Variety and choice in education – Menzies Research Centre book launch

TRANSCRIPT OF LAUNCH BY THE MENZIES RESEARCH CENTRE OF DR GRAEME STARR’S VARIETY AND CHOICE

 Thank you to the Menzies Research Centre for their kind invitation to launch the Centre’s new publication – Variety and Choice, by Dr Graeme Starr here in Brisbane today. I begin by recognising my parliamentary colleagues here today, in particular my Shadow Minister for Education and Training, Dr Bruce Flegg;  Member for Coomera, Michael Crandon; and Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education and School Curriculum Standards Senator Brett Mason.

 The Menzies Research Centre has a distinguished history of making a valuable contribution to public debate on public policy and aspects of our national story. I congratulate the Centre and its Executive Director, Julian Leeser for commissioning Dr Graeme Starr’s new book.

The debate about schools funding in Australia is an old and worn one as Graeme Starr, who is an accomplished author, adviser and lecturer, demonstrates.  This book expands his contribution to our political debate, increases our knowledge, and provides valuable insight.  Congratulations to the Menzies Research Centre for the production of the text.

The release of this book comes at a time when education is undergoing greater public debate. With increasing Federal intervention in education through funding, early childhood agreements, building programs and curriculum discussions, Australia is entering a new phase in the delivery of schooling its young.

It is now a pertinent time for reflection on the development of education in this country, and a detailed look at the players who helped create our education system. 

I believe we have just the one education system.  Too often, the non-Government schooling sector is treated as a different, competing system.  I firmly believe our Government and non-Government schools are complementary, and that together they can deliver better results for our country, our State and our community.

To take the non-Government sector out of the equation would diminish so much in our community and society – we would lose choice and diversity, we would lose a stream of excellence and achievement, our children and young Australians would lose some specialisations and ethical groundings, taxpayers would lose millions by having to fund new places in the state system.

By having complementary systems, we are achieving more in education than we would otherwise, and we are providing more for our community than we would otherwise.

Every parent in our community makes decisions about their child’s education.  Some parents choose to sacrifice more financially to provide a non-State school education. Some elect their local state school, some prefer religiously-based education, some choose the school that provides the best sports teams, others look to academic performance or cultural achievement.  There are hundreds of variables in education, and encouraging and fostering that choice and diversity is to the benefit of every member of our society from the child starting school to their employer twenty years or more later.

So it was refreshing to read this book, and discover the arguments that have been used for and against state aid laid bare, and placed in their contexts.

We owe a lot to the independent sector in terms of the early establishment of an education system in Australia. As our young colony grew and governments of the time were more concerned with day-to-day life than longer term investments such as education, it was the churches which stepped in and provided the early framework for our schools.

Catholic and Protestant schools became the educators of the families of newly arrived settlers and then the first generations of their Australian-born children.  These schools could look to the authorities for financial assistance for teachers’ salaries and buildings.

This era was the beginning of the embedding of state differences in education.  Each colony had slight variations in process and prowess.  For good or bad, those differences continue today, and the movement towards a national curriculum is highlighting those changes.

If I can just add at this point that, on the matter of the national curriculum, we need, as a State, to engage in a more active pursuance of the curriculum.  Instead of being content to let others make all the decisions, do all the work – Queensland needs to step up and speak up for the best possible outcomes.  Sadly, there is no sign of the Bligh Government doing that.

As Dr Starr examines in this book, as early as the 1850s the argument against state funding of non-state schools delivered an emphasis on secular schooling. A decade later, this was transformed into legislation, and mechanisms of the State. A further ten years down the track, and the mantra of ‘free, compulsory, and secular’, became the nationwide approach to education. State aid for non-Government schools had stopped. 

Under the guidance of radicals like Henry Parkes, the State aid opponents demanded a separation of church from schooling, and won the argument in terms of funding. Where they did not succeed was in the dismantling of the church-based system.   Though numbers of church-based schools declined, the support they could garner from their congregations and parents ensured their survival until such time as funding reappeared.

