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PRIME MINISTER
SPEECHi BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING MP
AUSTRALIAN TEACHERS UNION NATIONAL CONFERENCE
MELBOURNE 15 JANUARY 1993
Ladies and gentlemen
i am very grateful for the opportunity to address you even
though I am still officially of f duty.
This was supposed to be a Curriculum day.
But with our history being debated in the papers every day,
our national honour sullied again in the British press, every
day the expectation that one will be blamed for something else
going wrong over there, one is inevitably drawn back to the
world of controversy.
And what better place to re-join it than a teachers conference
an education conference?
Education~ will always be controversial. There will always be
arguentsabout it for the simple reason that it is so
important. It concerns the most basic instincts: to advance the interests
of our children. To give them a chance In a competitive
world. To assure their future..
Education is prone to passionate controversy because there is
so much at stake.
yet I imagine If the question were to be asked here What
should an education system aim to achieve? there would be
remarkably broad agreement.
No doubt there would be argument over emphases and over
details. But I don't think many people here would disagree
fundamentally with an ans wer along the following lines.
Our education system should prepare young Australians for
life and for the future. K. UUil// i. 11~)
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Our education system should serve the interests of each
and every individual an it should serve the interests
of Australia.
It should be truly relevant: meaning it should instruct
young people both in those values we hold as universal and
unchangeable, and in the skills and knowledge they will
need if they are to play a rewarding role in modern
society. It should be both humanitarian and utilitarian: meaning
it should have a moral core it should encourage belief
and trust in the institutions, values and traditions of
Australia and in liberal democracy; and it should equip
students with a knowledge, including an historical
knowledge, of Australia and the world.
And it should teach the skills our country needs to grow
and succeed, and our people need to increase their life
opportunities and their material well-being.
It should be efficient and it should be fair. It should
deliver the best possible education to all Australians,
regardless of their parents' circumstances.
No doubt there are other useful aims and other ways Of
expressing them, but I don't believe many people here would
dispute them fundamentally.
And I think it's important to remember that essentially there
is agreement about education.
We should etch this in our minds, and when we start to argue
about the details or the best means of delivering education,
we should recall that we share the view that education is
vitally important, that It is a wellspring of useful, happy
lives and a good society.
Today we would add to this, I'm sure, our belief that an
education system should offer education and training not just
to the young but to people of aUl ages.
The modern world demands that education should not stop with
the end of secondary school or college or university.
Increasingly, skcill formnat -oin x will be a lifelong process: the
institutions will need to be there to provide them; and our
schoolteachers will need to be there, providing young
Australians with the knowledge and approach to learning which
will allow them to acquire skills throughout their lives.
The world of my own youth made no ouch demands.
I left school at fifteen at a time when a very small
proportion of Australians completed secondary school. In m-,
area, Bankstown, I doubt if one in ten did.
it was the norm to leave at fifteen in the 1950s.
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Like other fifteen year oids I could leave because there were
jobs to go to.
But the job I went to no longer exists.
That is the crucial point to understand.
The systems and technology which have so remarkably advanced
productivity have come at the price of jobs.
Many of the old jobs are gone. The so-called dead end jobs
are largely gone.
In the new world that our children are now inheriting the
nation's wealth and life's opportunities will depend more and
more on the skills of our workforce.
it's been said before, but it was never so true education
and training are the keys to our success.
That is why in the past decade we have made the effort
necessary to increase the number of students completing
secondary school from 3 in 10 to 7 in
It is why we have created over 200,000 higher education places
the equivalent of twenty new universities.
And it is why last year we decided to establiSh the Australian
National Training Authority, as part of a wider process of
reform to raise the quality and status of vocational education
and training to the level of the other tiers of education.
it is also why such a great responsibility devolves on you
Australian teachers.
You have already borne much of the burden of change, and you
will have to bear more of it in future.
It is on you that our success substantially depends.
You will need assistance and today I pledge you that.
