Speech to the christian schools national policy

Christopher Pyne MP

Shadow Minister for Education

Speech to the Christian Schools National Policy Forum

Canberra 25 May 2010

I am delighted to have the opportunity to again address your conference this year.

I hope that you enjoyed the presentation by the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott yesterday. I know that he touched on a few matters with you, including our broad commitment to continue the current Socioeconomic Status (SES) funding model if elected this year.

I will expand on some of his comments in more depth with you today, and make some broader observations about school funding. I will then summarise the commitments the Coalition has made to date in education and outline the next steps with respect to our planned policy announcements.

As I did last time, I won't spend the whole of my allocated time speaking, so that we have the opportunity to engage in questions and discussion.

But first let us reflect on what has occurred in the education debate since I last spoke to you.

I'll begin by speaking about current mechanisms for monitoring and reporting school performance, in particular I wish to share my observations on the changes in the schools arena following the introduction of the My Schools website.

Measuring and reporting on school performance

In outlining my vision for school performance reporting into the future, lets pause to take a long hard look at what was achieved in the past.

When the former Coalition Government came to office in 1996 we were faced with the very real situation that many students -approximately 27% of year 3 students and 30% of year 5 primary school students were illiterate according to the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) evidence at that time.

There had been no real improvement in literacy in nearly two decades, despite a number of efforts – including the billion dollar ‘Disadvantaged Schools Programme' during the Hawke and Keating Government – which inadequately addressed this issue.

The test was how to make a difference, how to actually overcome educational shortcomings, and how to avoid simply spending more money with no better outcomes or improvements.

As you will recall our first step in Government was to make sure there was agreement on what was meant by literacy standards. We brought together the very best expert advice in order to deliver a practical agreement.

By 1998 all State and Territory Education Ministers had agreed on national standards for reading, writing and spelling.

Not long after this, we had the historic breakthrough -the development of an assessment of the literacy skills of every student against the national benchmarks, so that results would be published by State and Territory, and progress could be monitored properly for the very first time.

Obviously, much has happened since. It still remains clear though that NAPLAN results tell us that some teaching methods, whatever their strengths or weaknesses, are not working for all our children.

Then there was the leap to the MySchool website this year under Labor. While the Coalition will always support the collection and reporting of information about progress in our schools, I am convinced that monitoring and reporting arrangements can, and should be improved.

I have a strong desire to see this area of public policy brought to the very forefront of the education debate.

If elected this year the Coalition has a number of key initiatives we would instigate to encourage further development in this area.

First, we would examine introducing a national test for students to be conducted every year designed to measure improvement giving parents, teachers and government a far better understanding of how a student, and school, is progressing with the central aim of education – to improve learning.

Secondly, we would instigate a revision of the MySchool website, primarily to publish overall school improvement, rather than the raw test results.

As we all know, using NAPLAN data to assess the performance of individual schools is perhaps the most controversial element of the Myschools website.

There is continuing debate in relation to the validity of the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) which supposedly provides insight into similar schools comparative performance. Questions have arisen as to whether these groupings of similar schools are accurate, or whether they give a distorted version of comparative performance.

I recently read a comprehensive report on the MySchool website produced by the Grattan Institute. I would like to share with you a quote from this report that I feel captures the direction of where I would like the publishing of school performance to go in the future:

“our goal in publishing information needs to be about the objective of measuring school performance; school value-added scores should replace the current system that relies on like-school groups, that is prone to inaccuracies and may be biased against schools serving lower socio-economic communities. Inaccurate measures of school performance will not have the intended benefits of increasing school accountability and school choice and negate the substantial opportunities for improving school effectiveness.

Value-added analysis allows policy makers and educators to track student progress through their schooling, rather than relying on simplistic snapshots of performance at a single point in time. Regardless of students' social, economic or language backgrounds, or the school they attend, the focus should be on the progress, or lack thereof, made by all students”.

So my goal is to get a more accurate and detailed picture of the students who are achieving below the benchmarks, and additionally support ALL schools by giving them the autonomy to put in place frameworks to increase the prospect of student improvement.