In some ways, the demand for secularisation strengthened the church-based system, at least insofar as the Catholic system as it developed. By the 1870s, there was deep division between the secular and church sectors, with the view taken by the Catholic sector that all public funding was spent on schools they could not use – creating a form of social injustice.

Queensland proved to be a more conducive environment for non-Government schools than other states, courtesy of the scholarship system which allowed a form of state aid to be paid directly to the schools.  Non-government schools were allowed to enter secondary students in the Scholarship Exam as early as 1899, with an expansion of the program 15 years later.

Federal involvement in education only really began in the late 1930s, with initiatives in pre-school teaching and technical education.

There is no little irony in the selection of those topics – areas which are the focus of significant changes under Federal involvement today.

Queensland has – in the past – led the way in education at various times. As Dr Starr mentions, Queensland was the first state to make schooling free, in 1870.  More recently, as Professor Masters told us last year in his report:

“In 1964, Queensland significantly outperformed the other participating jurisdictions, including Victoria and New South Wales, in secondary mathematics.  In 1978, Queensland significantly outperformed all jurisdictions other than the ACT (which performed at a statistically similar level).  Rosier (1980) attributed the relatively high performance of Queensland students in the 1960s and 1970s to the ‘very strong emphasis on mathematics in the primary school in Queensland’. Queensland also significantly outperformed most other states and territories in primary and secondary science in 1983.”

Today, we are bottom of the class, our results are lower than all other states, except for in some cases Western Australia. So what has happened?  And how do we fix it? There is some valuable insight in this book into ways we can examine.

One simple way, a modern continuation of Menzies’ ideals, is embracing diversity, and using our combined diversity to provide the best possible outcomes.

As Australia became more culturally diverse in the post World War II era; more open to other cultures and immigrants, the face of our country changed, and with it the needs of our society. Menzies recognised this, and he recognised the need to nurture diversity with variety, not smother it with a one-size-fits-all, regulated system to produce uniformity and sameness.

An essential component of this variety was education. Choice in education leads to diversity in education.  Diversity in education leads to achievement and ability in society.

An education system that is united in one level of achievement, one aim, one set of values is not going to serve the interests of any country or society, regardless of the funding or ideals of the system. There are many ways to excel, and they all enrich our society.  Limiting the avenues for achievement stifles diversity and suffocates our society.

The beauty and strength of our community – be it Queensland or Australia – is in its diversity.  When we can maximise the participation of every individual, and the contribution of every individual, we achieve the most as a community and society.  By binding together our combined strengths, we can achieve and succeed.

In an educational sense, those strengths come from the providers of education, the teachers of subjects, the learners of lessons and the communities that support it all.

We cannot leave out any one of those groups without diminishing the subsequent benefit to our society as a whole. Today we are still fighting the needless polemic caused by ‘hitlists’ and intentional political division between State and non-State schools.

The idea that parents should be penalised for sending their children to a non-State school is abhorrent.  A taxpayer who makes an additional sacrifice to educate their child should not face the situation where they are excluded from the results of their own taxes. If schooling is compulsory and taxing is compulsory, and taxes pay for schools – the conclusion is simple.

This book offers a detailed examination of state aid to non-government schools as a history and an ideology.  The argument over state funding for non-government schools is one that is extraordinarily prone to misrepresentation.

We are all too familiar with campaigns that begrudge any expenditure on independent and Catholic schooling; campaigns that paint the non-Government sector as an unworthy recipient of Government funds.

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that this has become a stale debate, a counterproductive debate, and one, thankfully at least, some on the other side of politics seem to be tiring of too.

Every parent in this country pays taxes. Every parent in this country deserves to have some government support for the education of their child, in whatever type of school that they choose to sent their child.

I am pleased that 32 per cent of parents in this State choose to send their children to non-government schools. I am pleased because it takes the pressure off government schools and in turn improves the education of all students – students who go to government schools get increased resources, and students who go to non-government schools get the particular type or mode of education that their parents desire for them.

By having a healthy and vibrant government and non-government sector – both well resourced, and both focused on delivering high quality education, adapted to the needs and wants of the parents and students, and their school communities, we are able to deliver on the goal of a well-educated, informed and liberal society for the future of all Queenslanders.

As this book shows, that misrepresentation has been going on for almost as long as the education system in our county.

Ladies gentlemen, it is easy to bemoan the state of education in Queensland today.  After all, there is a lot to fault.

Anna Bligh was Labor’s education minister from 2001 to 2005 – she was the Minister who was supposed to be responsible for creating Queensland as the ‘Smart State’, and now, after five years of Minister Bligh and two and a half years of Premier Bligh, Queensland has  

• The lowest reading, writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation and numeracy results of all States,
• We top the nation in school bullying levels,
• Nine out of ten teaching graduates cannot secure a permanent position teaching in our state schools,
• Our schools are asbestos-ridden, and
• More than 72 per cent of Queensland secondary school principals admit students are being taught by teachers who are not fully qualified in curriculum areas such as mathematics, science, technology and computer sciences and special education

 In terms of pupils on seats, we have an ever-increasing march away from the State school system; and we have an ongoing debate whenever state funding for Catholic and independent schools is mentioned.

 The Government is happy to blame differences for all our problems – a different school starting age, a different curriculum, a different approach.

 Blame is an easy answer to a difficult problem.  This book shows decades of blame stymieing the cooperation between complementary education sectors.   Just as in that case, so as in the case of the Queensland education system, blame is not a solution.

 One of the most ludicrous examples of blame recently came in the form of the Government’s response to abysmal NAPLAN results.  Instead of looking at how to fix the problem, the Government issued a report which blamed the form of testing, socio-economic differences, repetition of difficult questions, lack of guidelines, too many guidelines, dialect, questions that were too hard, and even questions that were too easy.

 When parents receive report cards for their children with an ‘F’, most parents would seek help to improve their children’s marks to a ‘C’ or a ‘B’ or ideally even an ‘A’.  They wouldn’t sit at home and write a letter absolving themselves from all blame.

But that is precisely what the Queensland Government did. The Bligh Government commissioned an expert, Professor Geoff Masters, to review the results and map the road forward.  When they received Professor Masters’ report, they paid lip service to it, and carried on doing exactly the same as they have always done.  And put down our shortcomings to our differences.

Queensland has differences in our education system – we always have had – as this book shows.  And the differences in the past have often led us to be the best.

We need to recognise that we have been high achievers in the past, and we have every ability to be such yet again in the future.  To do so, we need to make the most of all our resources, and not waste time and money on blame.

Our side of politics has always valued education as the single most important pursuit of a government to assist as it empowers individuals to live long, healthy, rewarding and meaningful lives. We believe in a liberal society, achieved by a broad and liberal education. We believe in a comprehensive, education that equips young Australians to become valuable and informed citizens – who are equipped to contribute to our Nation and their communities.

 A liberal education is the birthright of all Australians. The cultural inheritance of having a full and comprehensive education in the English language and Western Canon that recognises our sociological development as the Australian people, the physical sciences, mathematics, Australian and local history, and technological skills – appropriately balancing knowledge content and skills acquired – all form the bedrock of a liberal education.

 This publication is a timely and valuable examination, not just of where we have come from in our education system, but also of the need to see through the extraneous arguments, and concentrate on the reason for our education system – to provide the best possible environment for our children and give them every possible opportunity.

 Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to launch the Menzies Research Centre and Dr Graeme Starr’s Variety and Choice here today. I commend the publication to you. I congratulate the Centre and Dr Starr. Ladies and gentlemen – Variety and Choice.