5AA Adelaide

29 May 2015 Transcipt

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

Interview - 5AA Breakfast with Jane Reilly, David Penberthy and Mark Aiston

Friday 29 May 2015

SUBJECTS: SA Education department; Federal Education Council; STEM.

DAVID PENBERTHY: Well the nation's education ministers will be meeting today and one of the items that is up for discussion was the proposal floated earlier this week by the Federal Minister South Australia Liberal MP Chris Pyne for maths and science to become compulsory subjects again in Years 11 and 12. Chris Pyne joins us now, Chris thank you for your time. Before we get on to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) discussions today, can I just ask you as federal minister, here in Adelaide we've woken up again to a front page article ‑ Families SA rocked by new abuse scandal. Do you as federal minister have any thoughts on the fact that here in South Australia the Education Department and Child Protection are co-located within the one ministry?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I think it's the only state they've ‑ where that's the case and I do think that it's high time that those two ministries were split. They are doing very different roles and every other state and territory has seen fit to have education as a standalone ministry and certainly not coupled with child protection. South Australia's obviously got real issues with this particularly ghastly problem over the last few years and it seems to have claimed Jennifer Rankine as the Minister. Susan Close is now the minister for the same portfolio that Jennifer Rankine had and Susan Close needs to I think ask the Premier to split the roles, Jennifer Rankine did as well as she possibly could I think in a very, very difficult circumstance but I think Susan has been ‑ will end up going the same way unless she can get on with either job, either child protection or education.

DAVID PENBERTHY: Now that's the thing that seems to worry a lot of our listeners, and it's something that worries me, is you want someone who is 100 per cent focused on the vital issue of child protection and particularly at a time when in so many areas, we lag behind the national results in that [indistinct] here in SA you want someone who's 100 per cent focused on how our kids are going at school.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Absolutely right and I think Jennifer Rankine would have been much more able to succeed in either portfolio if she had all of her attention on education, all of her attention on child protection. And I must admit I felt very sorry for Jennifer struggling to deal with the terrible issues that were coming out of the child abuse issue while she was also trying to address the falling standards in schools and I think it's a stubbornness on Jay Weatherill's part quite frankly. I think because people have been calling on him to divide it he stubbornly is refusing to do so and I'd call on him to have a minister who's totally focused on child protection and a minister who's totally focused on education.

DAVID PENBERTHY: Just in terms of today's COAG meeting earlier this week, you raised the prospect of maths and science becoming compulsory subjects as they used to be in Years 11 and 12. In a general sense Chris, do you fear that the curriculum may have become a bit too faddish over the last 20 years and drifted away from the fundamentals?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well my proposal, David, is that maths or science be compulsory in Year 11 and 12 ‑ not both ‑ and my view is that it would be a five- to ten-year transition period because obviously there's been some time since that's been the case and I think it would frighten a hell of a lot of students if they suddenly had to change all their preferences in the next couple of years. So I'm talking about a long-term or medium-term change and I'm asking the state and territory ministers to consider it. I'm not demanding that it happen but I think we do need to consider how to have more students focused on science and mathematics, and when I was in Year 12 my science was biology. So I'm not asking everyone to do physics…

DAVID PENBERTHY: Same.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: …chem and maths one and two.

JANE REILLY: Mhmm.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I do think that we have over the last couple of decades fallen in love with a couple of different fads that have been quite unhelpful. Our whole-language learning, for example, rather than phonics in terms of learning to read. We are going back again, though. We are swinging away from whole-language learning and back towards phonics in primary schools so that children can actually learn to read and then from Year 3, read to learn for the rest of their lives. And I think that is an important change, and it goes with the Federal Government's focus on trying to get the basics right rather than simply the endless argument about money when we've spent 40 per cent more on [indistinct] education in the last 10 years and our results have declined. So it's not the money that's the problem; it's things like the curriculum, teacher training, parental engagement, and autonomy, and that's why we're focusing on those things.

DAVID PENBERTHY: When we spoke to the maths teachers the other day, they suggested that you're sort of looking at it from the wrong end. That the big challenge is getting maths and sciences taught better at the junior primary level and right through, because otherwise you can't sort of turn someone's learning around so late in life when they're about to start Year 11.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, that's right, and that's why you can walk and chew gum at the same time, David, and that's why we're reforming teacher training so that we're not going to allow universities to graduate generalist primary school teachers anymore; we're going to ask them to graduate primary school teachers with a specialty in maths, science, or languages. So we're doing exactly what the Maths Teachers Association have asked us to do.

We'll also reform the national curriculum to turn four subjects in primary school into one so that there's more room in the curriculum for teachers to do in-depth teaching of maths and science and English, rather than having to move on quickly in spite of knowing that some of the students in the class might not have grasped the concepts.

DAVID PENBERTHY: And are you still pushing ahead with the idea to re-introduce or to look at re-introducing Latin? I can remember when that was floated, Chris, you were smashed up on the front page of The Courier Mail newspaper in Brisbane where they depicted you as a Roman emperor.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Yes, they had me looking as Augustus Caesar, which, Dave, I'm sure you'd think that having been at university with me, I admit - one went to the odd toga party, but…

DAVID PENBERTHY: I wasn't sure if you'd be prepared to discuss that on radio.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I'm not… I'd never propose the re-introducing of Latin. That was one of those wonderful [indistinct]…

DAVID PENBERTHY: I thought you did, though?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, no. I'm happy to explain. It was the wonderful News Limited tabloid beat up. The truth was, all we were doing was turning all the languages subjects into national curriculum subjects and putting about one-and-a-half million dollars into 16 different subjects so they'd be taught consistently on a national basis, one of which was Latin. But the story became that I was re-introducing Latin; actually, we were just making 16 subjects being taught differently in each state and territory part of the national curriculum.

DAVID PENBERTHY: Well, you mentioned uni. You also went to uni with [indistinct]…

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Although I thought I looked perfectly fine as Caesar, actually.

DAVID PENBERTHY: [Laughs]. No, it suited you. You did mention Adelaide Uni. One person you went to uni with was the Premier Jay Weatherill. Now, a couple of weeks ago on the ABC, you likened the State Government to a political bikie gang. The relationship between you guys and particularly between Tom Koutsantonis and Jamie Briggs ‑ look, all jokes aside ‑ is there a danger that it's so toxic that important things won't happen here in South Australia?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No, it's not. I mean, I think there's a frustration in the Federal Government that the South Australian Government would spend $5 million of taxpayers' money running attack ads against the Federal Government rather than spending that money on the services that they should be providing to the South Australian public. I think that is a genuine frustration. But we do get along perfectly well on a professional basis with the state government. But the state government does seem to spend a great deal of its time focusing on attacking the Federal Government. I suppose that's to distract people from all the problems that we've got in South Australia on an economic front like a lag in the economy and high youth unemployment and unemployment and lack of investment and infrastructure, high taxes, and far too much regulation and red tape. Now, they ‑ it's the time-honoured principle of state government to attack the Federal Government, but I think they've gone too far by spending $5 million on attack ads.

DAVID PENBERTHY: Mmm, mmm. We're going to have to leave it there. Education Minister Christopher Pyne, thank you for your time.

[ends]