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SpeechTRANSCRIPT OF DR DAVID KEMP AT THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS CONFERENCE, NATIONAL CONVENTION CENTRE
FRIDAY 14 MAY 1999
I think all of us here recognise that the strength of our democracy ultimately lies in the families, the values and beliefs, and the faiths of those families as they try to bring through the next generation. That’s really the foundation on which the security of the future of this country will be built. All of you here, I know, don’t need to be told how significant education is – how significant the schooling that we provide our young people is in ensuring that what we value is transmitted through to the next generation, and that we continue to build a society which is based on deep human and spiritual values. Independent schools play a significant role – they are one of the strengths of Australian society and that is true across denominations. It is true because the beliefs that are transmitted to children in those schools, I believe, are giving our young people a perspective on life and an understanding of what it means to be a person grappling with the great issues of life in a way that will lead to a much better society in the future. And I open with those general comments because they really provide the philosophical underpinning for the decisions that the Government has just announced. These are very historic decisions. They put in place, I believe, the foundation for a greater strength in the education system in this country – not just those in the independent sector and the non-government sector, but those in the government sector as well. And I don’t want anyone in this room to feel that in any sense the decisions that have been made are favourable to those in one sector and that they are at a cost to those in the government schools because that is absolutely not the case. This is a budget that is fair and equitable across the whole of Australian schools. Every child in all Australian schools will benefit from the decisions that we’ve just announced. This is a budget that is going to lift the quality of schooling in the government sector and in the non-government sector because the budget contains decisions which provide additional resources to both sectors. The budget contains an additional commitment of $131 million to lift literacy and numeracy standards for the early years of schooling and for those young people who missed out in the early years of schooling. Some have missed out because until very recently we haven’t had national standards of literacy and numeracy. We now have a national plan to make sure that every child coming out of primary school has the foundation skills for life. So we have put additional resources into that area and those resources flow to government schools because 70% of students are in government schools and about 70% of those resources will go to government schools. This is equally true for the additional resources that we have put into Quality Teaching. We realise that we are facing a changing society – we also realise that there are teachers in schools, in private schools, who haven’t had specific training in how to meet the literacy and numeracy needs of children with specific needs. Of course we also have many teachers who are seeking professional development in relation to the change in technology. We realise that there are many teachers teaching science and mathematics who don’t have the adequate disciplinary background to provide the level of teaching that they need and so we sought a quality teaching program and the commitment of additional resources to assist the professional development of teachers in both the government and the non-government sectors. Over the next four year funding quadrennium, that is, the years 2001-2004, it is useful to know in the context of the debate over the budget in the last few days, that government schools will receive $1 billion more from the Commonwealth Government in direct school funding than they will receive in the current quadrennium. Any suggestion that the resources that we are putting into the independent school sector and the non-government school sector have been at the expense of the government sector are totally false. And everyone can go out of this room with the personal confidence that if you’re happy with the decisions in the budget, that they’ve not been bought on at anyone else’s expense. Indeed we took the attitude that in the interests of educational equity itself additional resources needed to be put into the independent sector where the resources of schools were significantly below those in the government sector. It is just not right that there should be so many children being educated in schools where the public commitment was not at a level that we believe properly recognised the contribution to the society as a whole from the education of those children. The decisions that we’ve taken in relation to the non-government sector are designed to lift the resources of those schools, particularly those schools serving the lowest income communities to a level that is going to be adequate to provide a decent education to all those young Australians and that’s what we’ve done. There is a very powerful incentive built into the decisions in this budget - for schools in the non-government sector to open their doors to children of the neediest families in Australia and we wanted to put them in a position where they can say, ‘and now we have the resources that will allow us to provide you with the quality of education that you’re seeking for your child’. I thought Peter Crimmins stated the whole matter very well in the press release that he issued on the budget on behalf of the Australian Association of Christian Schools and he said in these words, and I quoted them in the parliament yesterday, ‘Choice