The Project
10 Jan 2014
Transcipt E&OE TRANSCRIPT
Interview — Network Ten The Project
10 January 2014
SUBJECT: Review of the National Curriculum
MALE COMPERE 1: To something else now. And all Australian high school graduates should be able to read and write and count. So, Christopher Pyne's review of the education system is probably a good idea. But if the problem is a lack of maths and English skills, why is Mr Pyne's solution so focused on left-wing bias?
[Excerpt plays]
VOICE OVER: If universities are having to teach incoming students remedial courses in maths and English, there's clearly a big problem with our school system.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: All of the international and domestic studies of our students' results indicate that we've been going backwards for a good decade.
VOICE OVER: So, the review of the education curriculum announced by the Minister today is clearly a necessary step to addressing literacy and numeracy. What's less clear is how reading textbooks of partisan bias or teaching students more about ANZAC Day will help solve the basic skills problem, yet Mr Pyne highlighted both today.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: One of the criticisms, of course, of the curriculum has been that it has not sold or talked about the benefits of Western civilisation in our society.
VOICE OVER: The two experts who will lead the review are highly qualified and well respected. They're also prominent critics of the current approach to history and social studies and have repeatedly attacked what they see as left-wing bias in the classroom.
DENIS FITZGERALD: Whenever you have a politician seek to determine what three million Australian youngsters will learn in the classroom warning bells ought to be signalling. This is at best eccentric and at worst, reckless.
BILL SHORTEN: The Australian Curriculum should be non-political. The politicians, whatever their politics, should keep their hands off the schoolbooks and school notes of Australian children.
VOICE OVER: The Minister says his primary goal is to take politics out of the issue, so why fixate on cultural concerns instead of the three Rs?
[Excerpt ends]
MALE COMPERE 1: Well, let's ask Education Minister, Christopher Pyne. Minister, as you've mentioned yourself, high school graduates who can't read and write when they get to uni is a big problem for this country, but what do partisan bias and ANZAC Day have to do with the solution?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, the solution is to have a robust curriculum, Charlie, that's the big solution. Now we want the history, science, maths and English curriculums to be reviewed by two expert reviewers who will come back to us and tell us what needs to be done.
Why is ANZAC Day important? Well, it's part of our history, it's part of the forming of our nation. We shouldn't be embarrassed about having that in our curriculum. Western civilisation shouldn't be something that we think is an embarrassment to be explained. We should be embracing the fact that Western civilisation has formed our country the way that it is today.
Equally, we need to know about our indigenous Australian history so that children know the truth about how indigenous Australians have been mistreated over the last 200 years. At the moment I don't think all those things are necessarily given the same balance in the curriculum, but the history's just one aspect of it. English, science and maths are all just as important, if not more important.
FEMALE COMPERE 1: I was just wondering what exactly the left-wing bias is that you're concerned about in the curriculum, Mr Pyne? I mean, again, you've talked about that a lot today as being a problem with the curriculum.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, the curriculum at the moment elevates the role of the trade union movement and the Labor Party and Labor prime ministers. And that's fine, that's all part of our history, but of course, you also need to balance that by explaining what the trade union movement, what its role has been in industry, in agriculture, in mining. Australia has been made the kind of country it is today because of agriculture, mining, industry.
And, of course, the Liberal Government, while the left doesn't necessarily like it, has governed for 40 of the last 60 years, and yet there's no mention of them in the curriculum. So I think there should be a balance...
FEMALE COMPERE 2: But if we're having students graduate Year 12 not being able to read and write or do math, I mean that's not just tweaking the curriculum. Are you suggesting we're going to have a complete overhaul of the whole curriculum?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Well, let's see what the reviewers come back with mid-year. Everybody will be consulted who wants to be consulted. This is not a committee of stakeholders. I am unabashedly putting students first. It was never designed to be a committee of stakeholders which end up with everybody pleased with the outcome or agreeing with each other.
MALE COMPERE 1: Minister, thanks very much for your time.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE: It's always a pleasure, thank you.
ENDS