ABC Sydney
HOST: Well the Prime Minister joins me now on 702 ABC Sydney. Good morning.
PM: Good morning.
HOST: So you have said that education's what drove you into politics. Are you also perhaps hoping it will be the policy that keeps you there?
PM: This is about our nation's future and about our kids and our schools. What's driving me is making sure that we are properly resourcing our kids, teachers, classrooms, our schools not only now, but for generations and generations to come.
We've got a school funding system at the moment which means there are kids in schools that do not have the resources they need to get those kids a great education. We can do better than that as a nation and we should.
So that's the passion, that's the mission, and that's what I'm on this week and for the weeks beyond.
HOST: So what's your vision under this passion and this mission? Would you see it as a predominantly public system in the future?
PM: No, parents would be able to make choices about their child's education. And I want parents to know that any choice they make means that their child will be educated in a school that's got sufficient resources to give that child a great education.
So people will pick a state school, a Catholic school, an independent school; they're family choices.
What I don't want to see is once that's happened that a child is in a school where they are left to fall behind because the school simply doesn't have the resources equal to the task of educating that child.
That's why at the essence of all of this is a school resource standard, which is the amount of money we know is necessary to get a child a good education, plus loadings that deal with the factors that mean kids need extra resources to succeed.
Loadings for kids from poorer backgrounds, Indigenous children, children with disabilities, children from non-English speaking backgrounds, as well as recognising that there are additional costs that come to play in small and regional and remote schools.
HOST: And you're looking at areas of social disadvantage to assess that, but do NAPLAN results come in to making up that formula as well?
PM: Well the NAPLAN results are the way in which we measure the outcome. Of course education is about more than we can measure in NAPLAN. But what we can measure in NAPLAN is how children are going for literacy and numeracy; reading, writing, maths.
We can measure that, we can make it transparent, and building My School has given us that ability.
That means for the future under this new system, every school would have a school improvement plan. It would articulate and tell us all what it's trying to do to get kids in that school a better education.
And then it can be held to account against that school improvement plan because we've all go the data. It's not locked up away in the inner-vaults of some bureaucracy. It's available for us all to see on My School.
HOST: Do you concede though that sometimes the problem with NAPLAN is that it's narrowing the focus of education and narrowing the curriculum, so in some ways it's not giving you a full look at the success of schools.
PM: Well certainly not narrowing the curriculum because we are rolling out a world-leading Australia-wide national curriculum.
HOST: Well a lot of teachers are teaching to test though - they're teaching towards the NAPLAN results, and they are reducing other subjects to do well in NAPLAN.
PM: Let's just look at it. The curriculum is being defined through the Australian National Curriculum. First time in our country's history we've had a national curriculum. Amazing when you stop and think about it, but that's a big job we're getting done.
In terms of narrowing the teaching, whether ultimately your passion is going to be science or history or acting, or creative pursuits, music, art, whatever a child's skills and aptitudes are, to fully engage with those skills and aptitudes they're going to need to be able to read and write and to do maths.
And so time spent making sure our kids are literate and numerate is time well spent.
HOST: I just want to go to New South Wales, and we're particularly a station for Sydney.
We have this thing now in Sydney because of urban consolidation - people moving back to the inner suburbs - that we've had a massive rise in enrolment in a lot of our public schools; up between 35 and 200 per cent, some of them standing room only in the playgrounds. And we've had funding cuts in New South Wales.
Will this money have to go towards building some of the new schools that Sydney needs?
PM: This money is not for school capital. This money is for the costs of making sure as a child sits in a classroom with their pens and pencils or their iPad or computer, whatever they're learning with - maybe a test tube and a Bunsen burner in science class - it is making sure that that child is getting a great education.
HOST: And are you concerned about some of the cuts the states may have to impose if they do take you up on this? If cuts come in other areas of education or in not building the schools that we need?
PM: Well budgets are about choices. I've had to make difficult decisions on the federal government budget. It's not easy days in terms of revenue.
We are getting less revenue into the federal government coffers now per unit of GDP - economic activity - than any time since the 1990s, the early 1990s.
So it's a tough old time in terms of federal government money, money being paid to us through company tax and other things.
That means you've got to be very prudent about your choices. You've got to back in new expenditure with savings.
We've turned around and done the tough things to do that.
