportunities or consign them to languish in mediocrity, overtaken and bypassed by others who are better prepared and harder working, in all ways hungrier for a better life and quite willing to pay the price in sheer effort to attain it. This reality is accentuated by our national geography. We sit on the very doorstep of Asia during what pundits have already labelled the 'Asian century', but it might just as fittingly be labelled the 'hypercompetitive century' or, perhaps more positively, the 'education century'. The coalition will work tirelessly, must work tirelessly, to overturn bad education policy and improve existing policy. Our young people deserve nothing less. I commend the motion to the House.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bass for raising this important issue—and much of what he has said I would agree with. People will perhaps recall that, in my maiden speech, I dealt with some of the failures of our education system, particularly in relation to the teaching of literacy. But I want to use the opportunity today in this debate to really talk about how, unfortunately, the Minister for Education has now got to a position where he is totally missing the most fundamental building block in this whole picture.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear, hear!

Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I note my friend the member for Lalor saying, 'Hear, hear!' I think there is a very, very strong case for ensuring that we put more money into areas of greatest need. I do agree across the board that money is not the complete answer in any way, shape or form and that we need a suite of reforms. But I say that the fundamental principle of Gonski is supported by international evidence that those states that do well heavily identify need and put money and locate additional resources to where there is the greatest need. Whilst money is not everything, it is certainly something and it is critical in areas where there are high levels of disadvantage.

I want to talk about what really makes the difference in these education systems. I agree that teacher quality is essential. Teacher quality is absolutely at the core of it—and any examination of the system tells us that. But one of the fundamental things that the Minister for Education is walking away from is ensuring that we actually have being brought into teacher education the intellectual ability to do the job.

I set out in the Federation Chamber the other day some appalling statistics. Around seven per cent of students going into teacher education have an ATAR of less than 50, around 16 per cent have an ATAR of less than 60 and around 27 per cent have an ATAR of less than 70. Initially, the Minister for Education, when he was the opposition education spokesperson, said that this was a significant issue. He made presentations to various forums, including the Sydney Institute, where he talked about the need for us to lift those standards and that, if we are actually going to have an education system that is characterised by rigour—the rigour that the member for Bass was talking about—we have to have personnel who are capable of reaching and delivering that rigour. If we are talking about ATAR performances and general performances that are not in that top 30 per cent, I think we are going to continue to struggle. If you look at what has happened around the world, we see precisely that.

What do they say most profoundly changed the performance of Finland? It was one of the lowest performers in the world, and within the space of around 15 years it became one of the highest achievers in literacy rates and the great achiever in PISA scores. They took a very strategic decision about who they were going to attract into teaching. They actually had a plethora of teacher-training organisations—little teacher-training colleges here and there around the country. They abolished all of them and put teacher training into a few elite universities, and only those people who could get into those elite universities were able to become teachers. Teaching then became a career that was prestigious. Finnish teachers are well paid but they are not paid massively more than teachers in other parts of the world. But, because teaching is seen as a career of choice, you get people really wanting to go into teaching, and that intellectual ability that you need to drive the rigour is there.

This whole debate, to which the Minister for Education, when he was in opposition, used to subscribe has now indeed gone somewhat backwards. He has put in place Vice-Chancellor Greg Craven—a man I know and personally like; a man I think is a very interesting person—of the Australian Catholic University, which is training around 8,000 students each year. It has an indicative ATAR score of 58 per cent for entry into their university.

I am very conscious that not all students get in under ATAR—and, indeed, a lot of students who have very low ATARs do a bridging course for their first semester and then go on to enter university—but I have to ask: have we got a bar that is set high enough? I want to talk about something that has been said by the Australian Catholic University—something that alarms me. The Executive Dean of the Faculty of Education said:

… ATAR cut-offs were an indication of supply and demand for a course, and that an individual's ATAR was no indication of how he or she would perform at university or in the workplace.

I totally understand that they are not the be-all and end-all, and any vice-chancellor of UWA will tell you that you would expect a kid that comes in from a government school with an ATAR of 85 to perform at the level of a kid from a private school with an ATAR of 90.

I get that there is a difference, but there has to be a minimum level which is acceptable. If we are wanting to attract people of ability and make sure that the people we are training to teach others are capable of a sufficient understanding to drive our system forward, to enable us to compete with those nations to our north, we have to be prepared to bite the bullet on this. We cannot let this issue be run by those universities that are providing mass entry level to teacher-training facilities who have a direct economic interest in keeping this wide open.

