Doorstop - Alice Springs

E&OE TRANSCRIPT Doorstop Yipirinya School, Alice Springs, Northern Territory 12 August 2014 SUBJECTS:  School funding, Direct Instruction, funding for remote boarding schools, higher education reform, the Forrest Review.   QUESTION:   Okay, so the Territory Government in here is talking about using a Direct Instruction model for high school bush kids who are taken from Queensland. Is that something the Federal Government is looking to [indistinct]…?   CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Definitely, and I met with Pete Chandler last week in Adelaide, and he talked to me about that very ambition of the Territory Government. I think Pete is actually in Cape York at the moment talking with Noel Pearson and seeing some of their Direct Instruction in action, but that’s not the first time he’s been there to do that. I think Minister Chandler has seen that in remote and rural communities in the Northern Territory, Direct Instruction can make a tremendous difference in terms of literacy and numeracy and culture and music, and we would strongly support that ambition of the Territory Government. In fact, we’re putting $22 million on the table for the Northern Territory, Western Australia, and Queensland to run a Direct Instruction program across those – across Northern Australia, really, and Noel Pearson’s organisation has won the project to do that. QUESTION:   So do you agree with the assertion that boarding schools in the bush [indistinct], or do you see that there’s actually some good in having teenagers close to their homeland? CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well, I wouldn’t endorse that assertion, because I’m sure that a lot of the boarding schools – a lot of the schools in rural and remote Australia are doing their level best, but of course economies of scale do mean that you can offer more options to young students in cities like Darwin, Alice Springs, Tennant Creek. So what we’ve done in the Budget is change the process by which students at boarding school attract funding. We’re putting an extra $6.8 million into boarding schools so that if a rural and remote child moves to a school in one of the capital cities or one of the major centres, that rural and remote funding will follow that student to the boarding school. That means schools like Kormilda and others will be able to be much more financially sustainable. QUESTION:   This school in particular has been pretty critical of a Commission of Audit recommendation to use a voucher system for indigenous [indistinct] families. Is that something that you’re able to rule out at this stage? CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        We’re not planning any voucher system for any particular family in Australia in education. QUESTION:   So that you are ruling out that recommendation…? CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        I would have no intention of implementing that recommendation. We’ve just had a four year debate about a new school funding model which began this year. It’s got four years to run. I intend to renegotiate that in 2017 to start in 2018. I think the last thing we need is a new debate about school funding models. QUESTION:   Talking about that negotiation, where does the NT now stand in the aftermath of Gonski negotiations? CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well, the Northern Territory were big winners from the election of a Coalition Government in September because I brought the Northern Territory, Queensland, and Western Australia into the new school funding model. The irony of that whole debate was that while Labor talked about a national model, they never actually delivered one. I found $1.2 billion after the election that Bill Shorten had ripped out of school funding and put that into Western Australia, the Northern Territory, and Queensland, who’d missed out during Labor’s years, and so the Northern Territory got a large injection of funds into their public schools and non-government school system, and that’s one of the reasons why I think Peter Chandler can afford to do the things that he wants to do with schooling in the Northern Territory. QUESTION:   Are you able to quantify [indistinct] how much [indistinct]? CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well, from memory – it was late last year, but from memory, it’s about $130-odd million. QUESTION:   How [indistinct] the Gonski model? Aboriginal boarding schools are going to benefit quite well… [Inaudible question]. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well, there is no such thing as the Gonski model and there never was. Labor never introduced the Gonski recommendations. That would have cost $114 billion over 10 years and while they pretended they’d produce the Gonski report, they never actually did so. So the model that we’ve implemented is where Labor left school funding. We’ve brought all the states and territories in, all the non-government schools. We’ve injected more money into schools, and over the next four years we’ll spend more than Labor would have if they’d been re-elected. But of course, money isn’t the only issue in schooling. The curriculum, the teacher quality, parental engagement, the autonomy in local schools, they are the real issue that will make an enormous difference in schooling across Australia. So we’ve settled the school funding issue; we’re putting more money into school funding. Now I’m focusing on the curriculum, on teacher quality, on parental engagement, and on school autonomy. The OECD says that of all the countries in the OECD, Australia is the number one in terms of teacher quality affecting our student outcomes. They state that every ten reasons that affect the student, eight out of ten in Australia are the classroom to which the student is allocated. So I want to work tirelessly on teacher training, on the professional development of the teachers, so that we have the best teachers in the world, which means we can have the best student outcomes in the world. QUESTION:   And you’re here at Yipirinya and we talk about money, but this school runs a program where they go and pick kids up from town camps and bring them here. They need $300,000 to support that program annually, they don’t have that money from either the Territory or the Federal Government. Is that something your government should be funding? CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well, I’ll add that to my list of things to talk to Pete Chandler about, because that’s a responsibility of the Northern Territory Government. I’m sure that the Territory Government’s doing absolutely everything it can to provide the best education outcomes possible for its students. That’s one practical thing that the Territory Government could fund, and no doubt I’ll raise that with Peter Chandler when I get the chance. QUESTION:   Would you urge him then to fund that transport programme? CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well, I’ll raise it with him, but he needs to make those decisions because he’s the Minister for Education in the Northern Territory. QUESTION:   On higher education reform, you said on Sunday, you [indistinct] with Labor and Greens [indistinct] against your policies [indistinct]. How are those negotiations going? [Indistinct]. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well, Labor and the Greens are being ridiculously irresponsible about higher education reform. They know that our universities need to change. They know that our students need to have more opportunity to go to university. They know at the moment our university system is declining and it can’t compete because it needs more revenue. They also know that that revenue isn’t available from the Australian taxpayer, so we’re going to ask students to pay 50/50 for their university education. At the moment they’re paying 40 per cent and they go on to earn 75 per cent more on average than Australians who don’t have a university degree. So we’re going to ask the students to contribute half-half with the taxpayer. I think that’s a fair split and I’ve obviously been meeting regularly with the crossbenchers in the Senate. I’m happy to work with Labor and the Greens as well. I’m certainly not going to waste a tremendous amount of time with them if they’re not going to be open to discussing it, but I think that as we get closer to introducing legislation, I’ll open the door to them as well and talk to them, but I am regularly meeting with the crossbenchers, talking to them by phone, by text, and I’ll have more to say about that, of course, when the legislation’s been introduced, when it’s passed through the House of Representatives, and then we’ll go into the Senate, and that’s when the real negotiations will begin. QUESTION:   So you still think there’s room to move there with the Palmer United Party? CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Of course there is. QUESTION:   But they’ve almost categorically ruled out supporting this policy. CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well, not really. I mean, the truth is that the show is not over until it’s over and it hasn’t even been put to a vote in the House of Representatives. It hasn’t even been introduced into the Senate. So I don’t talk about politics and public policy like it’s a horse race call. It’s a long, slow process, politics and good public policy, and I don’t care how long it takes, I will keep working to bring about higher education reform because it’s the right thing to do for universities and for students and I think I’ll be patient with the Senate and hope the Senate will eventually see the need for reform. QUESTION:   The Forrest review has recommended scheduling cultural and family activities for indigenous children outside of school hours and the school calendar. Is that something you’ll be looking deep into? CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well, the Forrest review is an excellent review. It’s got a lot of moving parts, obviously. Nigel Scullion, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, is responsible for – primarily responsible for reporting back to the Government and the Cabinet on the aspects of the Forrest review that we can implement and that we want to implement sooner, and some of them obviously will be much more long term, and I’ll leave Nigel to answer questions about what we’re going to implement or not implement out of the Forrest review. QUESTION:   Are you looking at the idea, though, of the Family Tax Benefit making that continuing [indistinct]? CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well, that’s another matter that you’ll hear more about in time from the correct minister for that, which is obviously Nigel Scullion. QUESTION:   Do you endorse the idea of allowing school principals to control youth allowances? CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well, I’m obviously not going to comment on matters from the Forrest review. I’ll leave that to the appropriate minister and the Prime Minister. I’ll have one last question because Hugh is cracking the whip. QUESTION:   You talked about school autonomy. We’ve got one public secondary education school in Alice Springs. Would you support that becoming more independent? CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        I’m strongly in favour of more independent public schooling and so is the Northern Territory Government. I’ve put $70 million on the table for the states and territories who want to sign up to an independent public school model. That won’t be the case in every school, obviously. Some schools, like remote schools, will find it quite impossible to be independent public schools. But the research indicates that the more autonomy in a school, the more local decisions being made, the better the outcomes for students, and we have an unabashedly students-first policy in the Coalition. The things that will bring about good student outcomes are the things that I’m focussing on. Now, independent public schooling brings about better outcomes. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. In Western Australia, they have independent public schooling, they have the best results in Australia, they’re the best resourced schools in Australia, and they also are the only jurisdiction where there is a movement from non-government to government schooling because parents like the independent public school model. So those people who are advocates of public schooling, as we all should be, should actually endorse the independent public schools model, not try and stand in its way like the union does. So I will do everything I can to support Peter Chandler here in the Northern Territory to expand local decision making into public schools, because I know it’ll increase the expectations of parents, students, and their staff, and that will bring about better outcomes. And obviously we want more indigenous Australians going to universities, doing vocational education and training. We need to raise their expectations that that’s what they should be doing. And we just saw six women from the APY Lands graduate from the University of South Australia this year in teaching. That’s exactly what we want. We want jobs in remote communities that are there already - whether it’s carpentry, construction, plumbing, teaching, policing – being filled by indigenous people from those communities. QUESTION:   That flows indirectly from independent schools then? CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        It does, because it raises the expectations in the schools. So the principal walks around and says to Johnny or Jill you seem to like your maths, perhaps you should be thinking about engineering. And the student thinks for the first time, no one’s ever mentioned that to me before. And that comes about because people have more control over the decisions that happen in their school and that means they have more interest in the outcomes for those students, because they’ve got more say about what’s happening in that school. QUESTION:   Just quickly one more thing, what are you thoughts on what you’ve seen here at Yipirinya School? CHRISTOPHER PYNE:        Well, it’s a very impressive school. I mean, it’s got every moving part. It’s got people in the Bell Shakespeare Company here today. It’s got the song room, four indigenous languages being taught, which is more than any other school in Australia. It’s a model for schooling in the Northern Territory and elsewhere. [ends]