in schooling is now a reality for working-class Australian families’. And that is what educational equity is all about – everyone is entitled to choice. Schools serving the neediest communities under the plan that we’ve just announced will receive from the Commonwealth 70% of the cost of educating a child in a government school – up from 56%. On top of that, of course, they will receive the state contribution of around 20% - 90% of the resourcing for government schools. We expect that there will be very significant options developed now for families in Australia to exercise choice which brings me to an important argument about educational choice. We support educational choice fundamentally because we believe it is the right of every family to have that choice – it’s a fundamental right and that’s the basis on which we make these decisions. Like so many other things that are good in the natural law that governs the world, if you recognise these basic rights of people other good consequences follow from them and one of the very good consequences of educational choice is that it allows parents to speak their mind to those who provide schooling. We’ve heard complaints from bodies like the Australian Education Union - not just this week - that somehow or other parents shouldn’t be allowed to exercise choice because that will take children out of one sector and into another sector. From that perspective the important thing is to defend the sector rather than the right of children and parents. If parents are given choice, they say, that this is going to damage the government sector; that it’s going to drain students away from the government sector; marginalise the sector and lead to problems in Australian society. I want to make this very clear to you this morning because I hope that you will make it clear at every opportunity you have - that the opposite is the case. I am absolutely confident that the decision that we have taken will have a very powerful effect in lifting standards for all young people and this will be so because parents’ voices will be very clearly heard. If parents are voting with their feet, every responsible state government will want to put their government schools in a position where they can respond to that. And that is already happening - there is already a significant movement for reform in the government sector which is devolving the authority of school principals and schools councils; devolving control over budgets; devolving control over staffing, and increasing flexibility in relation to curriculum to the community level, and that reform provides those schools with the opportunity to better meet the needs of parents in a way that strongly centralised, union-dominated systems don’t provide. What we’re going to see as the parent voice is amplified by these decisions is a very powerful incentive to reform within the government sector and the ultimate balance between those sectors is going to be determined by Australian parents. That, I think, is the great consequence of the decision that we’ve taken this week. In the end it is the decisions of parents themselves; the judgements they make about the quality of the schooling their children are being offered; whether they’re happy with the discipline in the classroom, and whether they’re happy with the values that are being taught – that will determine ultimately the character of Australian schooling. That is exactly as it should be in a democracy. It is not for central bureaucracies; it is not for unions to dictate the schooling that Australian children are offered; it is parents who decide that and I am very confident that as a result of the decisions that have been taken we will see a continuing lift in the quality of the schooling that is offered to every child in both sectors. As those of you who are school principals and teachers know here, parents are very discriminating. There may be some parents who don’t have a deep interest in education but the vast majority have a very, very deep interest in the schooling their children get. Every government school principal and every non-government school principal knows they have parents on the phone saying; ‘why are you doing this; why aren’t you doing that for my child’, and that kind of monitoring is what is ultimately going to drive the lift in quality in Australian schooling. As a government that is what we want to achieve because we realise that in the world that we live in nobody owes Australia a living – our future is in our own hands as a country. If this is going to be a country that has got something worthwhile to say to the world; that is going to be enterprising; that is going to produce a high standard of living for its citizens; that is going to produce jobs for everyone – we must recognise that that is entirely within our own hands. The society we build, the kind of attitudes and values that our families and our schools provide to the coming generation, will settle the success or failure of this country. As a government we realise that and we want Australia to succeed. We want Australia to not only be economically prosperous; we want Australia not only to be able to provide jobs for everyone, but we want Australia to be a voice in the world that is a voice for human and spiritual values that will have a very positive impact on the future of mankind. If we have families that are enabled and empowered to have their values developed and transmitted to the next generation then we will succeed in that. So this is all about positioning Australia as well as all those other matters that I spoke about. You mentioned at the start of your remarks the interest that I have in lifting literacy and numeracy standards. I want to develop a point about that because we have put in place a process that I believe is very important in achieving this. This process depends on establishing