In 2011 we had a COAG agreement that we were going to make sure that anyone who got into teacher training was in the top 30 per cent of the population in terms of literacy and numeracy. This is being opposed by the Australian Catholic University—who have now been put in charge of overseeing teacher standards. Member for Bass, I know you are a very bright man and I hope that you can lead a party room challenge to the Minister for Education as he backtracks on this fundamental principle. It is not going to do us any good if we are lifting these standards and supposedly introducing more testing and harder curricula if we do not have people who are capable of doing that.

There is some very interesting evidence in the book The Smartest Kids in the World, particularly on the United States, where, in order to try to respond to this, they made the curriculum harder and made teachers do masters' degrees. What they found—because they had not addressed the fundamental principle of increasing the entry level into the teaching profession—is that all this has amounted to nought; that you have to get that fundamental building block right and make sure that people who go into teaching have the intellectual ability to drive the system forward.

Ann Sudmalis (Gilmore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The latest PISA results, published in 2013, show we had a 20-point drop in mathematical proficiency since 2003—and, dare I say, 16 of those points were dropped between 2006 and 2012. In 2003 only 14.9 per cent of students were below level 2 in maths; yet in 2012 there are 18.3 per cent. Nations like Vietnam, Turkey, Latvia, Japan and even Ireland have now out-performed us. With the billions of dollars poured into education during that period of time, extra school halls and laptops to every student in particular year groups, we as Australian taxpayers would expect to see an amazing growth in achievement levels for our children. Sadly that is not the case. There has been less than a one per cent improvement in maths performance. The final blow comes when you look at the literacy levels: only 15 per cent of our 15- to 19-year-olds, those at greatest risk of not getting a job, have achieved mid-level literacy compared to 25 per cent of their parents.

Money thrown into schools is not the answer. As an experienced teacher and involved in the supervision of practice teachers, I have seen exactly what effects some of the ridiculous money throwing and weird policy making have created. In 2011, students were supposed to be in schools up to the age of 17—in a widely announced and popular policy called 'earn or learn'. Did anyone at that time ask the classroom teachers just what this might mean to the teaching dynamic? I think not. I sat in classrooms that year as an assessment observer, watching teachers grapple with unnecessary discipline problems, as resentful students attended classes they were not suited for but had to attend because of their age.

The wonderful rollout of laptops was an unmitigated disaster—with no budget for repairs and maintenance, insurance for possible theft and spares for classroom use and no technology available to stop students using these for entertainment during class rather than as research tools. The following is a true story. A young practice teacher asked her students in year 9 to close their laptops for the next part of her lesson, but the young boys in the back of the class had them open and continued to play their games. At least with notebooks—and I mean the paper kind—you could see if they were closed or not and students learnt to write. It is no surprise that our numeracy and literacy achievement levels have declined. Many schools have a storeroom loaded with broken and damaged laptops, with no money to take them to the local tip—because they have to pay a carbon tax fee to dump them—and no extra budget in place to replace these assets, especially as the rate of technological advance has meant that many of these devices now have redundant or incompatible applications.

We as a nation must invest in education—there is no argument from any person in government or parent or educator—but the discussion point is: where is the best investment dollar? Experienced teachers will tell you, especially if asked, that in-service and training in this changing and dynamic profession is critical. Stop dumping every social problem at the feet of teachers and expecting them to implement solutions with little or no training. Our outstanding teachers are facing so many different issues in the classroom: students with behavioural problems or learning difficulties; having fully integrated and inclusive classrooms, which is recognised as being of social benefit but stretches their personal resources; and test regimes which at times have inappropriate community expectations. It is time to address the real mechanism of better educational outcomes for our nation.

It is essential to have core curriculum subjects. We are a highly mobile nation and moving from school to school is hard enough but from state to state is very difficult. Most importantly, student outcomes have a direct relationship with teacher quality. If a teacher has the qualifications, the tools of their craft, support from the school admin structure and the ability to put different professional strategies in place, the students will achieve. The OECD 2013 report adds that increased student achievement is gained by: parental involvement; principals who act as communication leaders with both parents and teachers; classrooms conducive to learning; good teacher-student relationships; and quality teachers. This is the philosophy behind our initiative Students First.

