EMBARGO NOT FOR RELEASELWORE 5.30 PM ( EST)
MACQUARIE NETWORK WEEKLY BROADCAST
BY THE PRIME M" INISTE R, THE RT. HON.
WILLIAM McMAHON, CH, MP' 3 MAY 1972
E D U C A T I 0 N
Most of you will agree that our greatest resources
as a nation are the talents and abilities of our young people.
It is therefore absolutely vital to our future as a nation that
education should have a high priority among our national goals.
Education has this high Priority in the policy
thinking of Liberal-Country Party Governments. That's why we
have seen a rapidly-growing Commonwealth involvement in many
areas of education. Our help to the States and thie non-Go. vernment school
system at an accelerating rate are quite specific.
Firstly, there is the need to increase the availability,
or quantity of education as the population grows, and to meet the
aspirations of children who wish to stay at school longer or to go
on to higher education. Secondly, we aim to improve the quality of
education. To achieve these two overriding objectives, we are
committed, firstly, and very importantly, to our very strong
belief, that people have a right to freedom of choice of schools
for individuals or groups within our community. We also want to
reduce inequalities of opportunity in education and we want to
instill in all families a wish to encourage their children to make
the most of their personal potential.. They are our major
objectives. Our methods, too, are simply stated. We want to work
in co-operation with State Governments and independent school
authorities. We want to encourage much greater local intrest in
the day-to-day running of schools. Above all, we want to avoid
centralised monolithic control and enforced uniformity and
conf ormrity. In a nutshell: The Liberal Party approach is aimed at
releasing energies, removing obstacles and encouraging innovation. / 2
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Now you are entitled to ask: What have we done to
achieve this? Let us take the ten years up to 1971 as an example,
although we were already giving substantial help in educat ion before
then, with universities and scholarships. one significant move by
the Commonwealth was on aid to independent schools.
This policy began in a limited way in Canberra many years
ago, but the Liberal-Country Party coalitiomwas-tVe f irst Federal
Government to act nationally on aid to independent schools, as part
of programmes of direct Commonwealth assistance to all schools.
We were the only major party to wholeheartedly accept the
challenge of the plural society to help educate children outside
the State system. But it would be grossly wrong to take this to mean that
we do not have a significant and great concern for Government schools.
The figures for direct Commonwealth assistance to state schools
show that our support is weighted in favour of Government schools
on that basis. Teacher training assistance is helping produce new
teachers faster than new pupils. Average class sizes are coming
down. In 1961, only 28 per cent of the 15 to 18-year-olds stayed
at school. Last year, it was 42 per cent.
We are moving into new areas of education support by
helping migrant children to overcome the language barrier, and by
special grants we are deliberately discriminating in favour of
aboriginal students.
There were over 600,000 more children in Australian
schools last year than in 1961, many of them in the higher secondary
classes where costs are greatest.
Through our expanding general revenue grants to the
States, it can be shown that the Commonwealth provides more than
half of the total recurrent spending by Governments on education in
Australia.. Since 1961, direct Commonwealth spending on education
has gone up more than six times, and spending on universities has
almost tripled. In the last Budget, the increase for education was
14 per cent. In December, we deciced on a further $ 20 million
grant to the States. This was the first time that Federal grants
have been made specifically for primary and secondary school
classroom construction. Sorte of that money is already being spent to replace
and remodel old and outmoded schools in the cities.
From the beginning of this year, we also substantially
increased the grants to independent schools which we began in 1970.
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You can see our record is a-good one.; And you can
count on us to improve-on it inr-the future.
We aim to provide the maximum Commonwealth support
to both Government and non-Government schools with the minimumof
centralised controls.
We do not want another bureaucratic apparatus in
Canberra with the power to reach down into schools across the
nation and dictate which shall grow and which shall wither by
giving or withholding finance.