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Standing Committee on Social Issues

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About this Item
Subjects -  Teachers; Training Schemes; Schools; Education; Parliamentary Committees: New South Wales: Social Issues
Speakers - West The Hon Ian; Chesterfield-Evans The Hon Dr Arthur; Lynn The Hon Charlie; Deputy-President (Reverend the Hon Fred Nile); Burnswoods The Hon Jan
Business - Committee, Report, Motion


    STANDING COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL ISSUES
Page: 2310


    Report: Recruitment and Training of Teachers

    Debate resumed from 20 September 2006.

    The Hon. IAN WEST [2.42 p.m.]: When debate on the report of the Standing Committee on Social Issues entitled "Recruitment and Training of Teachers" was interrupted on 20 September, I was talking about funding historically and the referral not only of this inquiry by the former Minister for Education and Training, Andrew Refshauge, but also his in-depth knowledge and commitment in this area, for which we are grateful. I know that he has been watching the progress of the inquiry with great interest. Reports published over recent years have made a substantial contribution to the public education sector debate, particularly those by Dr Greg Ramsey and Dr Tony Vinson, which proved invaluable to the committee in understanding developments that have been taking place in the profession in the training and retention of teachers. Throughout the inquiry the committee heard overwhelming support for the expansion of the department by bringing into play an Institute of Teaching, and the induction and mentoring programs through the institute's professional teaching standards and the teaching profession as a whole.

    It was fairly obvious that there is a desperate need for all tiers of government to do a hell of a lot more to provide innovative funding to ensure that the historical perspective of the overwhelming importance of teaching, and its role in our society as a whole are not short-changed, as it has been over many years. It is interesting to note what has been said over the years by different people and different political parties. I was interested to read a report by Sylvia Lawson on a book written recently by a young Liberal, which made reference to the Liberal Party's beginnings in 1944 and the principles espoused by its founding father, Robert Menzies. At that time the party's strong statement of principle revolved not only around individual freedoms, free enterprise and the encouragement of initiative, freedom of religion and the like, but also on the rights of the whole population to accessible education, work and housing at reasonable cost. In 1944 the document that set out Robert Menzies principles included goals such as:

    A revised and expanded system of child and adult education, designed to develop the spirit of true citizenship, and in which no consideration of wealth or privilege shall be a determining factor.

    They are extremely important words for education when one considers training and retention of the citizens of New South Wales, and ensuring that the consideration of wealth or privilege should not be a determining factor in the ability of every citizen of our country to reach their ultimate potential, whatever that might be. Even the founders of the Liberal Party acknowledged that was an extremely important principle. It is tragic that today that principle seems to have faded away: it no longer comes to the fore, as it should. The attitude of the current Federal Minister for Education, Science and Training—the user-pay system—to funding for before and after school child care, primary and secondary education or tertiary education, and education on the basis of one's parents genes and the capacity to pay is slowly inching its way back into the psyche. That is a travesty. It is important for all honourable members to ensure that it does not spread. I commend to the House the report of the Standing Committee on Social Issues entitled "The Recruitment and Training of Teachers".

    The Hon. Dr ARTHUR CHESTERFIELD-EVANS [2.49 p.m.]: The inquiry into teacher training was certainly a very interesting one. The essence of the problem of teacher training relates to the goal of equity in society. In a sense, teacher training is where the hard edge of economic reality strikes the desire for social equity. The historical aspect of this debate is that many years ago, such as when I was attending the university, trainee teacher scholarships met the costs of a three-year university course and provided students with a living allowance that was not even means tested, which was a big deal at that time. In return for a university education, students were bonded to the education department to serve as teachers for approximately three years. The scheme offered a civilised way for students to pay their way through a university course in return for honouring their obligation to serve wherever the department sent them for a period of approximately three years.

    Teaching in the education system in New South Wales is based on a seniority system which means that junior staff are sent to less sought-after schools and good quality graduate teachers may be sent to disadvantaged schools. If market forces applied, the best teachers would be sent to the best teaching jobs and the worst teachers would be sent to the worst teaching jobs with the result that the difficulties for students in disadvantaged areas would be considerable. The seniority system is based on points. If a teacher accepts an appointment at a disadvantaged school for a number of years, that teacher accrues seniority points and at some stage is given the pick of teaching jobs. The upside of this scheme is that disadvantaged schools are sent quite good quality teachers, but the downside is that good teachers are sent to disadvantaged schools.