Additional research on 'effective schools' suggests a strong relationship between the quality of an orderly learning environment, teacher quality and student performance. Our teachers are the greatest asset for educational improvement. Now is the time to invest in them, talk and consult with them. It is important to get their views—they are in the classrooms. The best source of information is from the teachers—not representative groups, but those still facing a class every day and taking care of the nurturing and education of our children. Quality teaching is the mechanism to improve student outcomes.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bass for raising education in this place and keeping it on the agenda. Having been a school principal, I have a deep understanding of the ins and outs of school funding. It is fair to say that when I talk about education funding reform I am, to use the words of the Prime Minister, sticking to my knitting. On both sides of the House we are, at least on the face of it, in broad agreement that urgent reform of the education system is required—as we have just heard from our previous speakers—although I am a little puzzled that money is actually being identified as the problem.

The coalition's pre-election pledge that 'every single school in Australia will receive, dollar for dollar, the same federal funding over the next four years whether there is a Liberal or Labor government' seemed unequivocal. But it is now apparent again here today that this was just a cynical ploy by the LNP to gain power. Let us be clear: by breaking this promise on the Gonski reforms, those opposite are willingly and stupidly stealing from our nation's potential. The member for Bass makes the point that education funding has increased by 40 per cent with no apparent improvement in educational outcomes as a justification for going back on a promise. This is at best naive and at worst deliberately cherry picking stats to bend a predetermined narrative.

The most compelling figures coming from PISA are around inequity. It is the ball and chain that is holding this country back in education performance, and to say otherwise is disingenuous. The Gonski report followed intensive consultation across the education sector. It asked teachers, principals, academics, politicians, economists and private and public schools—all stakeholders had a say, and all were listened to. The Better Schools Plan that came from this report was wide-ranging and addressed the issues identified for improvement, some of which we have heard mentioned today by those opposite.

For the first time ever across Australia, state schools, Catholic schools and independent schools agreed on a way forward. The politics were removed in most states. The work was done and the way was clear. Now we see a slinking away from these commitments. Last week in Senate estimates we heard the proof of it. It was revealed that the states have clearly been released from their pre-election education funding commitments. These funding commitments were one of the structural pillars that held up the Gonski reforms. With states now free to slash their education funding, the government has reduced Gonski to ruins. In its place? The member for Bass makes the point that schools need greater autonomy, which of course was in Gonski. He might be surprised to find out that Victoria did just that under the Kennett government many years ago, and it was called Schools of the Future. Victorian schools are well down this path. It worked well for a few schools in the initial years, but it made life very difficult for many others.

The minister might want to talk to leaders and parents who lived the experience of being thrown into a competitive environment where autonomy ruled but support for schools to make the transition was minimal. He might also want to ponder what impact autonomy without support might have on equity, because there is a real danger, as was seen in the first years in Victoria, that inequity could be further embedded. Some schools had parents well equipped to take a school forward in partnership with a principal, while others did not. I might also add that, having lived this experience myself, I saw an enormous amount of money moved from classrooms to marketing campaigns in the early years, sometimes indiscriminately. He might be further surprised to find that, in a tale of two states, while Victoria travelled this road, New South Wales did not and still centrally control their schools. After 20 years, there is little or nothing between the two states in terms of educational outcomes. Giving schools greater autonomy is not the magic bullet it is claimed it to be. It will not do the work that the Gonski report set out to deliver.

Education is the cornerstone of democracy and it is the single most effective way of breaking intergenerational disadvantage. We can only conclude that this government does not want to break intergenerational disadvantage. I call on the government to honour its promise and put in place the Gonski measures, as intended by the former Labor government and all who signed up to it.

Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great opportunity to speak on this motion concerning the results of the PISA 2012 survey, which sadly show that Australia has delivered the worst outcomes for us as a nation since testing began. I heard the previous speaker talk a lot about academics, school principals—as she herself is—the unions and teachers themselves. That is all good, but today I want to stand here as the representative for Braddon and ask what the parents of our children think and, more importantly, what the employers in my electorate are saying about the current education system.

We have survey of 65 countries, where 15,000 students—that is not a bad sample, I would have thought—from 775 schools were randomly picked to do a survey crossing mathematics, science and reading. The reality here is that, when it comes to mathematics, we are ranked 19th out of those 65 countries; when it comes to science, 16th; and reading, 13th. As I said before, these are the worst rankings that this country has produced since the testing began.

Sadly for our country, the average student in China is now two full years ahead of the average Australian student when it comes to science and 18 months ahead when it comes to mathematics and reading. These are our trading partners, these are our competitors and these are the people that are setting the pace across the globe. We hear so much from state education ministers and state premiers—as is the case in Tasmania at the moment, which I will get to in a moment—when they announce so boldly, proudly and enthusiastically that 'we have spent a record amount of money in education—how good are we?'