We realise that these great structural changes ultimately are
made by and affect people; and they will be made most
effectively by people who have faith in what they are doing,
and know that society has faith in them.
We recognise that you who teach are the building blocks of
educational achievement, and no reforms which fail to
recognise the need for your professional trust and enthusiasm
can hope to succeed.
Ladies and gentlemen
I said that there is general agreement about the aims of
education. TEL
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The arguments generally concern the beat means of realising
our ambitions.
Most of these can be settled by discussion and negotiation. If
we never seem to get the perfect system, we do manage to
improve it.
But there is a point in this debate beyond which we cannot go
and that is the point which the Coalition presently
occupies. Our political opponents will probably not argue with the
higher purposes of education I spelt out a moment ago.
But they will tell you that the best way to achieve those
ambitions is to reduce the equity in delivery.
They say equality equals mediocrity they cannot imagine that
we can have excellence in a system which is fair.
I cannot imagine having it in a system which is not fair.
I say if we do not seek fairness and equity in something so
basic as education we squander the efforts of generations, we
betray our democratic values, and we condemn Australians in
the future to the social trauma which flows from massive and
deliberate inequality.
Equity and excellence are nQt incompatible concepts.
Nor do we accept the view which recurs so often through the
Coalition's policies: that if the strong are to prosper,
support for the weak must be diminished.
Dr Hewson has flip-flopped on F tjtback and is now doing an
exicriuciating imitation of a so'ft toy.
He is trying to speak a new conciliatory language. He is
talking about the need to put certainty in people's lives.
The kind of certainty Jeff Kennett has put into the lives of
Victorians. The kind of certainty which flows from the unfettered free
market of which the real Dr Hewson is an avid disciple.
The kind of certainty Mrs Thatcher brought to the lives of the
British people and Reaganomics brought to Americans. The
certainty which comes when the safety net is ripped away, and
the creed takes hold that fairness equals mediocrity.
The kind of certainty which the Federal President of Dr
Hewson' s Liberal Party described last week in a speech in
which he said one Nobel Prize winner is worth more than
hundreds of mediocre practitioners"
Worth more what? Worth more to whom?
TEL: 15 . Jan .93 9: 59 No. 004
A speech in which he said, echoing the old or real-
Dr Hewson, that lifting the average meant dragging up
" laggards" and pulling down " leaders".
One week before John Hewson pledged himself to putting more
certainty in the lives of Australians, his Federal President,
Mr Goldsworthy said this:
Life has to become tougher with less security and
greater uncertainty.
Greater Uncertainty.
Dr Hewson'a idea of certainty is the kind which underpins his
education policy: that Is, the kind which flows from
unleashing theoretical market forces on education.
The kind which will follow from his policy of shifting
resources from those schools which have the least resources to
those which have the most.
I do not want to dwell on the Opposition's policies I would
rather talk about our own.
But Some remarks must be made about education under the
Coalition. The Coalition proposes a system of student vouchers for
vocational training. They would take the Government's growth
commitment of $ 720 million and re-direct it through a voucher
scheme: and, in doing that, they would remove the foundations
of our agreement with the States and Territories to establish
the Australian National Training Authority and a national
approach to planning.
These vouchers would be available to young people on or about
the youth wage levels of $ 3.00 or $ 3.50 an hour. Those on
higher wages would not be eligible.
To take advantage of a voucher, a young person would be
required to negotiate an employment contract involving time
of f for training, or find training opportunities outside of
working hours.
The voucher policy is both inequitable and unworkable. It is
an administrative fantasy. It raises doubts about whether the
growth funding would ever be spent. Certainly there must be
doubt whether it will be spent where it is needed.
Indeed it may be more than an oversight that the Coalition has
not included Sny funding provision for the voucher policy in
the coatings for 1Fightback Mark II.
The Coalition's policies on vocational training threaten to
give concrete expression to John Foward's fantasy about dead
end jobs.
