Transcript for ABC 891 - Schools Assistance Bill
01 Dec 2008
Transcipt
ABC 891 Mornings
Schools Assistance Bill
1 December, 2008
David Bevan:
… Christopher Pyne, why won’t you pay ball over Education with Julia Gillard
Christopher PYNE MP:
The simple fact of the matter is that Julia Gillard is linking funding to non-government schools with the mandated national curriculum and the hidden agenda of destroying the SES funding model. The Opposition doesn’t have to pass those aspects of the Bill. We’ve said we’re more than happy to pass the funding parts of the Bill but we will baulk at a mandated national curriculum which has no flexibility for IB schools, Steiner schools, Montessori schools and unique other schools, and we also don’t believe that non-government schools should have to have their private sources of funding published for all to see
Bevan:
What is wrong with asking every school in this country to just simply comply with some basic things - that’s what the national curriculum is about, isn’t it?
PYNE:
… the national curriculum, which was the Howard Government’s idea, is a good idea and we support it. We always said it should be the national curriculum or its equivalent, so for International Baccalaureate schools, programs for children with disabilities, Steiner and Montessori schools, and there are other unique kinds of schools - Jewish or Muslim or Christian schools - they should be able to maintain their diversity to give parents choice about what’s good for their children’s education, but the national curriculum as embodied by the Labor Party in this Bill doesn’t do that, it crushes diversity and says one size fits all
Matthew Abraham:
So it you’ve got the money or the urge to send your child to one of these boutique schools, that’s okay. If you’re going to the State Government system or one of the mainstream schools, bad luck - you cop a national curriculum. So you want a little boutique set up for your Steiner schools, your Montessoris, your IB schools, which are not main frame players, you want them to continue to have their little, cosy little empires but you will not allow that for … a State Government school in South Australia - a Rose Park Primary or a …
PYNE:
No … the –
Abraham:
It does sound a bit like that, Mr Pyne
PYNE:
No, the International Baccalaureate schools and Steiner schools exist in the State Government system. Glenunga International High School offers the International Baccalaureate for example. There are primary schools, which offer International Baccalaureate in the state school system, and Steiner schools … there’s a Steiner school in my electorate at the local Trinity Gardens Primary School, so in fact it’s not unique to the non-government sector. The Opposition is standing up for the government and non-government sector. We believe in a national curriculum, we simply don’t believe that all the other unique forms of teaching, which can be accredited as being perfectly adequate, should be crushed by Labor wanting to have everything centrally controlled
Abraham:
But isn’t this how we got into this mess - and that is that we have allowed all these various schools to cherry pick, and then you say we have to have a national curriculum but you don’t want it centrally controlled … it seems that you want to have the national curriculum you have when you’re not having a national curriculum, I’m just wondering if you can explain how you can have a national curriculum with so, I mean for instance you exempt Christian schools, well the last time I looked Catholicism was a form of Christianity, are you going to allow the Catholic school system, because it’s a Christian school as you define it, to opt out of a national curriculum on aspects it wishes to?
PYNE:
No, we’ve always said that the national curriculum, or its equivalent, should be the guide for all teaching in history, English, mathematics and science, so we’re not changing that stance but we always said there should be some flexibility in it so that a State Government should accredit a form of teaching which didn’t offend the national curriculum. The problem with what Labor’s done is they’ve removed all that flexibility. Now one size doesn’t fit all. Lots of parents will say that there child was doing satisfactorily or below par in a school that was straight down the line, average school, but when they took their child to a Montessori school or a Steiner school or an IB school, which are both State government and non-government, they blossomed. There’s no reason why that shouldn’t be allowed to happen into the future. We aren’t so centrally controlled and determined by government that we believe only one size fits all. What the Opposition says is we are for diversity and choice within the national curriculum. Labor says one size fits all, it’s our way or the highway and we think that is unnecessary
Bevan:
How ideological is all of this? For instance, under the National Curriculum Guidelines, would Christian schools be able to teach intelligent design in their science classrooms?
PYNE:
No, the national curriculum would require that science be taught as the way the national curriculum should be taught
Bevan:
What does that mean?
PYNE:
… the national curriculum will have a science curriculum, the framing documents have been drafted. Obviously creationism is not part of the science curriculum
Bevan:
And intelligent design is the same as creationism so that’s
PYNE:
I’m not familiar with all the various terms, but I talk about it in terms of creationism, I know that it’s now been given a different phraseology - intelligent design - but most listeners will be thinking what on earth is intelligent design, and basically it’s creationism. What we’re saying is that teaching methods should be able to be flexible. So, if you’re in a Steiner school, and the listeners would be familiar with this, Steiner schools, Montessori schools, they have different teaching methods, which allow children to develop in different ways. They still have to be able to emerge from school knowing mathematics, science, English, history etc but Labor is putting a straightjacket on the capacity for unique teaching methods, and we think that’s unnecessary. We’re not saying for a moment that the national curriculum isn’t a good idea, it was our idea actually, what we are saying is that within the national curriculum schools who use innovative and creative ways or teaching shouldn’t be crushed
Bevan:
And the other, your other objection to all of this, is that under the Federal Government’s Bill, private schools would have to publicly release their other sources of funding before they can get funding from the Federal Government.
PYNE:
That’s right. The Bill requires non-government schools to disclose every source of funding to the school
Bevan:
Well, what’s wrong with that?
PYNE:
We don’t mind them having to disclose their sources of funding to the Government, we mind them having to be publicly disclosed or published
Bevan:
Why?
PYNE:
The previous government used to require that information but we never published it. We’re against that for a number of reasons - one reason that it is a part of the Trojan horse to destroy the SES funding model by running a campaign against non-government schools, secondly, private taxpayers who give their sources of revenue to the tax office, don’t expect to see it published on the front page of the newspaper and that is effectively the same thing that would be happening here. No problem with the information being collected, but why does it need to be published. You’d only publish it if you had a hidden agenda to destroy the SES funding model
Abraham:
… previously … your staff have sanitised our questions from the transcripts that you issue to the Federal Press Gallery and others, are you going to do that with this interview?[Laughs]
PYNE:
Not if you don’t want me to
Abraham:
I would ask specifically that they do not.
PYNE:
Absolutely, well we probably won’t even put our transcript … we’ve got lots of , we’ve only got three staff in this office, when I was in government we had eighteen, and we actually do our own transcripts. When we were in government there was an agency that used to do it for us
Abraham:
I’m happy for you to put out transcripts, that’s your business, I just have a bit of a problem when the questions are sanitised
PYNE:
We can only do as much as is humanly possible. At the moment we’ve got a transcript from ABC2 to do, a transcript from my doorstop this morning, a transcript from this interview as published, and a transcript of something else I’ve done this morning - that’s four transcripts for one bloke to do on his own in Opposition, so we’ll do the best we can, but there’s no hidden agenda in the transcripts policy, it’s just as much as we’re able to do
Abraham:
Chris Pyne, thank you for talking to 891 Mornings.
1 December 2008
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