And yet standards have declined significantly. Parents tell me that every single day, and employers absolutely tell me that they are not getting from the education system the potential employees that they need. Funding is increasing but performances and standards are falling. Something is not right; something is fundamentally wrong.

When it comes to Tasmania, we have amongst the largest falls in educational outcomes of any state. We are the worst performing in Australia, second only to the Northern Territory. In all three categories my state of Tasmania is the worst ranked state. What a dismal performance, something that I am far from proud of. I would hope that in my time in this place, together with, hopefully, a new minister for education in the state of Tasmania, we can work together to increase those standards significantly. We have a lot of work to do and there will be a great deal of time required to deliver it, but we have had 16 years of a Tasmanian Labor government where we have failed our young people when it comes to education. It should be noted that the last four years were in fact with an education minister from the Greens coalition side of the equation when it came to the handing out of portfolios. Not only are Tasmanian children more likely to have below-average results in maths, science and reading but they are far less likely to remain at school for years 11 and 12. Retention and completion rates are the worst in the country, just 67 per cent of children going on to year 11 and 47 per cent going on to complete year 12.

There is much work to be done. The work can be done with a diligent new Liberal state government, hopefully, being elected on 15 March where we will provide an additional $45 million over four years towards extending 21 high schools in the state to year 12 in the first term of a new government. There is much work to be done but we are committed together, federal and state, to deliver better outcomes.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thought I would start with a quiz: 'Joe had three test scores, 78, 76 and 74, while Mary had scores of 72, 82 and 74. How did Joe's average compare with Mary's?' You are not responding immediately, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I am sure that the answer you have in your head, as other members do, is that both Joe and Mary have the same average. This question was asked on successive tests in Australia from 1964 to 2003. In 1964 88 per cent of students answered correctly; in 2003 just 68 per cent answered correctly. A fifth of students who were able to answer it in the 1960s could not answer it in the early 2000s.

Behind this motion are a truth and a falsehood. I want to focus on the truth first, that Australian literacy and numeracy performance has failed to rise over a very long run, a much longer time frame than even discussed in the motion. Work that Chris Ryan and I published in the journal Education Finance and Policy found a small but statistically significant fall in numeracy from 1964 to 2003 and in both literacy and numeracy from 1975 to 1998. Work that Chris Ryan published in the Economics of Education Review last year looked at the change in PISA scores from 2000 to 2012. It found that mathematical literacy fell at the top of the distribution and reading and literacy fell throughout it. It found that declines in school performance were most marked in private schools. Work that Chris Ryan and I have done on teacher aptitude, which was referred to by the mover of the motion, also found declines in literacy and numeracy of new teachers relative to those within the same class. From 1983 to 2003 the share of teachers in the top fifth of their class halved and the share of teachers in the bottom half of their class doubled.

That is the fundamental truth of this motion, but the falsehood is that money does not matter. To see that falsehood we know you need only look at the previous Liberal Party speaker's speech, where he finished by pledging an increase in funding on behalf of the Tasmanian Liberals in the next election. Money is not a guarantee of better outcomes but it is a necessary condition for better schools. That is why under Labor in government we not only brought down the Gonski review but also put in place national partnerships which see literacy and numeracy coaches in so many of Canberra's most disadvantaged schools. We put in place the My School website which those opposite had talked about for many years but had never been able to deliver. And we put in place unprecedented investment in school infrastructure, which has improved educational outcomes. For example, at Amaroo school in my electorate classroom partitions allow team teaching and allow teachers to share skills.

So nothing in the research body supports a broken funding system, a system which was always designed to be a temporary arrangement in the early 2000s but which was backed by the now education minister as recently as a year ago. The education minister has in the past described the Gonski report as 'conski', and it appears to me that he has not made his way through it. That is indicated by the strong focus on school reform that you see within the Gonski report itself. Chapter 5, Building Momentum for Change, includes sections focusing on the great teaching profession, empowered schools, developing and sustaining innovation and engaged parents. We need to focus on this suite of school reforms alongside fixing a broken funding system.

As Amanda Ripley notes in her new book, The Smartest Kids in the World, making education systems work is a confluence of factors. It requires great teachers, engaged parents and a funding system which supports school reform. All of those things were in place under the former government, and I am disappointed to see that the opposition is allowing states to take money out of schools as fast as the federal government puts it in, rather than making a guarantee that no school will be worse off under the National Plan for School Improvement.

Debate interrupted.