Julia Gillard's approach, typical of Labor, is to simply hand more federal money to the states for some schools- $11 million to be precise – through the National Partnership arrangements, and then sit back as though the job is done.

I believe that this approach is overly simplistic. If we were in Government we would not have distributed funding based almost entirely on the raw NAPLAN results. We would have taken a much more evidence-based and measured approach.

So I will finish on this topic by informing you that recently the Coalition supported a motion in the Senate for an inquiry into the NAPLAN testing and publication of data.

I would extend an invitation to you, to share your expertise and wisdom with us on how together we might be able to improve the current arrangements.

The draft National Curriculum

I'd also like to spend a few moments talking about the direction the national curriculum is taking under Labor.

The Coalition recently entered a submission about the draft National Curriculum in English, Maths, Science and History for Years 1 to 10 to the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA).

After studying the detail of the draft National Curriculum it has reaffirmed my original suspicions that many of you might recall when the Schools Assistance Bill was being debated in 2008; it's too prescriptive, with a ‘politically correct' agenda ahead of genuine educational outcomes and true to Labor form lacks clear evidence of a well thought out implementation plan.

Our largest concern with the draft National Curriculum relates to the three cross-curriculum perspectives, namely the imbalance of the focus on:

• Indigenous perspectives;
• sustainable patterns of living and skills; and
• Knowledge and understanding related to Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia.

Even if the Coalition did approve of the need for having these cross-curriculum perspectives in the National context, we would immediately revise the selection of the three specific cross-curriculum perspectives chosen by ACARA.

There are in our view, so many other areas that are as equally valid and important to those I have just listed.

For example what about a cross-curriculum perspective that covers the importance of liberal democratic institutions in shaping our nation?

What about the heritage and the impact of our Judeo-Christian Western tradition that touches on every aspect of modern life from literature, philosophy, science and the Arts?

I worry the draft curriculum risks turning schools around Australia into carbon copies of each other – suppressing the ability to inspire diversity, innovation and experimentation.

I am also hearing about concerns that are being raised about the capacity of the sector to roll-out the curriculum – particularly at a time of teacher shortages in certain areas.

And let's not forget the lack of additional resources assigned by the Rudd Government for teacher training and professional development prior to commencement.

With the comments today from Professor Stuart Macintyre, one of the authors of the draft history curriculum, that the Government has no plans in place to support schools with the roll out of the curriculum, it seems that once again Labor is building the roof of a house without first constructing the foundations and the walls.

We have already announced we will review the national curriculum if elected, widening the consultative process, and considering a broader based approach that encourages and fosters choice and diversity.

Schools funding into the future

I'll move on now to the forthcoming review on recurrent funding arrangements for schools into the future.

As I pointed out earlier, we have already committed to using the SES model if elected, because we believe it places the funding of non-government schools on a much more equitable basis than existed in the past.

As the recurrent funding is distributed according to need and schools serving the neediest communities receive the most monetary support, it means that parents at all income levels by and large have the capacity to choose the most appropriate schooling for their child.

Under this model there are incentives for non-government schools to attract students from lower-income families.

It replaced the gross inequities of the former ERI, and we ensured when in Government that no school was financially disadvantaged by the move to the SES funding system.

I want to stress here, as Tony Abbott mentioned yesterday, that this does not mean the current model cannot be improved.

We are following with interest and considering the submissions to the Government on how school funding arrangements can be improved in the future.

In particular, when reading the Christians Schools Australia's submission to the Government on the draft terms of reference for the schools funding review, I did note your comments that we need a more strategic intervention to help schools improve those outcomes for the most disadvantaged students, including those with special needs.

This has not gone unnoticed throughout our term in Opposition.

I am proud to tell you that we have been investigating this issue with a view to bring some fairness and equity to the education system in Australia for students with disabilities and their families as a matter of priority.

