Mr TURNBULL (Wentworth) (13:37): This bill, the Australian Education Bill 2012, is a very brief document. At 1,400 words, it contains fewer words than were contained in the honourable member’s speech or will likely be contained in my remarks. It sets out some worthy objectives, acknowledging that all students should be entitled to an excellent education regardless of where they live or their income. It notes that, if Australia is to be a prosperous nation with a high standard of living, the performance of our schools must continuously improve and so forth. All of those are worthy goals.
But it does not have a number in it; it does not set out a plan; and it finally says, in proposed section 10—which, I guess, summarises this or discloses that it is essentially a political document—that this act does not create rights or duties that are legally enforceable in judicial proceedings, and a failure to comply with this act does not affect the validity of any decision. It is at best a statement of intent so general as to be barely worth debating, but nonetheless we are here discussing education. I think we should be focusing on the real issues in education as opposed to the warm words and noble goals of this bill which are expressed, as I said, in such general terms that it is very difficult to have a debate about them.
A lot of this debate has been going on in the context of the so-called Gonski reforms. I have to say that it is a matter of some concern to me that my old friend David Gonski has become not simply a leading business figure and great lawyer, but also now a proper noun. Indeed, on occasions he has become a verb. It is a very disturbing development for a gentleman of his standing. Whether he is going to be decapitalised as the next step in his grammatical progression is yet to be seen. But the point about the Gonski review and the Gonski report is that it essentially identified—fairly, I think—the need for additional financial resources to be made available for schools and students who are getting inadequate resources given their particular needs, whether that be not coming from an English-speaking household, poverty, an Indigenous background or so forth. Again, in general terms, who would argue with that? But the government has gone from taking these valuable insights from the Gonski review to claiming it is implementing them, when what Gonski was saying was that there should be more money invested in education. And yet the government seems now to be employing—this is a government which has promised and failed to deliver many surpluses—what can only be described as accounting tricks to make it appear as if there is more money going into the education system, when there is not. The fact is, over the forward estimates, the government is removing nearly $3.1 billion from education funding through various redirections of national partnership arrangements and reductions in recurrent funding for non-government schools, while only returning roughly $2.8 billion in new spending over the same period. That is giving with one hand and taking with the other, and we have heard Mr Gonski himself lamenting the way in which the government is cutting funding for higher education as part of this shuffling of money from one pocket into another.
Spending money on education is one thing, but it is not enough to simply spend the money without looking for outcomes. The critical issue, if you look at the big picture for Australia, is this: we are moving into a vastly more competitive world than ever before. We are no longer competing with low-wage economies doing low-skill jobs. We now have low-wage economies doing very high-skill jobs and developing very sophisticated products. The internet has made more and more of our economy trade exposed, so not only are higher-skill occupations in Australia being competed against by a broader range of countries—many of them with a lower wage regime and lower incomes than Australia—but the internet has also made many businesses, industries and jobs, which used not to be trade exposed, trade exposed. Think of the retail sector. Ten years ago it would not have occurred to us that retail was competing in a global market, yet virtually every category of retail is now competing globally. So how do we maintain a high-income, developed economy in Australia, with a generous social-welfare safety net?
We can only do that by raising our productivity and competitiveness, and that means better and better education and higher and higher levels of skills. But it is not enough merely to throw money at the problem and hope that will solve it. We have tried that and it has failed. The reality is this: under Labor, all we have seen is a decline in Australia’s educational outcomes. In Australia, educational spending per student has already risen, in real terms, over 40 per cent in the past decade; yet according to the OECD PISA rankings, our outcomes have declined from among the strongest in the world in 2000 to still fairly good in 2009, but well behind a leading group of five school systems—four of them in East Asia. Under this government’s watch, therefore, we have seen education spending increase and student performance fall.
Where Labor thinks it can just throw money at education, cross its fingers and hope it can improve, the coalition knows we can do better. We do better by focusing on the teacher, on choice, on incentivising and on rewarding teachers.
I refer to a paper, published in October 2003—so it is almost 10 years old—on this topic by John Hattie, from the University of Auckland. It makes a very powerful point: ‘The greatest source of variance in terms of the performance of any student is the teacher.’
The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr S Georganas): Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate will be resumed at a later hour and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.
Mr TURNBULL (Wentworth) (15:49): When the debate was adjourned earlier today I was referring to an article by John Hattie concerning the question of how much of a difference experienced and expert teachers make. He identified that, of all the influences that account for the variance in achievement of students, obviously the largest one, at 50 per cent, is the qualities and abilities of the student himself or herself. But the next largest factor, at 30 per cent, in the variance in achievement was due to the quality of the teacher. He makes the point—and this is a point we have made repeatedly from this side of the House—that we have to direct attention to higher quality teaching. Simply throwing money at the system, campaigning for smaller class sizes, regarding the teachers unions’ industrial objectives as being consistent with good educational outcomes—that is all very misconceived. The focus has to be on the quality of the teachers.
