SUBJECTS: Australia Day in the National Curriculum, Australia Day, NAPLAN results

STEVE VIZARD: Australian school children should – could soon be taught, compulsorily taught, about the invasion of Australia, amongst other things, under a new scheme suggested by the Federal School Education Minister Peter Garrett. The goal – teaching all students what Australia Day means for every group of Australians.

Peter Garrett joins me now.  Peter good to talk to you.

PETER GARRETT: Hi Steve.

STEVE VIZARD: What’s this about?

PETER GARRETT: Well Steve I can’t say that your introduction is right actually.  You’ve probably been reading the [inaudible] this morning, but we’re not talking about teaching kids about invasion day at all.  What we’re saying is that every Australian student should have to learn about Australia Day –

STEVE VIZARD: Yeah.

PETER GARRETT:   – its history and its meaning, and we don’t want that to be an optional extra for states and it’s included in the national curriculum, and that’s agreed by education ministers, including myself.

In fact, invasion day, the term isn’t even used in the Year 3 curriculum, but I do expect in some schools that teachers will talk about Australia Day and they may mention that some people, including some Aboriginal people, still call it invasion day, or there’s been a debate about it.

But really this is about making sure that the study of Australia Day itself is not optional as it has been under state curriculums, but rather it’s mandatory under the national curriculum.

STEVE VIZARD: What is it about Australia Day and its particular importance that sees you seeing it as so fundamental that it should be a compulsory part of the curriculum?

PETER GARRETT: Well I think Australia Day has become the day where we, at the beginning of the year, reflect on our country, our great fortune to be living here.  We reflect on our history, some of us, and we also think about what’s coming up ahead.  We have celebration events.  We have citizenship ceremonies.  We have the Australian of the Year who plays a role.

It’s a focal point for us as Australians, and it seems quite sensible to make sure that kids in Year 3, who will be a part of all this, they’ll be down at the beach –

STEVE VIZARD: Yeah.

PETER GARRETT:   – or they’ll be in the backyards –

STEVE VIZARD: Yeah.

PETER GARRETT:  – or they’ll be in, you know, going off to one of the events – actually know about the day, why it’s January the 26^th, and also have a bit of a discussion with their teachers about what it means to people.

STEVE VIZARD: Well that all makes perfect sense and that seems very celebratory and appropriate.

Just to finish off on this invasion thing, given that it is now a part, under your proposal of the compulsory part of the syllabus, given that teachers across Australia are going to deal with it, how far into the notion of invasion day or the indigenous perspective of the First Fleet, the arrival on January the 26^th, 1788 - how far into that should a teacher stray, in your view?

PETER GARRETT:   Well look, I think teachers need to teach to the level that their kids are at.  So for Year 3 obviously it’s a discussion just about the day and what’s happening, what do you think it means and what happened in history and so on and so forth.

As kids go through the curriculum, they get to learn about the lives of notable Australians, they get to learn, in Year 6, about the birth of Australian democracy and it’s in Year 6 that they learn about additional things about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and they can reflect on that history and teachers would do that, depending on the way in which they were teaching at that point in time. Then in high school, of course you go further as well. 

Teachers and schools have got flexibility Steve in this, as to how they teach the subject.  They’ve got to teach what’s appropriate to their age group. I think clearly that we should recognise the history of the Europeans coming to Australia, that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were here first, that they were occupying the country, that they had lived here for tens of thousands of years, and that there’s, you know, an important part of our history which is to do with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are still here and who play full roles in Australian life. But –

STEVE VIZARD: But you don’t see it as an invasion?

PETER GARRETT: Not specifically, no. It’s not a word I’ve ever used in any of my public or private conversations with people. I’m a strong supporter of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, as you know, and I’m a strong supporter, for example, of the referendum proposals that we’ve seen this committee just bring forward with Mark Leibler and Pat Dodson on it.

STEVE VIZARD: Yeah.

PETER GARRETT: I think we need to continue to build and develop understanding [inaudible] were in place from the English when they first sent the First Fleet and when Cook first came out here and so on and so forth, but I understand the hurt that Aboriginal people still feel about the nature of that first contact.  And that’s something which we’ll work through in our history.

But you know what – I reckon most teachers have got a pretty fair handle on this as well, and I think the fact about the national curriculum is a simple one – about 80,000 kids are travelling interstate every year. We’d like them to, whatever school they’re going to, get that basic common learning entitlement.