    Good quality teachers who opt out of the public education system to go to the private sector are able to compete on merit and have jobs in very nice schools. In a sense, there is good and bad in the seniority system. The not-so-good features of the public education system are the limited capacity of schools to choose teachers, bureaucratic problems associated with administration of the seniority system, and casualisation of the teaching work force. At the school that my son attends, the music teacher was much admired. His employment for approximately a decade required him to spend half of his time at my son's school and half of his time at another school. He was offered a full-time job at another school and accepted the appointment. He should have had a full-time position years ago. As a result, my son's school has lost a very good music teacher and everyone is very disappointed. Perhaps to describe his employment as having mucked him around is too strong a term, but the practical effect was that his lack of tenure affected his career, his ability to obtain a mortgage and other aspects of his life. Attempts to achieve equity in the teaching profession sometimes have resulted in creating problems for individual teachers.

    While teachers are training they are released to schools for practicum that involves attendance at private and public schools. When private schools accept a good teaching student for teaching practice, they sometimes offer not just teaching experience but a job with pay commencing while the student is completing their course and employment that will begin after graduation. A student may receive the offer of a good job at a good school at a time when the department has not even advertised its positions in goodness knows what type of school with a commencement date several months hence. That means that recruitment is a bit of a non-contest and good quality graduate teachers are lost from the public sector to the private sector. Those who value equity are very concerned that students in disadvantaged areas are not getting the benefit of having good teachers in their schools. Despite the rhetoric and subjectiveness of some submissions, the underlying concern of the report on the inquiry into the recruitment and training of teachers relates to retaining good teachers in the public sector.

    The committee interviewed the Director General of the Department of Education and Training, Andrew Cappie-Wood, who is certainly one of the most impressive heads of department in New South Wales. He is aware of the problem and is doing his best to recruit student teachers earlier, but it is very difficult to do so earlier than does the private sector during pre-service practicum. It is also difficult for him from a budget perspective to obtain approval to pay numerous pre-service teachers long before they graduate and begin teaching. These implications have to be considered in Australia if we purport to strive to achieve equity in our society. One of the subtleties of the modus operandi of the Howard Government is to advocate choice as a virtue and eschew compulsion. However, in an economic system, choice tends to be the province of those who can afford choice, and those who cannot afford choice have to go without it. In an education context, choice is available to all the students who are bright because that they will go to good schools whereas all the kids who are not so bright go to schools that will accept them. Consequently, there is a concentration of most of the bright students in some schools and a concomitant polarisation in society of ability, opportunity and quality.

    Only when we manage to a high standard across the board should specialisation be embarked upon, and even then only when quality assurance is insisted upon. That may require incentive payments to attract good teaching staff to disadvantaged schools so that those schools may have better teacher to student ratios and other benefits. One of the advantages of the seniority system, despite seniority as an objective standard having its pros and cons, is that schools in disadvantaged areas do not necessarily have only less competent teachers. But attaining an equitable standard of education requires more than a teachers seniority system: Additional measures should be applied, such as affirmative action programs in disadvantaged schools. The committee did reasonably well in wrestling with those key issues within the framework of its terms of reference.

    Without in any way being critical, the report also discusses the decline in prestige of the teaching profession over the past 20 or 30 years. As the salary levels of a profession fall relative to the consumer price index, not far behind will be a decline in status as young people decide that they will not follow a profession that is not well paid and provides restricted opportunities. As part of an increased emphasis on teacher recruitment, there has been a discussion of teacher training systems in the context of how quickly an expert in a particular field may learn pedagogy, assuming the requisite knowledge of expert content exists.