I am asking premiers to make choices on their budget - obviously they'll need to justify those choices to their communities the way that I am working to justify our choices to the Australian community.
HOST: Yes Prime Minister and I suppose that this morning you are having to justify the cuts to universities. We've spoken to the University of Western Sydney this morning and the concern is that when you remove the cap to allow more students of under-privileged background in to universities, that's terrific, but now they'll be facing more over-crowded tutorials and lecture theatres and the like. So is it worth improving our school education at the cost of our university students?
PM: I want to be very clear about this decision about universities. I very much value what our universities do and I'm proud that as a Government we have worked with our universities to increase the number of places and to get them to focus on getting disadvantaged kids into university, which means we are seeing kids go to university, first in their family to do so. So that's fantastic.
We have worked with universities to increase funding; funding has increased by more than 50 per cent.
HOST: But they've got a lot more students so their spreading it more thinly.
PM: But more than 50 per cent is a big, big increase. It's an increase per student as well as a global increase.
We have increased the amount of money going to universities. They've seen a global increase, they've seen increases per student.
Against that backdrop of increases we are saying to universities we want to moderate the future rate of growth.
So it's not a cut in the sense of you've got less next year than you had this year, what it is is slowing the rate of growth by taking a 2 per cent efficiency dividend one year, and a 1.25 per cent efficiency dividend a second year.
So universities will still see more money, just the rate of growth in that money will be less.
HOST: Well they're certainly seeing it as a cut and are predicting more crowded universities, less help for those who need it. Do you risk isolating an area, a sector that's been relatively supportive?
PM: Well the maths is the maths. It is a moderation in the rate of growth, so that's the facts of it.
If I was a university vice chancellor and I was looking at my university, of course I'd want a bigger growth rather than a lesser growth rate. Of course you would.
And I understand vice chancellors saying that about their own universities - I would if I was them.
But I'm not a vice chancellor, I'm Prime Minister of the country. And I've got to work out how as a nation we've got a strong economy in the future, we've got the high-skilled, high-wage jobs of the future, we do that in a context where the countries of our region are pumping their education systems ahead.
And my judgment call is if we don't get school education right for the long-term, we will not only be letting our kids down and stunting their chances in life, we will be weakening our economy for the long-term.
And I don't think in that context that it's too much to ask our universities that have seen the amount of resources into them growing strongly, to moderate growth rates for a couple of years.
HOST: Of course you mentioned that you made tough budget decisions and the state governments will have to do the same thing. But this doesn't provide all the money - the uni cuts - and I suppose a lot of people would be thinking where are you going to get the rest of the money from in a time when there's big planning for the NDIS and huge costings out there. Where will the rest come from?
PM: In terms of savings that are being directed to support this, the savings from university is one source. The savings from the superannuation package which was pitched to make superannuation more sustainable and fairer will also be making money available for better school education.
Then of course there are some school programs that we do now which will become part of this new funding model because they are pitched at the same objective, that is getting kids a great education.
HOST: So they'll be absorbed into this funding?
PM: Absolutely. We are looking at $14.5 billion of new money plus money to get us to the school resource standard.
The Federal Government is going to put in $2 for every $1 that state governments do.
We on top of all that are going to index our money to schools at 4.7 per cent. So that gives more growth in the amount of money going into schools.
We've got against that backdrop on our books at the moment national partnerships valued at $2.1 billion, which are partnerships that have an end date.
Yes, we are going to roll those into this new funding arrangement, which is far bigger for every school for all time, and pitched at the same objective.
HOST: Prime Minister I just want to give you another number, and that's 29 per cent, which the Nielson poll puts the Government at this morning.
Education possibly one of your policy strong points, if this doesn't move people, will anything?
PM: This is about our nation's future and moving our kids through school and getting them a great education.
HOST: Would you like to send Simon Crean to a re-education campaign after his comments on the weekend about you?
PM: All of that I'm not commenting on. I get it that people are interested in the atmospherics of politics. And commentators write the commentary on it, and so it goes.
What matters for our kids, our future, our nation is the reform proposal that I've got before the nation now.
What matters for the next five, ten, 15, 20 years is getting this done. That's my focus, that's what I'm talking about, that's what I'm putting my efforts towards.
HOST: Well it will be interesting to see what happens with the premiers of Friday. I thank you for your time this morning.
PM: Thank you very much.