CHRIS SMITH: Julia Gillard, I think, should be congratulated. The Federal Education Minister and Acting PM is pushing for parents' rights to know what is going in their kids' schools - and I think that's well and truly fair enough. And let's face it, as a parent you can't glean much of a satisfactory or unsatisfactory notion from a report card. It doesn't tell parents much at all and doesn't tell those who run our schools much either.
But Julia Gillard's looking to change that. She's met with the Chancellor of Schools in New York, where there's a lot more targeted teaching based on information gathered from students' backgrounds and also their performance. Now if the Education Minister is able to introduce something like that here, nationally I presume, it will help nudge along the Education Revolution we heard so much about during the election campaign.
Now this plan will give parents plenty ... plenty of information about the kid's school. For one thing, it'll reveal how much money the parents of students have, also class sizes, teacher qualification, the number of Indigenous students at the school, kids with disabilities and non-English speakers; some real test results. And I know people are frightened to put people at the end of the scar when it comes to test results. But I would've thought the acknowledgement that kids aren't doing as well as they should is an enticement to improve.
We've spoken about that on the program and other programs on 2GB before. Maybe you'd like to comment - 13 1873.
Education Minister and Acting PM Julia Gillard joins me to talk about the plan right now. Good morning, Acting Prime Minister.
JULIA GILLARD: Good morning.
CHRIS SMITH: How does that feel, to run the country?
JULIA GILLARD: [laughs] It feels pretty good but obviously the boss will be back. He arrives back late tonight, but in the meantime, I'm obviously here doing what I can, doing what I can do to fill in the gap.
CHRIS SMITH: Give us insight, do you speak to Kevin Rudd like ... now that you're running the country, do you speak with him like five, six times a day?
JULIA GILLARD: The Prime Minister is overseas, he's in intensive meetings. He obviously went to the Olympics first, then in Korea, then in Singapore. So we don't need to speak as frequently as that and obviously I'm well supported by our public service advisors and by our staff. So I keep an eye on domestic matters when he's overseas.
CHRIS SMITH: Okay, to education. Now if this plan for our schools was to be introduced, you'd do it nationally no doubt. You'd be supplying families and education planners with a hell of a lot of information. Now just explain for our listeners - how would that benefit the kids in classes and parents?
JULIA GILLARD: I think it would benefit two ways: number one, if we had real national information about who's in school, we would be able to identify those schools that have large numbers of kids that are going to need that extra little bit of help to succeed in schooling. We know that kids from poor families, Indigenous children, children with disabilities, children from non-English speaking backgrounds, can all end up with great educational results, but they often need a little bit of extra help to get there. So we would be able to focus on those schools that have children in large numbers in those categories within their number and give them extra resources and extra help. So that's number one.
Number two, we would be able to compare like-schools, schools with comparable student populations and if you saw that one was doing a lot better than the other, then you'd be able to work out why. You'd be able to spread the best practice from the high achieving school through to the school that isn't doing so well.
Now at the moment we've got no way of doing those comparisons, and if you tried to do those comparisons just on test scores, then principals and teachers and parents would be able to say, ‘Well, you know, you're not comparing us with the school that's like us'. So we need all the information about student population so we can do the comparisons of like-schools.
CHRIS SMITH: I received so many calls from parents saying almost the same kind of thing - ‘I'm not getting enough information. I don't know how my student or my child is doing'. Truly, really, in real terms, to compare like-schools to like-schools, is that why you're saying you need to reveal how much money the parents of students have so you can compare, say, socio-demographic regions and areas?
JULIA GILLARD: It's interesting. At the moment, sitting in the chair as Federal Education Minister, I have a database which gives me the socioeconomic status of private schools. So we know that information about non-government schools, but we don't know it about government schools. So it's not about getting an individual parent's information. I'm not interested in what Mr Smith and Mrs Jones have or don't have, but having enough information so we can look at those schools that come from poorer, less advantaged backgrounds and identify them.
And I want to reassure people we're not just gathering information for information's sake. We're in active discussions with states and territories and the catholic and independent school systems about bringing new resources to (inaudible) in schools that do face disadvantage. So we want to use this information to identify problems with a view to fixing them not blaming people, saying bad schools, bad teachers or anything else.
We want to take a positive mindset and say, ‘Let's work out what's out there. Let's see where disadvantage is and let's make a difference for that disadvantage. Let's compare comparable schools and if one is attaining a lot better - there's better teacher practice, better leadership, better things happening in that school - let's spread it'.
CHRIS SMITH: Okay. You've got an uphill battle to a certain degree because in recent years the four letter word ‘FAIL' has been taken off the agenda by educators.
And we've heard this time and time again - you cannot classify kids as failing, you can't tell the kids and their parents that they haven't done as well as they should and yet again I get so many calls from parents saying, ‘Hey, that's how they improve. That's what we need to help them improve their marks at school and improve their retention to what's happening in the classroom'. Is that what you're supporting here - a real series of test result that has winners and losers?