This was brought home to us yet again in February last year when the Grattan Institute published a report following its conference that examined four high-performing school systems in our region—in Korea, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore—all of which were overtaking us to varying degrees. I quote from Ben Jensen’s report where he says:
“Today’s centre of high performance in school education is East Asia. Four of the world’s five highest-performing systems are Hong Kong, Korea, Shanghai and Singapore … in Shanghai, the average 15-year old mathematics student is performing at a level two to three years above his or her counterpart in Australia, the USA, the UK and Europe. In recent years, many OECD countries have substantially increased education expenditure, often with disappointing results. Between 2000 and 2008, average expenditure per student rose by 34% across the OECD. Large increases in expenditure have also occurred in Australia, yet student performance has fallen.”
He goes on to say:
“Success in high-performing education systems in East Asia is not always the result of spending more money. Korea, for example, spends less per student than the OECD average.”
I think we all know this from our own experience. I remember being a very poor student of Greek in year 9. I think I got six per cent in the annual exam, which I assume was awarded to me for spelling my name—probably only in English! And then the next year, due to a remarkable and charismatic teacher—John Sheldon, who I pay tribute to today, to his charisma and knowledge—I was so inspired to improve my performance that 12 months later I did very well and, in fact, came fourth in the state. We have all had experiences like this, where it is the outstanding teacher who makes the difference.
This is where, when the previous speaker, the member for Newcastle, was referring to the school halls program of the Rudd government and saying what a fabulous program that was, the real tragedy was, of course, that this was not directed at teachers at all. The truth is that the Gonski proposals—the so-called Gonski reforms—were simply about financial resourcing, and it is a very valuable piece of work by a very outstanding Australian. But what the government has not done is to put genuinely new money on the table, or additional money on the table. As I said earlier: it is taking with one hand and giving with the other. But, above all, it is not providing any detail as to what this money is actually going to be used for.
There is talk about giving schools more money, but how is it going to be used? The one thing that we know for sure is that just putting more money into the education system will not, in and of itself, produce better educational outcomes. The focus has to be very keenly on the quality of the teachers, rewarding teachers—good teachers—more generously and encouraging them to stay in the classroom. One of the characteristics of the Australian education system that comes up in the OECD’s PISA studies—and these are the big studies on school performance and student performance across all the OECD countries—is that Australia has the narrowest range in teacher remuneration for classroom teachers between the starting salary and the highest salary you can earn while remaining in the classroom. That means that all too often the outstanding classroom teacher goes on to an administrative job—becomes a principal or a deputy principal—gets out of the classroom in order to earn more or, indeed, leaves teaching altogether.
We have to recognise that a good teacher—a really effective teacher—is very intelligent, is well educated—particularly if they are in science or mathematics; they have quantitative skills which are in enormous demand—and, above all, is an engaging and compelling communicator. Those are skills which are immensely valuable in just about every other part of the economy.
I do not think that anyone becomes a schoolteacher in order to get rich, or because the income is attractive. But, equally, we have to recognise that teachers have husbands, wives, children and obligations, and that unless the best teachers are better rewarded there will be a continual loss of them either to non-teaching roles within the educational system or, indeed, to the rest of the economy.
The most concerning thing, therefore, about the government’s program is that it has this word, ‘Gonski’—and my old friend, as I said earlier, has become not just a proper noun but a verb as well—but where is the detail? None of the states are yet aware of the precise funding details. What are the precise requirements? What does it really mean? The Prime Minister is seeking to get the states to sign up to what is effectively a press release. This issue is too important to be politicised in such a transparently crass way.
We have to get down to the specifics: how is this program that the government is proposing actually going to put more money into schools? Is it going to be a net increase in funding? And what is the outcome going to be for each and every teacher in the system? How is this funding going to change the quality of the teaching in the classroom? Until the government can do that, this will be seen as yet another reminder of Kevin Rudd’s great campaign on health: all hype, all headlines, all press releases without the detail that is so critical to our children’s future.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Ms Saffin): I thank the honourable member for his contribution. And in relation to the word ‘Gonski’, the honourable member might consider that it is a gerund—a verb-noun!
Mr Turnbull: I thank the Deputy Speaker for that. On indulgence, I may say that David Gonski is just rising up the scales of grammatical achievement! He is a noun, he is a verb, he is a gerund! It is extraordinary—better than an AC!
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I thank the honourable member—that is enough!