Sky News - Graham Richardson

E&OE TRANSCRIPT Interview - Sky News Australia, Graham Richardson 19 February 2014 Time: 20:15 Subject: Teacher remuneration GRAHAM RICHARDSON: A little earlier on tonight I spoke to Christopher Pyne, the Education Minister. Now Christopher Pyne and I have a lot we disagree with but I do think he's on the right track when he talks about improving teacher training. But I also tried in this interview to get him onto the subject of trying to give a real career structure for teachers because if you're a young person and you look at how you'll be in 25 years time working as a teacher you don't get paid very much and yet there is no more valuable job to the future of Australia than the people who teach our children. I think they really matter and I think we've got to do something about it. Here's what Christopher Pyne had to say just a little while ago. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Christopher Pyne, welcome to the program. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Thank you Graham. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Now I - you've been in the news, you don't seem to be able to stay out of it and I want to try and take the issues one by one. Now we're over the Gonski stuff, you are going to fund Gonski right through, is that correct? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well we're going to fund the next four years of the funding agreement, exactly as we've always promised and we're the only party delivering the national funding model because we've got Western Australia, Queensland the Northern Territory now in the system when they were previously out of the system. Bill Shorten cut $1.2 billion from it, we've put that back in it so we've delivered a national school funding model for the next four years at the price that was expected and unfortunately was short changed when Bill Shorten was the Minister for Education. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: I think he had a fairly short reign in that one. Now can we just go on though, that having been said, there now seem to be two other issues in which you're involved. Now the first one is the question of the curriculum. Now can we actually ever have a national curriculum, is it possible? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well absolutely it's possible and in English, history, maths and science, every state and territory is implementing the national curriculum in those four subjects. New South Wales will be the last one to do so because they have a syllabus‑based system so they have to break it down into its component parts. Almost every other jurisdiction has picked up the national curriculum as proposed by the Commonwealth and now I want to review it because it's been in place in some places for three or four years, to make sure that it's robust and meaningful and that it's actually imparting knowledge as well as skills to our young Australians, giving them the best outcomes possible. Given that we've declined so much over the last 10 years, we want to make sure every part of the education system is working together. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Where do we take it then when you talk about that, when it comes to say the teaching of English, are we back onto teaching grammar as an example? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I hope so and I want to have a more orthodox approach to teaching methods, to pedagogy as that's called, in the classroom. I think that things like phonics, rather than whole language learning, things like direct learning rather than child-centred learning, these are the more modern things that have been taking over the education system to the exclusion of more orthodox methods. But I don't think that the results bear out that change over the last couple of decades. I think the results indicate that we need to rethink whether some of the ways that we used to teach young people were in fact correct and should not have been jettisoned in the first place. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Yeah look I can understand that view because I think that's worried a lot of parents for a long time. That some of the basics just somewhere along the line disappeared. Now you mentioned New South Wales being slightly different, you seem to be having a celebrated disagreement, clash of personalities, whatever, with the New South Wales Minister, Adrian Piccoli, do you not? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: No I don't think that's true. I get along very well with Adrian but you know New South Wales... GRAHAM RICHARDSON: It doesn't read like that. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well I feel that I get along well with him but maybe I'm not picking up the social signals Graham. But the point is that New South Wales is the biggest jurisdiction and they therefore have a big say over their own direction. They want to, they're a state that's bigger than New Zealand. I think Adrian's doing a very good job in the work that he's doing in NSW and I want to help him to get a more robust curriculum, more principal autonomy, better trained teachers and more engaged parents and we're working hand in glove. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Yeah I'm very glad to hear it, I just find it extraordinary that you know a fellow Liberal like yourself is finding it difficult with him or he's finding it difficult with you, I'm not sure which way that goes. Then the next issue comes along and it's this - and I don't understand this, this is the idea of public schools being independent schools, how does that happen? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well in Western Australia and Queensland they're implementing models where public schools become independent public schools and that means that the principal and their leadership team has a lot more autonomy from central office. They get to choose their staff, chose their curricular and extra-curricular priorities. They're a one‑line budget item in the state budget and they get to decide how many teachers they need in what areas and what teachers they want. So they're more like the non-government system where there's more devolved power to the local school. These have been a runaway hit. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Does that mean then that if one of these schools wants to choose a teacher, as an example, then they advertise the position and look at applicants and interview them and pick one. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Yes, how amazing Graham, it sounds so simple and yet... GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Because that's not what happens now is it? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: In most states and territories that is a far cry from what happens now. In most states and territories the central office sends a teacher that they want to send into a school. You would think, the way you put it, is exactly as I would suggest it. That the local schools get to decide the teachers that they want and need, and their priorities. This has been an enormous hit in Western Australia and we've put $70 million on the table to expand the professional development of principals and bursars and their leadership teams to ensure that they are ready to be independent public schools. Because what the OECD says, and most independent studies show, that the more autonomy in a school the better the outcomes for students, the higher the expectations. And our policy's unashamedly a student's first policy. So we want better teacher training, we want a more robust curriculum, we want more autonomy for schools because all of those things indicate that if they are being done properly you'll get better results for the students themselves. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Are we still rating teachers, are we trying to work out who's a good teacher and who's not and if we are doing that, who does it? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well every state and territory employs their teachers and their schools, they decide how much they get paid, what their conditions are. So it's not for me to tell them whether their industrial relation structure is archaic. But if - but one of the ways we're going to have to encourage, you know, good people to want to be teachers is to make the teacher training challenging and interesting, well I can help with that. We need to create the career structures throughout teaching where young people with all the choices they've got can see that there is a career path for them, where they'll get rewarded on the basis of merit and hard work, not on the basis of length of service. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: That's what we don't have at the moment. If you look at the entry requirements for some of the teacher's colleges they're among the lowest... CHRISTOPHER PYNE: That's true. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: ...for all of our tertiary institutions. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: That's true. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: So you're not getting the good students, you're getting the ones that can't get anywhere else. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: But the ATAR score which is what you're talking about is a measure of popularity of the course, it's not always a measure of the aptitude of the individual and there are very good people with low ATAR scores who can be very good teachers with support, with pre-university extra training, with support throughout their courses and they can pursue their vocation. That's not to say we don't want a higher ATAR score but that is not the silver bullet in education. The silver bullet in education is a high quality course. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: But also, don't you think that you never get this until there's a career structure. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Exactly. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Where a young person who wants to get into the teaching profession can say to themselves, okay I go to the teaching profession, in 20 years time I'm going to be earning a pretty good income. At the moment a really good teacher and teaching upper end of secondary school, be lucky to getting $90,000 a year. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Graham the teaching profession is one of the most unreconstructed professions in Australia in terms of remuneration and conditions and you're absolutely right. You can fiddle with the ATAR scores all you like, at the end of the day young people need to be challenged, they want to see a career path and they want to see that if they work harder they will get rewarded in terms of their income. They don't want to sit there and be working harder and be meritorious but see somebody who's been there longer than them, but not doing all that, getting paid more than them just because of length of service. That outdated model is not going to attract good people to teaching and so that's what the states and territories can concentrate on. I'm going to do my level best to produce the best teachers possible out of universities and then it's up to the states and territories to create the kind of industrial environment that attracts those young people to the teaching profession and keeps them there. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: But the difficulty's going to be that if you are going to make the profession properly paid - and in my view by the way, just as something that you just quickly say, it seems to me incredibly important that we do that because obviously these are the people teaching our children, this is what really matters, this is what we have to try and fix. And yet it seems to me it's been ignored for a long time and you can be a 22 year old working in a merchant bank and you've been pulling in 250 a year. But there's no teachers doing that and it just seems to me… CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well there... GRAHAM RICHARDSON: ...they're playing a much more important role with the future of Australia. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well there are a lot of young people with a lot of choices available to them in their careers these days Graham and teaching has to compete with all of the other choices and it's not enough just to say we need more money. We've spent 40 percent more money, 44 per cent more money in the last 10 years and our results have declined and the issues that you've raised about teacher remuneration and conditions have remained unchanged for that period of time. It's not real world to expect young people to want to choose teaching as a profession if they can't see a career path ahead of them when they're remunerated on the basis of their effort rather than the basis on their length of service. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: I accept that but what you're saying is the states have got to sort it, the reality is of course, that you well know, they can't afford to sort it. To put in a proper career structure, to value teaching as in my view, society should value it, would require a lot more - a lot of extra money, I mean billions - and of course, it's not going to come from the states, they are absolutely stone broke, it has to come from you. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: But the spending on education by the states and territories has risen dramatically over the last few decades. Money is not the issue in education. The amount of money has risen, but there's also been an obsession with smaller class sizes - which is what the union is most focussed on - smaller class sizes, more teachers. But of course if you have smaller and smaller class sizes and more and more teachers, then you will get - people are still being paid about the same rather than the full range of remuneration based on merit. Now these are - these are simple propositions that in the private sector are part of everyday life, but for some reason the teachers union doesn't ever consider the prospect that they need to change the way they remunerate their teachers in order to attract the best and brightest. They simply won't accept it. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: But see this is what happens in the states. The reality is with the states - when they're trying to negotiate with the teacher's union for let's say the next two years or five years or whatever the term of the agreement is, it's always trying to wind it back to the lowest amount possible isn't it? It's always - they're always are we going to get a three percent increase or a two percent increase? If you want to value teaching, and increase those salaries substantially - which is what I think we must do, at some stage we must do - it can only come with Commonwealth money. It'll never happen with the states. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: But Graham, the Commonwealth is not going to pour billions more into an education system when we're already putting billions in every year. We're not going to put more in to simply lift the salary of every single teacher, none of whom we employ, none of whom we can control. We don’t own any schools or operate any schools and there doesn't seem to be any willingness from the part of the union to say that rather than every single teacher - no matter whether they're the best or the worst - getting an increase in their salary, let's break it up so that the really good teachers get paid more and the teachers who people realise need more professional development, get that professional development. But at the moment if you speak to the union they will tell you that every teacher is exactly the same, that there are no good teachers and not good teachers, they're all exactly the same. Now we know that's not true because I'm a parent of four children, you're a parent of children, we all know that there are some great teachers and there are teachers that need more professional development, and that is a matter for the states and territories and the union, but the bit that I'm going to focus on is the teacher training bit because that's the bit that I can have more control over. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Well look I wish you - because you're not a great fan of unions. Have you spoken to the union that you're involved with? CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well there's two unions in my area, there's the Independent Education Union and there's the Australian Education Union, and the IEU came out and welcomed the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group today, but the AEU came out and said that while there's a lot more work to be done, they're not happy that we're having a review of the teacher training. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: Why am I not surprised? [Laughter] Mr Pyne I've got to leave it there but thank you very much once again. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Pleasure. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: We'll talk to you soon. I think the development of what - in your portfolio - is arguably much more important than all of those economic ones that everyone will vote for in the next election. I'm more interested in our future. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: I'm very passionate about it as you know, and I really do enjoy this portfolio because it's so important to the outcome of our society down the track. GRAHAM RICHARDSON: We're both passionate about this one and I wish you well. CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Thank you. Ends