    More time needs to be spent on teacher training to get mature-age teachers back into teaching. A huge recruitment drive is under way to get teachers back, and the Government is putting a great deal of effort into that. The inquiry did quite well and I thank the committee staff and the people who attended. The committee heard from the New South Wales Institute of Teachers, a new body that is trying to maintain quality in the teaching profession. Pre-service teacher education enhances performance but government schools still have to attract quality teachers in the face of private sector market forces, given that John Howard is giving roughly 60 per cent more money per student to private schools than to public schools. The parents' input pushes up the amount of money available to private schools far higher than can be matched by the department. There is ongoing need to encourage the retention of teachers by supporting and mentoring them in their first years when they are more likely to drop out. Those aims are very important in maintaining teacher quality and confidence. I congratulate the committee on its report. [Time expired.]

    The Hon. CHARLIE LYNN [2.59 p.m.]: The Hon. Dr Arthur Chesterfield-Evans spoke about his time at university. I never had that opportunity; I left school at 15. When I was raising my three daughters and putting them through the education system, I was in what I regarded as the profession of arms. Most parents are so busy in their late twenties and their thirties with their own careers that they leave the education of their children to the teaching profession. We had a lot of experiences with schools around New South Wales and around the country. My eldest daughter went to 13 different schools in three different countries during my 21 years in the Army.

    Some time ago I was shocked by events in the education system in New South Wales. We always enrolled our girls in Catholic schools, because we thought they would have a common standard of education. However, we found out that they never had a common standard with uniforms. With three girls you could bet that if they went to different Catholic schools, one would have a brown uniform, one would have a grey uniform and the other would have a blue uniform—all totally different. With daughters of that age, the uniforms have to be exactly right; so the uniforms cost us a fortune. However, the standard of education was the key reason for enrolling them into Catholic schools. I then received a posting as an exchange officer to the American Army for two years. I had to move from Scheyville to the Middle Head Army unit. I moved my family from Scheyville to the Army's married quarters at Castle Cove.

    Halfway through that year, the girls were transferred from a Catholic school in Windsor to their first public school, in Castle Cove. A couple of days later the headmaster rang me and asked me to come in for a yarn. He said, "Your three daughters need to drop back a year." I asked him what he meant by that. He went through all their tests, which indicated that my three daughters had to drop back a year. I asked him, "How can this be? Do you not have inspectors? I am a professional and I have entrusted my daughters' education to the profession of teaching." He told me that those two State schools at primary level had one year's difference. There was a year's difference, and my daughters had to drop back a year. That had a major impact on their self-confidence. I felt that the teaching profession had failed me, and it had.

    We then went to America where the school year is from June to July. It took the girls a long time and a lot of additional coaching to recover from that lack of self-confidence. The Hon. Dr Arthur Chesterfield-Evans spoke about the choice we have between public and private schools. Without doubt there are good public schools within the system. Where I live, in south-west Sydney, Airds High School, James Meehan High School, Robert Townsend High School and others are good schools staffed by dedicated professionals. As the Hon. Dr Arthur Chesterfield-Evans said, getting teaching back onto a professional basis is one thing, but what they teach is important. Incoming teachers have to realise that they have a very important role—in fact, the most important of all roles—in the teaching and development of our children. If the curriculum is wrong, if there is no standard against which to make a judgment, if there are no school inspectors to maintain standards, some schools will be of a higher standard and others will drop below the line. The reason that a lot of teachers are attracted to the private sector is because their standards of behaviour and teaching are higher.

    The Hon. Jan Burnswoods: Rubbish!

    The Hon. CHARLIE LYNN: In response, that is what the statistics indicate. No-one can argue with that. An article in the Weekend Australian by Paul Kelly referred to Kenneth Wiltshire's article in the previous Weekend Australian entitled "In defence of the true values of learning". The article referred to the history summit held in Canberra at which Tony Taylor said that most students on leaving school "will have experienced a fragmented, repetitive and incomplete picture of their national story". He said they need to understand their national story, their history, because that is where our values are founded, established and developed. Paul Kelly wrote:

    Most state governments surrendered curriculum responsibility many years ago to progressivist education theory and the clout of teacher unions. In some cases this retreat assumes epic proportions …

    The decision from the history summit was that history should be re-established in schools as a core academic discipline …

    Wiltshire paints a picture of curriculums that have "strayed far from being knowledge-based", with teachers who represent "a cohort of almost three generations of this situation". Curriculum accountability has been weakened and school inspectors have long since been abolished. Labor governments are "usually under the influence of the teacher unions".

