6PR interview with Liam Bartlett
LIAM BARTLETT:
First up on Mornings today, the national push to get better teachers into our classrooms. Now, the Federal Education Minister has just finished holding a press conference to outline his plans to lift the standards of Aussie schools. We’ve spoken about this on the program before. The standards, the rankings of Australian schools have continued to decline over the past 10 years. And to try to stop that and lift our current, rather dismal position, the Minister is announcing a review of initial teacher education to try to answer two questions: how do we attract and select better quality students into the teaching profession? And how do we prepare those students to become better teachers and deliver a better-quality education in the classroom?
Education Minister Alan Tudge joins us this morning. Minister, good morning to you.
ALAN TUDGE:
Good morning, Liam.
LIAM BARTLETT:
Minister, how do we do that? How do we reverse that trend of our top students out of high school choosing almost everything except education?
ALAN TUDGE:
Yeah, it’s unfortunately not a healthy trend. If you look over the last 15 years, actually the proportion of those top students going into teaching has declined by about 30 per cent, the fastest decline of any other course that students are choosing. And we do need to reverse that. Now, we're setting up a review specifically to look at this question, and it will look at the attractiveness of the course, the length of the course. It may look at just the status associated with teaching and how we might be able to lift that. But other countries seem to manage better than us at this question, and we want to learn from them as well and potentially replicate some of those.
LIAM BARTLETT:
How important do you think that status question is? Because if we look at the sort of aspirational parts of, well, anyone, human psychology, you know, kids want to sort of be in the best course. They want the best outcomes. No one can blame them for having that sort of ambition. How do we improve that aspirational part?
ALAN TUDGE:
Yeah, again, that's a tricky thing. And we want to work through this question and examine other countries, how they've done it and to try to replicate it here. We do attract some unbelievable people to go into teaching, and we've got brilliant teachers out there, but we haven't consistently attracted the brightest kids finishing school to go into teaching. And we do want to do so because ultimately, Liam, as you know, teacher effectiveness is the most important thing which occurs in the classroom to lift school standards. And so, we want to continue to improve that. Now, I helped established, before I became a member of parliament, an organisation called Teach for Australia. Now, it specifically targets very high performing non-teacher graduates and fast tracks them into the classroom. But that manages to attract absolutely brilliant people. So, it can be done, but how do we mainstream this concept more broadly? That's what we want to look at.
LIAM BARTLETT:
How do we get more of them? Yeah. So, the review panel..
ALAN TUDGE:
How do we get more of them? Because as I said, there has been a decline. When you look at, say, the number of kids who are getting ATARs above 80, so you're in that top 20 per cent bracket. We've had 30 per cent fewer kids with ATARs above 80 are now doing teaching. Now, academic performance isn’t the only thing, of course it’s not, to be a great teacher, but I mean, the research does say that, you know, if you do well in school, you tend to be a better teacher. And likewise, it goes to common sense that if you do struggle in school, you're less likely to be an effective teacher in the classroom. So that has to be a key objective of ours.
LIAM BARTLETT:
Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? I mean, just because you're smart, doesn't make you a good teacher. But the opposite is also true. But we also want to know that the teachers who are there are reasonably clever.
ALAN TUDGE:
When you look at places like Singapore or Finland or other countries which consistently are in that top band of performance from an education perspective, then they consistently do attract the very best and brightest from their societies into teaching. And we should try to get back to that position again. And again, it's not just about academic performance, but it is an important element, but you've got to have a whole suite of other skills as well. And that's where the teacher preparation part comes in as well. So as you said at the outset, we’re looking at two questions: how can you attract great people to do teacher courses and then how do the courses themselves prepare people to be the most effective they can be in the classroom? And I've got concerns that we're not always teaching our students the best practices. And indeed, teachers themselves have been saying that.
LIAM BARTLETT:
Alright. Minister, the entry levels, what are we going to do about the entry levels? Because as you well know, those entry levels for teaching have been constantly lowered over the past 10 or 15 years – do we need to arrest that?
ALAN TUDGE:
Well, certainly in New South Wales they did. They actually put a flaw and said that you must have an ATAR of 70 or above to go into teacher education. Now, there’s been mixed reviews of that because on the one hand of that, in some respect, it may lift the academic performance or lift the status of teaching by having kids with higher ATARs. On the other hand, there’s some concerns now that there may be some teacher shortages into the future, because we’re not getting enough people going into teaching. So, it’s a wicked problem that we’ve got to address, and hence I’ve set up an expert panel to help address this particular problem, where we’ve got, in fact, Bill Louden, from University of Western Australia. He’s going to be assisting with this task, along with Lisa Paul, who is the former Secretary of the Federal Education Department, and two existing school principals. So, highly accomplished panel.
LIAM BARTLETT:
Well, that's good, at least you've got a West Australian voice.
ALAN TUDGE:
I thought you'd like that, Liam, and he's very highly regarded, Professor Bill Louden, and he's almost Mister Education across Australia, and he's done so many reviews, and he's certainly recognised as an expert in Australia.
LIAM BARTLETT:
I suppose the point about the entry levels, I mean, you can't have a situation where teaching is the sort of lender of last resort, can you?