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In combination they would destroy our Chances of building 8
skilful society by removing the essential funding, structures
and incentives.
The same thinking governs their policy on University
education, and similar results would follow.
The Opposition want to allow those who can afford to do so to
pay for a place at University, even if they have not earned a
subsidised place on the basis of academic merit.
The cost of a university degree is between $ 25,000 and
$ 130,000.
Existing fee-free places would become subsidised places in an
ill-defined system of student vouchers.
We do not yet know what level of cost will be covered by the
voucher. We do know that universities would be free to set their own
fees on a11 courses.
And we know that students would be personally liable for costs
in excess of the voucher's value.
The consequences for equity of access to University are plain
and unmistakable.
As far as schooling is concerned, I suppose I could do worse
than simply ask for a minute's silence while we think of Mr
Kennett* You don't need me to tell you about Mr Kennett.
The alternative Commonwealth government has in mind
dismantling public education in Australia. They will achieve
this by a couple of simple policy measures, both of which were
launched in Fightback I and live on in Fightback II.
The only area of schooling which would receive any significant
increase in support under a Hewson Government would be wealthy
private education.
At the same time Federal grants to the states, and by
implication to State schools, will be cut. This is a blatant
shift of public resources from State to private schools.
It will be perceived in many quarters as an attack on
government schools and may well re-open the old State Aid
debate. The second major policy measure proposed by the Opposition
would involve a major re-distribution of resources between
non-government schools; the existing twelve categories of
need would be collapsed into six, to the overwhelming
advantage of those at the top.
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The type of private school which will benefit most from this
re-distribution will include Scotch College and Melbourne
Grammar, which are currently in Category One.
These schools will receive a funding increase of over fifty
per cent.
The schools to receive the lowest increase will be you
guessed it Aboriginal schools and special schools for
students with a disability. That is, those schools currently
in Category Twelve.
We are talking about more than policy differences here. These
are policies reflecting an ideological fixation with the
belief that to quote John Hewson Mark I the poor will drag
us down. The same school of thought which insists that equity
and excellence can't co-exist. That you can't raise the
average without helping undeserving " laggards".
In so far as the HewSon funding increases will provide for
needy private schools, the Federal Government's announced
increases will effectively do the same, and in a climate of
stability and certainty for the entire sector.
Under the Government's policy, schools in category 12 will
receive real increases in Federal funding every year until the
Year 2000. Schools like Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar
will simply have their much smaller grants maintained at the
some level in real terms.
If Hewson's promised windfall to wealthy private schools does
have the effect of re-igniting the State Aid debate, questions
about education quality, teacher training and schools reform
will be buried under arguments about resource allocation
acrimony of the kind which polarised the Australian community
for a decade in the 1960s.
if there is anyone involved in Australian education who
believes there is no substantial difference between the
Government and the opposition, they should think again.
As my colleague Kim Beazley has said, the Liberal Party's
education policy is a triumph of ideology over rationality.
I think it is fair to say that Government policy has tried to
attend to needs and facts.
In higher education, for instance, through a period of
exceptional growth we have been able to maintain a fair system
of student income support and provide undergraduate and postgraduate
courses without up-front fees.
The challenge now is to consolidate the expanded system and
improve its quality.
We will continue to provide for growth there will be a
further 25,000 increase in student numbers between 1992 and
1994. TEL
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And we will provide for exciting a= w forms of opportunity
through the development of the Open Learning Initiative.
I am well aware that, despite this growth, excess demand for
university places remains high.
The answer is not to provide a university place for all who
apply. Apart from being an unreasonable burden on taxpayers, it would
result in 8 major mismatch between the skills we have and the
skills we need.
The answer lies in the provision of fair access to a
comprehensive and balanced range of education and training
options. To achieve this we will need, not only measured
growth for universities, but a major expansion and improvement
of vocational education and training by which I mean both
entry level training arrangements and more advanced TAFE
courses. I am sure most of you are aware of the initiatives we have
taken last year.
Under a new national vocational education and training system
an additional $ 720 million will be provided over the 1993-1995
triennium. It will be a genuinely national system, with agreed goals and
priorities established through a Ministerial Council, end
planned and funded through the Australian National Training
Authority. The system will enjoy the close involvement of industry and
encourage the growth of a network of high quality training
providers. it is an historic initiative, and one of which we are very
proud. it's a rational, decisive and coherent response to-change. A
response to need. It will bring us, within the decade, up to
the level of the best in the world.
Considerable as the undertaking is, in a sense the development
of ANTA represents only part of 8 wider strategy of taking a
national approach to education.
This dates back to the Hobart Declaration on Schooling in 1989
when, for the first time in our history, Australia's eight
State and Territory education ministers agreed on national
goals. For the first time the development of frameworks for national
curriculum and assessment in Australian schools was set in
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For the first time employers were brought to the negotiating
table on education issues.
When all eight of the National Curriculum Statements on key
learning areas and their assessment profiles are completed in
June this year, for the first time parents and employers will
have access to common curriculum frameworks which relate to
all Australian schools.
We will be able to produce education resource materials to
support the national statements at a fraction of their present
cost: and these economies of scale will also make regular
curriculum review and renewal much easier.
Beyond the material gains there is, if you like, the national
one. As we approach the second century of our nationhood, we
will have at last an education system which can meet the
nation's needs and express its character and purpose.
Ladies and gentlemen
Earlier I said that the Government is aware of the change
teachers have had to accommodate in recent years.
And we are aware that change is going to continue in the next
decade. As Kim Beazley points out in his Ministerial
Statement, the prospect is daunting.
it will save you from an insufferably long speech if I simply
recommend his Statement to you, and progress quickly toward
the Prime Ministerial prerogative of announcing the good news.
It goes without saying that the success of our educational
endeavours depends critically on teachers.
The Government is of the view that the vast majority of
teachers are dedicated and well able to deliver the necessary
change. There is no doubt that not all the community is so well
disposed. There a belief that some teachers are not
contributing, and even though this may not be in proportion to
the facts, the hard truth is that the teaching profession
cannot afford to carry either the passengers or the reputation
that goes with them.
For while education depends on many players, it depends most
of all on teachers: on their skills and their understanding
of future directions.
This is an age when success depends on productivity
improvement and industry reform, and the education industry
can be no exception.
All parties involved, especially employers and teacher unions,
will have to take up the challenge. I don't believe that
should be a cause for anxiety: in my experience, those who
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have taken on the task of industry reform never want to return
to the old industrial culture.
We are aware that change is stressful both the experienced
of change and the anticipation of it. We are aware of the
absolute need for support.
The typical teacher today was trained twenty years ago when
only about thirty per cent of students Completed secondary
school. Support and training are required to meet the needs of the
extra forty per cent of students who now complete it.
Work is continuing on the development of the key competencies
essential for effective participation in the emerging forms of
work and work organisation, and these will require new
expertise from the teachers and trainers who will deliver
them. There will be increased demands on teachers to keep up with
developments in subject content, communications technology,
Interactive computer software; and in coming to grips with
the new structures which will integrate schools, TAFE and
higher education.
To help equip teachers for the challenges they face, to
encourage and increase their professionalism, to give them the
training and support they need, I am pleased to announce today
that the Federal Government will commit $ 130 million over the
next three years.
million has been allocated to support the development of
the seven key competencies to a stage where they can be
incorporated successfully into the school curriculum. About
million of this allocation will be earmarked for teacher
training. Up to $ 105 million will be available for new professional
development activities over the next three years.
At this stage I might make the observation that these measures
hold a particular significance for the women who comprise
seventy per cent of the teaching workforce.
Raising the status of teachers, as we are determined to do,
raises the status of women and enables them to contribute more
effectively to national objectives.
It is perhaps significant that this organisation has been the
means of career breakthroughs for two of your past leaders
Di Foggo, your former President who is now on the Industrial
Relations Commission, and Jennie George, another former
President, who is now Assistant-Secretary of the ACTU.
I might say also thiit these new measures of professional
support will assist women who need to refresh their skills on
return to the profession after a period of parental leave.
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Sixty million dollars will be provided over the next three
years to establish a National Teachers' Professional
Development Program to renew and increase teachers' knowledge
of their subject disciplines.
Some of the funds will go towards support for National Teacher
Forums which provide opportunities for teachers and university
academic staff to share information.
The Government will be allocating five million dollars towards
a Quality schooling Program which, in addition to funding
projects in the areas of school leadership, school
organisation and student welfare, will support the
establishment of the proposed National Teaching Council.
The National Teaching Council, we Sincerely hope, will be an
important step towards higher levels of professionalism among
teachers, and a vehicle for the greater involvement of
teachers in the reform of education and the teaching
profession itself.
if the object of providing these new funds can be summarised,
it is to allow teachers to play a central role in determining
their own professional development needs within the context of
emerging national priorities.
There is no question that our aims will not be fulfilled
without improving the productivity of teachers.
There will have to be changes in the way teachers work.
The National Project on the Quality of Teaching and Learning
has developed the National Schools Project which, in 150
schools across Australia, has introduced new ways of working
with the potential for real productivity gains.
These include greater use of para professionals; flexible
timetabling outside traditional school hours; and flexible
class sizes to suit the needs of schools.
Flexibility is the key in modern education, as it is in modern
industry and business and as it must be in government and
unions. it goes without saying that governments need to work with
teachers and their unions and with education systems to
develop ways of working which will create a more effective
teaching environment and a better quality education.
The need for teachers to renew and expand their knowledge and
skills, and to modify their teaching methods, presents an
obvious challenge for teacher education of all kinds.
The Federal Govern-ment recognises, in particular, the
important role played by higher education institutions in the
pre-service and in-service training of teachers.
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As the major funding source for Australian Universities, the
Federal Government provides over $ 420 million a year for
teacher training within higher education institutions.
Teacher education faculties have had their fair share of
change and uncertainty in recent times, particularly in the
wake of major reforms in the higher education system.
They have also had their fair share of criticism.
Not all the criticism is justified, but doubtless some is. It
is indisputable that staffing rigidities in many teacher
education faculties are an obstacle to the renewal of courses.
it is significant that fifty per cent of teacher education
academics were school teachers before 1973 and only twenty per
cent have taught in schools in the 1980s.
To their credit, many universities have established strategies
for the renewal of their education faculties, and others are
developing them. For those institutions the Government will
advance operating grant funding to assist in the early
retirement of staff.
Ladies and gentlemen
The announcement of this new funding package for the
professional development of teachers is just one element of a
comprehensive policy framework encompassing all the sectors of
school, TAFE and higher education.
Our goal remains to make education accessible to all, and, in
particular, to assist those people in the workforce who need
further training or re-training to keep their jobs and their
industries alive.
We say that a fair and equitable education system, especially
a fair and equitable school system, will as readily deliver
excellence and opportunity as an unfair one.
And we say that a fair one will deliver a good society.
We see our efforts in education as an effort to extend
Australian social democracy bringing our educational
standards up to those we have achieved in such areas as
health, social security, human rights including the rights of
women. We should be and can be as good at education as we are at
these things, which is to say as good as any country in the
world. And to be good at education is to be both excellent and
equitable. Education in the 1990s is the machinery which will deliver us
a prosperous, strong and good society In the twenty-first
century. 4 P. 12/ 11-
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It is the Vehicle of change and there is no-one else to drive
it but you the teachers of Australia.
So we will support you, and work with you, and we will create
the education system which Australians have a right to and we
a11 want.
CANBERRA/ ME LEOURNE
January, 1993