    The Hon. Jan Burnswoods: You are wrong, that is not about New South Wales.

    The Hon. CHARLIE LYNN: Look, I am talking about the experience of my children. I do not know what experience the children of the Hon. Jan Burnswoods have had. I am talking as a parent.

    The Hon. Jan Burnswoods: You do not know about the New South Wales curriculum.

    The Hon. CHARLIE LYNN: The Hon. Jan Burnswoods is talking from an academic point of view. She is one of those progressive people that Paul Kelly was talking about who have put so much politically correct rubbish into the education system that they are destroying the very system they are trying to build.

    The DEPUTY-PRESIDENT (Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile): Order! Members will cease directing comments to one another across the Chamber.

    The Hon. CHARLIE LYNN: I am talking about the practicalities of life.

    The Hon. Jan Burnswoods: No, you are not.

    The Hon. CHARLIE LYNN: Yes, I am. The Hon. Jan Burnswoods is talking theory, but I have been through the system. The system failed me and failed my children.

    The Hon. Jan Burnswoods: New South Wales has three different curricula. This is rubbish.

    The DEPUTY-PRESIDENT (Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile): Order! Former Presidents have ruled that members can speak rubbish in the House.

    The Hon. CHARLIE LYNN: The Hon. Jan Burnswoods can squawk later on, she has the bill for it. For example, I refer to male teachers. Why would any male enter the teaching profession? With child protection provisions things have gone so far that if a child runs through the school ground and trips and skins herself and starts crying, the male teacher has to stand and watch. He cannot pick up the child.

    The Hon. Jan Burnswoods: Rubbish!

    The Hon. CHARLIE LYNN: The Hon. Jan Burnswoods knows that that came out in the inquiry; or was she asleep at that stage? She did not want to hear it. She only hears what she wants to hear.

    The Hon. Jan Burnswoods: What you are saying is a pack of lies. It is garbage.

    The Hon. CHARLIE LYNN: The Standing Committee on Social Issues should revisit all these matters when the Hon. Jan Burnswoods has left—as long as she does not go back to teaching! I will do the numbers for her to get her back into the Labor Party, or back her as an Independent, if it keeps her out of the schools. I will do whatever it takes to make sure that she has no influence over developing the minds of young people because they will be as bitter and twisted as she is.

    The Hon. Jan Burnswoods: You never turned up at the inquiry.

    The Hon. CHARLIE LYNN: The Hon. Jan Burnswoods will have a chance to squawk at the finish. She should just sit back in her tree and wait until she has a right to reply. In that newspaper article Paul Kelly wrote:

    The truth about the critical literacy agenda was exposed 128 months ago when the president of the NSW English Teachers Association, Wayne Sawyer, wrote that the Howard Government's 2004 election win showed that teachers were failing in their mission and the Government, like Margaret Thatcher's, had a Stalinist outlook.

    This is the conspiracy theory that these progressives, the Lefties, have. They are just so far out of touch.

    The Hon. Duncan Gay: They are regressives.

    The Hon. CHARLIE LYNN: Yes, they are regressives; progressive is their word, but they are actually regressive. However, this Parliament has made a major contribution to the teaching profession by keeping the Hon. Jan Burnswoods out of that industry for the past 12 or 16 years. We have done our bit, but we are about to release her back into the wider public area.

    The Hon. Duncan Gay: I've got grandchildren about to enter the education system. That's what I'm worried about.

    The Hon. CHARLIE LYNN: I would be worried too. Perhaps the Hon. Jan Burnswoods will be employed as a consultant. The Minister for Justice has said that he will not appoint her to the Parole Board, but I am sure that there is a job for her somewhere. The Peter Principle refers to lateral arabesque, which involves promoting people sideways, getting them to do lots of paperwork but not paying any attention to the things they write. This report is an example of lateral arabesque. No-one will take any notice of this report. I hope that the Standing Committee on Social Issues will revisit many of the same issues next year and get them right then. We have failed this time but we will get it right next time.