I am pleased to advise you today, that if elected a Coalition Government will address the structural issues which cause a disparity in funding support between the government and non government sector.

And I do want to take this opportunity to thank you for being a part of this process, and for the ongoing engagement with us on this issue.

But back to my earlier point. I often get asked about what I make of Labor's review of school funding arrangements.

It is useful here to read in between the lines, and to look closely for clues.

In this context I would like to address a couple of matters you will be all too familiar with. As you know, when the Rudd Government came into office they abolished the establishment grants for new non government schools, and the very popular Investing In Our Schools program.

We have also witnessed the introduction of the Government's “national partnership arrangements” with the states, which supposedly support literacy and numeracy, teacher quality, and supporting school communities with low socio-economic status.

Now we all support the idea of improving literacy and numeracy, improving teacher quality in our schools, and ensuring that students from low socio-economic status areas get the support they need, but there is a large gap between this Government announcing that they will direct money towards a problem, and that money then being effectively used.

I believe that the Rudd Government's National Partnerships will not deliver on the promised outcomes – rather they just funnel money into failed Labor State governments as a way of boosting their broken Budgets.

Take, for example, the Government's series of fact sheets on the National Partnerships which suggest: “the States will be able to identify those elements that will best enable them to achieve improvements.”

In effect, rather than targeting funding towards students who are falling behind, or even towards school communities in critical need, the Government's approach is that they'd rather make deals with State bureaucracies.

I believe the beaurocratic national partnership agreements are really only the first step by Labor, through these kinds of agreements, to try and micro-manage non-government schools – and force them to act like government schools, being shackled to state bureaucracies.

The danger is that the very elements that ensure the success of the non-government sector which are flexibility, autonomy and choice are being compromised though these agreements.

In all, it would seem that the Rudd government is now intent on reimposing by stealth, a gradual constraint to the non government sector, and in my view, this will slowly strangle its ability to meet future growth.

And they are hiding their real intentions through the schools funding review, not due to report until well after the election has passed.

The important questions remain unanswered.

What, for example, will happen at the end of the school hall program?

The Government have not outlined a blueprint on how they intend to address the growing inadequacies of existing capital support mechanisms to the non government sector.

The Coalition in contrast, will always have parental choice at the heart of our policies.

We know that choice of school has encouraging effects on the quality of both government and non-government sectors.

We will always encourage parents to exercise their right of choice, and are committed to supporting both the non government and government schools sectors to be able to respond in a flexible manner in order to meet the needs of students and the broader community.

Conclusion

So I will finish by recapping the commitments we have made to date in education.

I have previously announced that the Coalition, if elected will commit $165 million to continue the School Chaplaincy program over the forward estimates, guaranteeing its future.

We appreciate that chaplains play a valuable role in our schools, supporting students and school communities by offering pastoral care and guidance across religious denominations and beliefs.

In contrast the Rudd Government has reduced funding for this popular program, and has planned a review which, I might add – surprise surprise – will not report until after the election.

We can only assume that if Labor is re-elected this year there will be some unpleasant surprises in store.

I also have announced a comprehensive $10.5 million plan to address the escalating bullying and cyber bullying in our schools.

The key components that lie at the core of this policy are:

• Granting new powers to principals giving them greater autonomy to deal with bullying issues in their schools and
• Establishing new National Cyber Bullying Taskforce comprising representatives from the internet industry, experts, education stakeholders, parents and students.

A chief responsibility of the taskforce would be developing a code for social networking sites and recommending a universal system for children to report cyber bullying and refer offensive material.

There will be more great news in store for you in the weeks and months ahead from us.

Over the last twelve years the Howard Government was a great friend of the non-government sector, as we recognise many shared values in common – values such as freedom of choice, belief in school autonomy and independence, as well as limited Government interference.

If elected the next Coalition Government will take up the reins where the Howard Government left off, but we will need the support of our friends as well.

We are in the last stages of finalising our polices to take to the next election following the handing down of the Budget.

My office will always be open in the weeks and months ahead, as we announce our policies I will seek your feedback.