Media Release - Minister Fails in her own Knowledge of Schools

6 October 2006, 2:50pm

Education Minister Bishop's comments about school curriculum and her desire to nationalise education entirely fail to recognise current realities.

The back to basics mantra is political opportunism at its best and represents a serious failure in educational leadership from the federal Minister" said IEU Federal Secretary Lynne Rolley.

"Ms Bishop's approach is both confrontational and muddle-headed. What Australian parents and the broader community should be worried about is the further imposition of ‘Chairman Howard' ideology on our schools and our students" she said.

The IEU supports work to achieve greater national consistency and comparability in curriculum, assessment, reporting and certification and in other areas of educational policy which contribute to ongoing improvements in learning outcomes. However, the IEU believes that this should not lead to national standardisation or uniformity of teaching approaches and subject curricula or a loss of quality teaching and learning conditions.

"Ms Bishop's comments grossly misrepresent the facts and belittle both the time and expertise that teachers and other stakeholders have committed over the years to developing curriculum and learning opportunities with the sole interest of fulfilling every student's opportunity to learn" she said.

"Her approach would miserably fail to address the critical competencies that employers themselves having been asking schools to address for the last decade such as problem solving, entrepreneurship and team work. In no way does she model the cooperative and collaborative approach which characterizes the way teachers and students work in Australian schools today. "

"The fact is that all schools and all teachers recognise the importance of literacy and numeracy skills and considerable time and effort is being invested in developing these skills in students"

"Australia's high performance on international assessments is testament to the success of our schools on a comparative basis in these skills" she said.

"Further, curriculum development in the states is not carried out in some vacuum by ‘ideologues' as Ms Bishop suggests" she said, "Indeed when curriculum development takes place in the states and territories, all stakeholders including teachers, parents, employers and experts from the university sector are involved".

"While the Minister might claim her comments are not directed at teachers, her comments in fact go to the very heart of the commitment that many, many teachers across this nation have made and continue to make to curriculum development".

The IEU has supported the work of MCEETYA over recent years in this area and notes that very recent curriculum review in some states has been at pains to ensure that the nationally agreed elements are in place.

"It is an utter nonsense for Ms Bishop to hark back to the good old days of Latin in schools. The fact is in those days most students did not complete year 12. Today the retention rate is over 75% nationally" said Ms Rolley

The IEU has long supported educational reform in curriculum that is based upon research, ensures educational validity and integrity and supports teacher professional judgement. The debate around such reform needs to be undertaken in a timely way, following broad consultation with key stakeholders in order to build and achieve consensus."

Contact details

Lynne Rolley
Federal Secretary
Ph: 03 9254 1830
Fax: 03 9254 1835
ieu@ieu.org.au