    The Hon. JAN BURNSWOODS [3.10 p.m.], in reply: I must add some important comments that I was not able to make last week when I introduced the debate on the report of the Standing Committee on Social Issues. I thank the committee staff who played a role in the hearings and in writing the report. Susan Want, who is in the Chamber, was our Acting Director towards the end of the inquiry and she had a hand in writing the report. I also thank Rachel Simpson, a former director of the committee. I pay particular tribute—as the committee does in the Chair's foreword—to Victoria Pymm, the senior council officer, who because of staff changes in the secretariat of the Standing Committee on Social Issues had to assume her role quite suddenly. She did a fine job on this quite complicated inquiry.

    I also pay tribute to the witnesses who appeared before the committee. The inquiry was referred to the committee by the then Minister for Education and Training, Dr Andrew Refshauge, and in most cases the witnesses and committee members were in agreement. I remember particularly Dr Paul Brock from the Department of Education and Training pointing out that over the past decade or so 16 or 17 inquiries had been conducted into various aspects of teacher recruitment and training—many of them at a Federal level—and that this topic is often inquired into. I think that reflects the importance that the entire community places upon the education of children, and therefore on the training, quality and retention of teachers.

    Almost everyone has opinions about education. Fortunately, most of them are much less ignorant and better informed than those of the Hon. Charlie Lynn, who, despite being a member of the committee for the whole inquiry, does not appear to have learned anything. Paul Brock did the committee a service, as did other witnesses from the department and several academics—including some from interstate—by pointing to the relationship between our inquiry and other inquiries and by highlighting the things that have not changed over the years. I guess the major difference was that our committee focused on practical measures. We were not interested in exploring the sorts of ideological issues that have exercised the minds of some people. Fortunately, we did not take a Brendan Nelson type of approach to our task. For instance, we did not try to set exponents of teaching reading against each other and highlight the minute differences between them in an attempt to achieve some ideological purpose.

    The committee explored the question of whether enough teachers are trained in our universities, and we criticised the Federal Government for its continual reduction in funding for bread-and-butter university courses such as teaching and nursing—which we debated in this place last week. The inquiry was about trying to ensure that teaching is as attractive a profession as possible. Everyone agrees that teaching is a difficult profession, particularly in our high schools. We need well-trained teachers, particularly in government schools, and we need them to stay in employment. Our community is full of people who are former teachers. We need to make sure that we attract the best people to the profession in the first place and train them well. Student teachers must gain experience through the practicum while they are doing their university training and through the important process for which the Department of Education and Training was much praised—namely, the employment of teacher mentors to assist beginning teachers in a variety of areas where they often require assistance, especially during the first crucial year.

    It was suggested that beginning teachers should have a reduced teaching load, that the number of mentors should increase and that they should work in all schools. Much attention was paid to the very important issue of ensuring that there is equity in the system. Some schools are less attractive to teachers for a variety of reasons. These may include geographical distance and isolation and the perception that schools are located in unfavourable areas of the State, whether in climatic or distance terms or because of views about the nature of the children and the community. For instance, some schools have a much higher percentage of children from non-English speaking homes. The report tries to comment on a variety of issues and to make recommendations for the future.

    The committee's findings were unanimous every step of the way. I think that reflects the commitment on the part of all committee members and witnesses to ensuring that the children of New South Wales receive the best possible education and tutelage by the best teachers. Some issues raised in this debate—particularly by the Hon. Charlie Lynn, who made some remarks about the curriculum—were neither in the committee's terms of reference nor anywhere in the report. But issues of relevance, knowledge and ignorance have never worried the Hon. Charlie Lynn before so I should not be surprised that they do not concern him in this debate. The report deals seriously with some very important issues. I thank the Deputy Chair of the committee, the Hon. Robyn Parker, and the other committee members who contributed to the report and to this debate. The Hon. Dr Arthur Chesterfield-Evans, the Hon. Kayee Griffin and the Hon. Ian West made valuable contributions to this inquiry and to the work of the Standing Committee on Social Issues. I thank them and the committee staff.

    Motion agreed to.


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