In an extremely provocative speech to private school leaders, Education Minister Stuart Robert has blamed “dud teachers” for dragging down Australian student results.
The Minister told the Independent Schools Australia National Education Forum that results would improve if this “brutality reality” was confronted.
“If you knock down the bottom 10 per cent of dud teachers, you will actually get our PISA results back to where they should be,” Mr Robert said in the speech, suggesting they were in the state system.
The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international assessment that measures 15-year-old students‘ reading, mathematics, and science literacy every three years.
Mr Robert told the gathering Australia was once among the top nations in education but unfortunately over the past 20 years had experienced a decline.
“Why don’t we face the brutal reality that we have got to … stop pussyfooting around the fact that the problem is the protection of teachers that don’t want to be there; that aren’t up to the right standard; that are graduating from university or have been for the last 10 years and they can’t read and write,” he said.
Mr Robert said the decline in results coincided with an increase of school funding and “simply funding education systems does not alone guarantee results”.
“Despite our 42 per cent real per capita increase in school funding our performance as relayed in PISA is going backwards cannot continue,” he said.
“I think it is reasonable to say on behalf of all of us, that is not acceptable.
“In reading the OEDC, the top 30 industrialised nations, we have gone from four to 16. When it comes to science we have gone from 8 to 17, mathematics we have dropped from 11 to 29 in the world. Despite a 42 per cent real increase in funding.”
Mr Robert also took aim at the curriculum, saying it was “nuts” history students were being taught to identify racist statues.
Queensland Education Minister Grace said she was appalled at Minister Robert’s comments.
“He’s been acting in the job for five minutes and thinks he knows it all,” she said.
“The account of the Minister’s comments at the conference reeks of a boys club, slapping each other on the back telling themselves how good they are, and sneering at the state system that educates around 580,000 students in Robert’s home state of Queensland.”
Ms Grace said the state system had some of the world’s best teachers and latest NAPLAN results suggest state schools and teachers are doing something right.
“For Minister Robert to say our state school teachers are ‘dragging the chain’ is outrageous, inaccurate, and an insult to hard working teachers across Queensland and Australia.”