ALAN TUDGE:
No. We certainly don't want that to be the case, and as I said, we do get some brilliant, absolutely brilliant people going to teaching. You know, I don't want to downplay that, because we do. But we certainly don't want teaching to be the place of last resort, and there are effective mechanisms where we have consistently got great people, and I mentioned Teach for Australia, but also overseas, where they've consistently attracted some of those really great students into teaching or more of those great students into teaching.
LIAM BARTLETT:
If you had to choose one model – I noticed, you mentioned Singapore there – would that be your sort of Holy Grail model?
ALAN TUDGE:
Listen, Singapore does exceptionally well in terms of their school performance overall. And, you know, a 15-year-old in mathematics in Singapore is three years above an average 15-year-old in Australia in mathematics. It's quite extraordinary. Now, part of that is to do with the status of teaching. They pay the teachers very well, they have a single institution where they train their teachers, and it is a very highly regarded profession. And that, I think, is a big part in terms of the result which they get in the classroom subsequently. Would they be the single one? I don't know. I think there's elements of the Singapore model that I think are really great. The Scandinavian countries have also done exceptionally well in terms of their school performance- Australia used to be, Liam. We used to be consistently in that top band of education performance like 20 years ago, I'm talking about, and we’ve just declined steadily over the last 20 years. And it's…
LIAM BARTLETT:
Yeah, we have.
ALAN TUDGE:
… I think it’s very concerning and this is, Liam, despite a massive increase in school funding.
LIAM BARTLETT:
Yeah, well that’s the interesting part about it. It’s not as if we haven’t been throwing money at it. So, look, high time we looked at this, and I’ll be very interested to see what your panel does. I’m glad you’re looking at it on a national level; that’s terrific. When will they report back to you?
ALAN TUDGE:
So, they’re going to report back at the end of the year and, hopefully, with some very firm recommendations, which will be partly directed at me and the Federal Government. But there may be some recommendations to the universities themselves and indeed, to the school authorities also.
LIAM BARTLETT:
Alright, Minister. Well, we'll get some response from our listeners to see what they think about this and what they think the solutions may or may not be that could feed into that panel. 9221 1882 is our talkback number. Can I just ask you, while I’ve got you there, on a related matter? Your Respect Matters Program, as I understand it, sexual consent will be taught to kids as young as 14, and primary school children are going to have lessons on relationships and power and abuse. Are you comfortable with all that?
ALAN TUDGE:
Yeah, so that's not quite correct. So, the materials which I launched yesterday, materials which have been developed over the last couple of years in consultation with people like Our Watch and the e-safety Commissioner. It has 350 videos and podcasts there and they go all the way from Prep, all the way through to Year 12, but they’re customised to appropriate age, in line with the national curriculum. So, there's nothing which is out of line from the national curriculum, which has been agreed by all state and territory governments. So, the issue of sexual consent, for example, doesn't come up until Year 10.
LIAM BARTLETT:
Year 10? Yeah, where you can be 14. You can be 14 in year 10.
ALAN TUDGE:
Where it’s unusual for you to be 14. In WA you’re a little bit younger because you start school slightly earlier.
LIAM BARTLETT:
Yeah, plenty of 14-year-olds in Year 10 here, yep.
ALAN TUDGE:
And that's – but, ultimately, we're not enforcing anybody to be teaching this. I've always consistently said these matters, the most important people in teaching these matters is actually parents but that schools can also play an important role. We’re just providing some good materials; which teachers may want to select from. And there are some good materials there; they can look online, they can choose them, and they can select the appropriate ones. And if, you know, if the teacher doesn't think it's appropriate for their class, for whatever reason, well they can choose not alternative materials.
LIAM BARTLETT:
I think a lot of people would agree with you about the home being the most appropriate place. But what age do you think it's appropriate for teachers to talk to kids about consent?
ALAN TUDGE:
That's a good question. I mean, we've agreed through the national curriculum that these matters should begin in Year 10, and I think that's probably about right. Now, some argue, and some have very powerfully argued that it should be done earlier because some kids are having sexual activity earlier. Others have suggested it should be later. We don't have a view, we are putting these resources out there for schools to select from, as a mechanism to help ensure that there are respectful relationships across the board. In primary school, it literally is about engaging with your friends and respecting one another. In the junior secondary school, you do get things such as power and sometimes abuse issues might be discussed, and it’s only in the senior years in secondary schooling that those matters around sexual consent and other related topics are discussed.
LIAM BARTLETT:
It's a very difficult area for schools to tread as well isn’t it? Minister, thank you very much for joining us today.
ALAN TUDGE:
Yeah, I’ve heard that consistently as well, that some teachers find it very difficult, and they don't want to put a foot out of line. And so, the ambition in part with these materials, Liam, is that these might assist those teachers as well, to be able to grab some of those materials off the web to be able to use them in an appropriate manner so, that we actually do get a better society in terms of people respecting one another.
LIAM BARTLETT:
Alright. Good to have you on the program, Minister. Thank you.
ALAN TUDGE:
Thanks, Liam.
LIAM BARTLETT:
Federal Minister for Education Alan Tudge and his plans to lift the standards of Aussie schools.