very clear standards of what we expect young people to know in terms of their literacy and numeracy skills. We brought together the best experts in Australia to tell us what level of literacy skills children need to have at the end of year 3; at the end of those early years of schooling, to continue successfully through their schooling. Out of this we put in place the National Literacy Standards. We conducted the first national literacy survey and we analysed the results against those standards – we found that 30% of young Australians in year 3 were below that standard. That is again a matter of fundamental educational equity. The Commonwealth has agreed with the states that every child in the government system will be assessed against that standard and that they will report those results from year to year, so that we can see whether every child is coming up to the standard. It was an historic breakthrough to achieve that. This is a huge change in the nature of educational accountability. If you recall when we came to office there’d been a program called the Disadvantage Schools Program. That program, in the ten years before we came to office, had spent $1 billion in helping the so-called neediest pupils - the most education-disadvantaged pupils and yet after ten years and $1 billion 30% couldn’t read and write adequately. In fact because of this failure many people are unemployed - because they have poor literacy and numeracy skills. If we want a socially harmonious society where everybody has decent opportunities, we need to achieve within very few years educational equity for all those young people, and a system of accountability which shows that they are reaching the national standards. That form of accountability I think is very important for all schools, not just important for government schools but important for non-government schools. Let me say that I think that all schools in the non-government sector receiving that public support need to be educationally accountable in exactly the same way – we want to know that if taxpayers are putting money into the schools, then young people are getting those basic skills. I’m working closely with your representatives to determine how we can best do that. It doesn’t necessarily mean taking the state basic skills tests, although as they’re refined they will provide measures of educational outcomes in those vital areas against the national standards. But there may be other ways of doing it and I’m sure there are and we want to work with the representatives of the Christian schools and make sure that we have instruments that are available, which are economical and which will do the job in a cost-efficient way to produce that level of educational accountability and that will be of benefit to this whole system of parent choice that we’re talking about - because the important thing about parent choice is not only that parents have the freedom to make choices but they have the information to make the choices. They actually need to know how well their children are going to learn. School reporting is important to us. It’s recognising the dignity of the parent in their right to choose. They shouldn’t have to choose in a vacuum; they shouldn’t have to choose on the basis of anecdotes and hearsay - they should be able to choose on the basis of solid information. They don’t want to choose on the basis of simplistic information; they don’t want to choose on the basis of simplistic tables - they want quality information; they want some qualitative information. As you know, the things that parents are looking for are to do with the values that their children are going to learn. They want to know about the safety of their children in the schoolroom and in the playground. They also want to know whether we’re going to teach their children to read and write properly and whether they’re going to meet the standards - and parents are entitled to that information. So in terms of the development of accountability in education throughout Australia, we’re saying that ‘parent choice should be informed parent choice’. The Commonwealth is already funding research into school reporting and will be reporting on best practice in this area. We want to see schools reporting satisfactorily and adequately to parents because ultimately we must have a system of parent choice in this country that’s credible in every aspect and that the information is available to parents. That’s enough about that this morning. Could I conclude by saying how much I have appreciated and valued the input from your representatives who have come to see me on many occasions during the time that I have been the Minister responsible for Schools – I always valued the accuracy; the non-partisanship; the expertise; the input and the recommendations that they provide. These decisions that the government has announced this week will provide funding to non-government schools on a much fairer, transparent basis and that will enhance educational equity. If these are decisions which you feel happy about, then you can thank the representatives in your school organisations who have come to see me, particularly people like Jack Nichelsen and Peter Crimmins, who have done a wonderful job for you because they have made sure that the government is in a position where it can take wise decisions. Where they felt there were inequities they pointed them out to us and we listened to them and believed that what they were saying to us was right and that those inequities had to be corrected. We’ve sought to put in place a system of school funding which will provide a very firm foundation for parent choice and quality education into the next century and I believe we’ve done that and I thank you very much for your hard work and support in getting us to this point. Thank you.
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