It was something which we worked very hard to get in place. This is just but a part of it, but I think it’s an important part of it.

STEVE VIZARD: Just finishing up on this Australia Day stuff – we’ve had a very unusual piece of research come out of WA suggesting that people who fly the Australian flags are, amongst others, tend to be more racist.

You know, what’s your view about this? Is, you know, the Australian flag somehow a symbol of racism?  Where do you sit on all of this Peter?

PETER GARRETT: Look I think the flag is a very important symbol Steve, and I’ve always felt that, and I’ve always felt that provocative gestures and extreme behaviour around the flag do a disservice to the flag and to the country.

And that’s always been my view, but I have also recognised, as I do say for example in the American political system, that people are free in this country, so long as they’re not breaking the laws, to you know, have a flag badge or a flag on the back of their T-shirt or wave it as they go. I find excessive flag waving and jingoism, which has got racial undertones pretty unfortunate when you see it happening. I don’t think it’s widespread. I don’t like to see it. I don’t think other people would like to see it as well, but I also respect the fact that the flag is an important part of our country. I just hope that everybody else respects it in the same way.

STEVE VIZARD: What are you going to be doing on Australia Day?

PETER GARRETT: Well in the morning, one of my favourite things actually, we’ve got a special big Australia Day citizenship ceremony and that’s a beaut one for people who are taking that step to become Australian citizens.

It’s pretty interesting, because sometimes you’ve got people who have actually lived here for a long time, they know a lot of, you know of –

STEVE VIZARD: Yeah.

PETER GARRETT:   – they’ve literally, they’re here, but they’re just taking that final step.

STEVE VIZARD: Yeah.

PETER GARRETT: And others are more recently arrived, but it’s a momentous day. It’s a beaut day, and of course there’s a morning tea and so on and so forth.

I then visit some of the community events that are taking place in the electorate. I’m actually going to go, which is what I normally do, in towards Redfern and there will be a concert of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and performers, and I’ll go and participate in that and I’ll be a part of the crowd and I’ll say g’day to the performers backstage, because I think it’s important that we recognise the indigenous heritage and living culture of this country on this day as well.

STEVE VIZARD: Very quickly Peter, the gap between our best and worst students in these NAPLAN results, the 2011 NAPLAN results, gave Christopher Pyne cause to say despite the billions spent by the Gillard Government there’s not been any tangible improvements in the only area that really matters – educating young people. Your response?

PETER GARRETT: Well, we are looking specifically at the deficient level of investment and policy under the government of which Chris Pyne was a part of when the Coalition were in Canberra, and it’s a trend that goes back a decade or so, under their watch.

Now I don’t normally get into this sort of blame game stuff, but that needs to be clearly understood.

The second thing to say –

STEVE VIZARD: But how would tests that cover Years 3, 5 and 7 – so these are you know largely young kids for the most part – and you’ve been in, Labor’s been in government for a few years – how is that directly attributable to a previous government?

PETER GARRETT: Well, on the question about top performing students, and that’s measured by a different test.  That’s not Years 3, 5 and 7, that’s testing kids who are aged 15, 93 per cent of our kids are performing at or above the national minimum standard and we have put significant resources and investment into things like teacher quality, national partnerships with the states, the national curriculum – which you and I are just discussing – and part of that investment is to identify what’s working well and make sure that that learning is shared right across the country.       

So we did have some positive results in those NAPLAN tests by the way.  I mean, for example, we saw things like Year 3 numeracy, you know, looking pretty good. Year 5 literacy, looking pretty good.  You know in some cohorts Year 9 reading, which can be quite problematic for teachers in schools – kids have got a lot of distractions now – signs of improvement there.

But there are still issues for us to address, but I absolutely reject Chris Pyne or anybody else in the Coalition starting to talk to us about taking education seriously, because that is literally what we’ve done.  We’ve nearly doubled the spending. There’s more to be done.  We want to work cooperatively on that.  We want to make every school a great school. But it’s going to take some time.

STEVE VIZARD: Peter, we’ve got to let you go. Peter Garrett, always good to talk to you.

PETER GARRETT: Thanks very much Steve.

STEVE VIZARD: That’s Peter Garrett, Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth.