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PRIME MINISTER
FOR MEDIAFRIDAY, 8 MAY, 19 81
ADDRESS TO THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF INDEPENDENT CONFERENCE
ON SCHOOL GOVERNANCE
I am very pleased to be with you tonight, and to have the
opportunity to address a conference whose theme is the
governance of schools.
The matter of governance, in a general sense, is one in which
I suppose I have some experience. I. can only hope that school
governance is free of some of the problems that-atise in
governing a country. I am, of course, " considerably less
familiar with school governance although while I was Minister
for Education, I developed an abiding interest in the role of
Government in the educational process. And in this context
I wish to make a few comments about the present and future
role of this Government in education..
Let me say at the outset that the Government views with very
great satisfaction the present strength of independent schools
in Australia and the strong support that independent schools.
are receiving from the community.
We have consistently maintained, from the very first, that
choice in education is a fundamental element of a free society.
It was an earlier Liberal Government which originally introduced
the concept of State aid, a concept which. was decisively upheld
from a constitutional point of view in the High Court's decision
-earlier this year.
The Government's objectives in education involve promoting freedom
of choice and equality of opportunity in schooling, while
aspiring to standards of excellence at all levels, and at the
same time helping the disadvantaged in the community. Our wish
is to see that access to choice in schooling is open to the
widest possible cross-section of the community. To advance
this objective, the Government must plainly make a financial
contribution to independent schools as well as to Government
schools and the level of contribution to independent schools
must be considerable. / 2
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In the early 1970s, for reasons which I n~ eed not go into,
a bleak future seemed to lie ahead for the'independent schools.
Financial problems mounted, and solutions were hard to find.
Between 1972 and 1977, the number of independent-schools in
this country actually declined by 65.-and that is a lot of
schools to close down. An increase in Commonwealth support was
necessary in order to redress the balance which had almost
been destroyed in earlier years.,
The facts seem to show that our efforts have borne fruit, for
in the two years after 1977, the number of independent schools""
increased by 75-and over the last three years ( 1977 to 1980)
enrolments in independent schools have risen by 37,000,
comprising 20,000 at the primary level and 17,000 at the secondary.-
Putting the secondary figures in a different way, the
proportion of secondary students enrolled in independent schools
has risen from 24.4% in 1977 to 26.4% in 1980, and projections
for 1984 suggest that this proportion will increase by one or
' two'frte percentage points.
The implication of these figures is unmistakable a large
number of Australian parents wish their children to be educated
in-independent schools.
If the position of independent schools was deteriorating in the
early seventies, the reason was not that this type of education.
was less attractive to Australi'ans -the reason. was rather that.
the Government--of the day adopted-policies the effect of~ whichand
possibly the intent of which was to weaken the independen. t
school sector. We opposed this trend utterly. Our support for
an independent sector is not support for an exclusive sector,
but for a more widely accessible independent sector.
The aim of our policies is to place more, not less, Australian
parents in the position where they can choose which kind of school
best suits their children. If the education offered by a
particular school suits a particular child then we would
increasingly want to see a system in which the parents of that
child would be in a position to send their child to that school..
That is what freedom of choice in education means.
I cannot emphasise too strongly that we support the independent:
sector not because it is exclusive, but in order to make it
more accessible. More and more parents are becoming alive to the
importance of education and more and more are feeling an obligation
to seek out the kind of education which seems best suited to
their children. It would be a tragedy if in this situation fewer.
parents were able to make the choice they really wanted.
While choice is a fundamental reason for the support we give to it,
the independent school sector provides a range of further benefEits
for the Australian educational system. If all schools were
Government schools, there would be an inevitable shift towards
a monopolistic and bureaucratic control of education and education
is surely an area in which monopoly and excessive bureaucracy -can
have only the most damaging consequences. ./ 3
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Government funding itself, of course,
must be careftlly watched on its impact on
the independence of independent schools. It would plainly be
self-defeating if the independent schools were to become wholly
dependent upon Governments. While independent schools currently
receive considerable Government support, the future of each
particular school depends fundamentally on the quality and
attractiveness of the education which it offers.
Independent schools have no forced clientele. If enrolments fall
off at an independent school no bureaucratic fiat to swell its
numbers will come forward to save it. This surely is a
desirable discipline as well as a challenge.
Schools which depend upon voluntary enrolments have a strong
incentive to adapt to the demands of changing conditions. And
within the independent school sector t: ere-r a -degree-odf diversity
which . must surely provide-asa-tiaptiorr. and change. right
across the spectrum of schools.,: T is-Esi-nat-to~-s that
experimentation is going on only with the independent school
sector the Government sector has equally made a major contribution.
But the kind of experimentation which can occur in an independent
sector cannot be guaranteed under a centralised education system.
There is a . fundamental reason why: this-is-so andTI will expand.
upon it because it applies in many areas of life beyond education.
The independent schools provide this diversity and experimentation
because they are responsive to the values of different groups
in Australian society they reflect the diversity of our society.
They are responsive because ultimately the parents who send their
children must themselves pay a substantial proportion of the costs
so the schools must provide the education that a sufficient
number of parents want, or else close down.
Institutions which are closely identified with what people want
will remain healthy and strong because " they are in a state of
continuing renewal as people's wants change and develop. Placing
control over the allocation of funds to institutions in the hands
of those whom I will broadly call the " users" is the best possible
guarantee of their continuing health and vitality. In few . areas
of life is this more important than in education for the vitality
and adaptiveness of our whole society is so much bound up with
the appropriateness of our education to the needs of our children.
Institutions which are less subject to the mechanism of
" user-control" experience greater difficulty in adapting to
changing needs.
We are emphasising the " user pays" or " user controls" concept
as part of our wider approach to encourage a dynamic adaptation
throughout Australia to the needs of the 1980s and beyond. We have
been doing that in our recent decisions to transfer a number of
Government enterprises to the private sector and in our recent
health decisions. / 4
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Total Government control over any institution can lead to
rigidities, inefficiencies and a lack of responsiveness which we
believe Australia can ill afford in the challenging period
ahead of us. A strong independent school sector encourages
the adaptive potential of our educational system. It is an
important element in Australia's capacity to face the future
with confidence. And it is to the need to adapt that I now turn.
Your programme for this conference lists papers on the
relationships between governing bodies and principals, bursars,
parents, past pupils and so on. But I see no paper explicitly
addressing the relationship between the governing bodies and th.
needs of present pupils. In the rest of my remarks I would like
to address the question: " What kind of education do we owe our
children in the rest of the eighties, given the challenges that
confront Australia?". What do schools and parents owe to the
children who come within their care? What is the role of
Government, and more particularly, what system of education should
Governments encourage and provide for? All these questions have
acquired particular urgency in recent years.
I want to discuss them with particular reference to the need of
our young people to find satisfying jobs in the years ahead.
You all know that numbers of young people who should be able to
work* productively are unable to find employment when they
leave school. The fact that this situation exists gives the
Government, as well as parents, schools and students great concern.
It is a situation which neither society nor the Government is
willing to accept.
It is important not to get the problem out ofperspective, . for
the great majority of school leavers either proceed to
tertiary education or else find employment quickly and I am pleased
to say that youth unemployment is now dropping quite fast as the
economy gathers pace. Total teenage unemployment is now 13,400 below
the level recorded in April, 1980 but it is still much too high.
. There is a minority who have real difficulties and these
difficulties cannot be overlooked. During 1980 about 20,000
15-17. year old young people were unemployed for at least eight
months. Through transitional programmes the Government is making a very
considerable contribution designed to enable these young people
to find jobs and be able to cope with them. And let me refer here
to reports a few months ago that the Government was proposing to
withdraw unemployment benefits from 16 and 17 year olds for
never have I known a greater perversion of a public debate.
Our proposal was first to get a situation in which there would be
worthwhile courses, together with adequate secondary allowances
for the disadvantaged and then, and only then, to consider merely
consider whether the young people concerned should be left with
the option of going on the dole and possibly thereby lose for
years the chance of getting a job. How false an impression of
that proposal was conveyed to the people of Australia.
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The situation that confronts young people is the product of
a variety of factors. There is the economic situation, in other
countries as well as our own, there i-s a higher participation
rate in the work force, there are problems of wage relativities
which have made it difficult for many young people without
experience to appear attractive to employers.
In addition to such factors, young people are perhaps more
selective about the kind of employment they will undertake, and
there is also the well-known Catch 22 problem that it is hard
to get a job without experience, and impossible to get experience
without a job.
These factors all have a place in explaining the current problems
with youth unemployment. But a further factor is that many of the
the people concerned have inadequate skills and inadequate
training. They have not received the kind of education which
C they required.
It is easy to over-simplify the problems that are opened up
by this consideration. I think it is generally agreed -hat
schools must be adapative to the. requirements, . the-in-teiests and
theen thusiasm of pupils. Every teacher know-s-how.-vital! it is to
capture the interests of students. The teacher believes
almost as a matter of faith that there is in all young people
_-' some latent curiosity, some enthusiasm no matter how much
hidden to acquire knowledge. If only the teacher can strike
S. the right note then there will be a. take-off-even with the
f--least promising -students.
A point which has received an entirely proper emphasis in recent
times is that while many schools provide well for pupils who have
an academic bent and who are suited to tertiary studies, they
provide much less well for pupils of a more practical disposition.
One of the most pressing responsibilities of secondary schools is
to those students who wish to leave school early and start working.
These are-the students whose needs are not being met wiose
interests are not being captured, whose enthusiasmsare not being
exploited, whose natural abilities are not being harnessed, whose
self-confidence is not being built up. In earlier-times, it was
often thought that these students were simply failures. But it
is now increasingly accepted that it is the system that is failing
not the students who do not get much out of it.
Surely there must be a relevant and a useful education which will
serve the needs and at the same time capture the interest of
every child. If we do not find that education, then surely we
have failed the child. And if a few students would leave school
feeling they had gained little no matter what had been offered to
them, feeling they were failures, then surely we can make sure
that they are very few indeed. / 6
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In the vast majority of cases, when children leave school with
a sense of failure or frustration, the inescapable conclusion
is that the school has failed them. It is obviously easier to
say these things than to work out suitable curriculums or to
finance them. There is a range of challenges that teachers,
schools and perhaps even governing bodies must try to meet.
It is not clear, for example, that the kind of knowledge and
skills that students will be interested to acquire will
necessarily satisfy the requirements of employers. Again, the
skills and knowledge that are attractive to the employers of
today may not enable the students concerned to adapt to the
changes of tomorrow yet education should surely aim to teach
young people how to make the kinds of adaptations that are likelyto
be necessary during their lifetimes.
Further, young people do not always like what they are best
at which means that there may be a gap between capturing their
interest and providing them with the skills which may best enable
them to obtain satisfactory employment.
Secondary schools also face the challenge of not knowing, at least
in the early years, whether a student will want to go on to
further education, or whether he will wish to leave -school as
early as possible and start working. It. is easy-forthose of us
outside the-educational system to underestimate-these challenges
which are in many ways most acute during the earlier years of
-secondary education. But unless they are confronted in the early
years, the problems that are currently arising for 16, 17 and 18
year olds will remain.
The challenges--to schools, and-to everyone-concerned. about
education, are obviously very great indeed, and the Australian
community rightly believes that they have not yet been met
satisfactorily. Is it too hard to develop courses which will tap the talents of more
of our children, courses that will capture their interest and
meet their practical needs? I do not believe that this is too hard
or that our society or our school system lacks the capacity to
meet the-challenges.
The Government will co-operate both with the States and with
schools to help meet them. A major responsibility of Government is
to make sure that we have the system that is best calculated to
provide our children all of them with the kind of education
which we owe them. That is why we place so much emphasis on
encouraging a healthy independent school sector.
The matters that I have talked about tonight concern all schools, and
in the independent school sector the solutions depend very much
on an awareness of the needs and the opportunities on the part of
school governors and staff. The academic achievements of the
independent schools are well-known and respected. As the needs of
pupils change I have not the slightest doubt that the independent
schools can adapt in ways that parents and pupils would want.
Independent schools or many of them have changed and adapted
to a remarkable degree. The independent schools have over many
centuriesmade an incalculable contribution to the civilisation of
which we are the heirs. I have no doubt that provided their
accessibility to as many parents as possible is maintained
they will continue to do so.
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