JULIA GILLARD: I think we've got to be pretty realistic and we're in a big wide world and it's sometimes a tough world and kids have to come out of school with the skills to live in that world. So they've got to be able to read and write, they've got to be able to get a job, they've got to be able to have the life skills, which mean that they will cope with life's up and life's downs. And there's not point to trying to cover up whether or not kids are getting those skills that they're going to need for life.
Now that doesn't mean that the message to a young child has to be confidence-shattering, ‘You're a bad boy or you're a bad girl'. That's not how the message should be put. But students need to know how they're going, their parents need to know how they're going and then they need a plan for getting better.
CHRIS SMITH: The New York experience you went through must've impressed you, to turn around and say what you said at the conference yesterday. Tell us about that.
JULIA GILLARD: Yes, I had the opportunity to go the United States and I met there with a man called Joel Klein, who is the all up runner of the schools in New York - they call him the Chancellor of Schools. And New York is obviously, geographically, a very small place compared with Australia but there's 1.1 million kids in New York schools so he's got a pretty big job, Joel Klein.
And he's got a system and obviously there's a lot of statistical methodology and expert advice in this, but what the system does is it enables him to compare like-schools with like-schools - see how people are going. They then give extra resources to try and boost schools that haven't done well. And one of the things that Joel Klein said to me which really impressed me is he said, ‘When the system was first introduced, it was very controversial'. Now when they go through the system, he takes calls from principals that say, ‘Next year I'm going to make sure my school does better'. And that's the kind of attitude you want. Now, I'm not ...
CHRIS SMITH: It almost increases competition, right?
JULIA GILLARD: Well I think it increases focus, absolutely. I'm not suggesting we uplift the New York model and move it to Australia - Australia's a very different place. But I think you can look at things like that and you can learn from aspects of them, and the transparency and the sense of achievement and the drive to get better results.
And I think we'd all know from watching our TV, parts of New York are pretty tough places with a lot of educational disadvantage. To get better results in places like that is really meaningful. And what we want to do when we look across this vast country is make sure that every kid's getting an excellent education. And I think as we look across this country now, we can see too many places where we'd say the kids aren't getting a fair chance.
CHRIS SMITH: How are you going to convince Morris Iemma this is the way to go and maybe a few other Premiers that don't agree?
JULIA GILLARD: Well, we'll keep having the discussion and we're in intensive discussions now with the states and territories. We've got some very important things to do by the end of the year. We've got to agree with the states and territories and the catholic and independent school systems the next school funding agreement. We also want to agree with them a new national partnership for more money for disadvantaged schools. We also want to agree a new national partnership on teacher quality because how good the classroom teaching is so much a determinant of everything else. And we want to agree with them some new ways of boosting literacy and numeracy.
So it's a big agenda. But as part of that agenda we're going to be pursuing these transparency measures and we're going to be putting that pretty assertively.
CHRIS SMITH: Can I ask you one simple question on banks before we let you go?
JULIA GILLARD: Certainly.
CHRIS SMITH: I keep hearing, we keep hearing talk about forcing banks to lower interest rates. Treasurer Wayne Swan has said he can't do much about that. Here's a hypothetical for you: what about legislation to keep the market deregulated - don't touch that - but still force the banks to do what they've done for 20 years honestly and stay in line with the (inaudible) issued by the Reserve Bank.
So forget Glenn Stevens said, that is, ‘Oh, banks go for your life. Lift them as much as you need to lift them'. How about we get the banks back in line with the Reserve Bank and make it essential through legislation. I know it's a tough call and it is a hypothetical, but why couldn't you consider that?
JULIA GILLARD: I don't think legislation is the way to do it. Banks obviously look at the Reserve Bank ... do more than look obviously. What the official interest rate is vital to them. There are also the costs that they incur in accessing money, so banks borrow as well as lend. And when they borrow, things like the global credit crunch obviously matter to them. So something that started with the sub-prime mortgage problem in the United States is now infected the global credit markets of the world ...
CHRIS SMITH: Yeah, but that is an excuse now because it is definitely and, without doubt, easing and they keep using that as an excuse.
JULIA GILLARD: But what we've said to the banks and Wayne Swan's been said very clear on this is we expected them - should the Reserve Bank puts interest rates down and obviously the Reserve Bank sets these things independently of Government - but should the Reserve Bank put interest rates down, we expect banks to pass that on. And we're also making it easier for consumers to put pressure on their banks by making it easier for them to switch banks if their bank isn't doing the right thing. There have been all sorts of, you know fees and other arrangements that have locked people into mortgages. We want to make it easy for people to switch if they think their bank isn't giving them a good deal.
CHRIS SMITH: I just get a feeling that out there the community doesn't think enough is being done to force the banks into line, but anyway that's a question for another day, no doubt. Thank you so much for your time. Enjoy running the country.
JULIA GILLARD: Thank you very much.
CHRIS SMITH: Okay, Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard.