MEDIA RELEASE

UP TO $4 MILLION HELPS IDENTIFY ‘LIGHTHOUSE’ SCHOOLS IN BOYS’ EDUCATION

27 November, 2002 MIN 250/02

Today I am announcing a significant Howard Government response to the clear need to address the education of boys in our schools.

Up to 30 ‘lighthouse’ schools will be identified across Australia to act as beacons in boys’ education. They will act as champions and demonstrators and disseminate ‘best practice’ boys’ education to schools around them.

These primary and secondary schools will each receive up to $60,000 to document what works and how they are achieving the best for boys in their care.

These ‘lighthouse’ schools will be identified through a two stage process.

The first stage will provide between $5000 and $20,000 to up to seventy schools to enable them to document and develop their boys’ education practices. Schools may choose to use the funds for a range of purposes including to provide professional development or hire academics to assist them.

If schools do not already have a specific boys’ education programme they may use the funds to work towards that goal.

The ‘lighthouse’ schools will be chosen from schools identified during this process.

I shall also be writing to State and Territory Education Ministers to request a review of the existing gender equity policy framework (Gender Equity: A Framework for Australian Schools).

The 1997 framework, which was built on the 1993 National Action Plan for the Education of Girls, sets out the way schools address gender equity issues, and does not specifically identify issues pertaining to boys.

It is clear this needs to be reviewed so that boys and girls are able to find and achieve their own potential in an educational context which takes into account their differences.

I shall also be allocating $500,000 for research in areas around pedagogy, curriculum, testing and assessment. It is important we identify what information is available and what more needs to be uncovered about the way we are teaching boys and the ways they are learning.

It has been suggested, for example, that boys may be being disadvantaged by exams which are writing and time intensive. This may be the most difficult environment for many boys to be their best.

It is imperative that nothing is done which undermines the important and necessary progress which has been made in the last twenty years in the education of girls, however the evidence is overwhelming that boys are falling behind in our education system.

It is unacceptable that 14 year old boys are doing worse in literacy tests than they were 25 years ago.

In Year 5, 89.6% of females achieved the literacy benchmark compared with 85.2% of males.

In 2001 the Year 12 school retention rate was 79.1% for females and 68.1% for males.

Males made up 43.6% of the 614, 076 domestic students in Higher Education in 2001 compared with 46% in 1991.

The national shortage of teachers – and especially male teachers- has been an important consideration during this year’s Review of Higher Education.

Only 46% of secondary teachers are male and only 21% of primary teachers are male, and the trend forecasts are toward even fewer males.

I am keen to discover from boys completing year 12 what is preventing them enrolling in teacher training. Less than a quarter of those training in our universities to be teachers are male.

I shall be writing to the Deans of Education at Australia’s universities which offer teaching asking them what percentage of their enrolments for 2003 are men? I shall also ask them if that gender imbalance is reflected in the unsuccessful applicants for their teaching courses and what measures they may suggest to overcome this problem?

I have been impressed by the discussions at today’s forum on Boys’ Education at Parliament House.

The suite of initiatives on boys’ education I am announcing will be undertaken over two years and will be part of the $159 million Quality Teaching Programme.

The Government will respond fully to the House of Representatives Inquiry into Boys’ Education, and its report Boys: Getting it Right, early next year.

News/ Picture editors please note:
The forum is being conducted today in Committee Room 1R1, Parliament House, Canberra.
A media conference will be held at 12.45 p.m. in Committee Room 1R2.
A picture opportunity will be available on request before the lunch break at approximately 12.25 p.m.

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