‘Let every school have a flag’: Coalition's plan for curriculum overhaul, Western culture focus

Speaking at a conference over the weekend, Shadow Education Minister and self-confessed ‘policy nerd’ Julian Leeser, said data drawn from PISA, NAPLAN and other assessments clearly shows that the curriculum is partly to blame for our nation’s declining academic performance.

“[It has the] unique distinction of being both vague and overcrowded … the content is not clearly sequenced, it doesn’t build on the foundational knowledge layer upon layer in a carefully planned way, [and] you can’t pick it up and teach the teaching points.

“In fact, you can’t pick it up at all. It’s in an online form and it’s not even downloadable in a single document. If you print it out, depending on the font size, you’ll get some 3000 pages.

“But what you won’t get is a teaching plan,” Lesser lamented.

Taking aim at Education Minister Jason Clare who has announced ‘keyhole surgery’ in the form of a review of the K-6 maths curriculum, Leeser argued that urgent ‘open heart surgery’ on the entire document was a far better option.

“Our academic performance shows that we can’t afford to wait until 2032 to have that much broader look at our curriculum. The whole curriculum must be reduced to make it shorter, to make it clearer, and to make it more usable.

“We owe our children to do better … and most importantly, I’d like to see a curriculum that gives time back to teachers and principals,” he said.

As part of the Coalition’s five-pronged policy to turn around our ‘grim’ educational scene, Leeser said the curriculum overhaul would start by removing the three cross-curricular priorities. These would be better taught as subjects in their own right, he said.

“All the evidence points to the need for clear, sequentially structured teaching points that build on layers of knowledge. How is that consistent with having cross-curricular priorities, which almost by definition just can’t be sequenced in that same way?” Leeser queried.

The three cross-curricular priorities are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Culture, Asia and Australia’s Engagement with Asia and Sustainability.

Given each are embedded across learning areas, they are taught by teachers who lack deep subject matter expertise, Leeser added.

“I … think it does the subjects themselves a disservice, and it does our teachers a disservice.”

“Reducing the dross and the distraction” is what the Coalition’s curriculum reform is all about, Leeser reiterated.

“As you know, I’m the Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians. I want to see our students learn about Indigenous heritage, just like they learn about our British foundations and our multicultural character.

“I’m the co-chair of both the Parliamentary Friends of India and the Parliamentary Friends of China; I understand the importance of Australia’s engagement with Asia.

“And I’ve been on the record about the need for a sensible and balanced approach to sustainability. All three topics are important each in their own way.

“But that does not mean that they should be delivered thematically to our children as cross-curricular priorities. Teach them as discrete, carefully planned topics that fit properly within geography or history or science class.

“Give them the respect as subjects that they deserve, and the same goes for the teachers who are teaching them. If you’re teaching maths or science or history class, I’d like you not to have to worry about teaching these additional bits.”

Leeser, who sat on the Teach for Australia board, said every Australian school should have an Australian flag and that students ought to take pride in the values for which it stands.

According to Leeser, a major challenge is that too many Australian children are being denied their “birthright” to learn about Western values and culture.

On this point he credits Professor Simon Haines, who was the inaugural CEO of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation in Sydney, and education author and commentator Dr Kevin Donnelly AM for inspiring his thinking about the curriculum and the importance of liberal education.  

“Within the context of our shorter and more precise national curriculum, I want Australian students specifically… [to learn] the basics like democracy, the rule of law, a fair go, the development of Australia’s system of constitutional monarchy and federation, the incredible, stable system of government that has been the result of all of that, our Judeo-Christian inheritance – all of which have been part of liberal education policies for the last 30 years, and which only now Labor has started to belatedly accept,” Lesser contended.

More Australian students should be “exposed to the foundations of Western culture, the classical works of literature and art and music and philosophy that underpin and enrich the ideas that have shaped our country”, he elaborated.

The Coalition’s curriculum reform would also build a sense of pride about what it means to be Australian, Leeser noted.

“Let every school have a flag, let every student take pride in the flag, in the history of the flag and the values for which it stands.

“On teaching our children about national pride, there is much to do.”

Having been in the portfolio for almost a year, Lesser said he had visited schools from across all sectors and contexts and was yet to encounter a single person who sings the praises of the Australian Curriculum.

Taking to Reddit to air their thoughts, teachers have largely criticised Leeser’s comments.

“The last revision to the curriculum was published under the coalition government.

“Why does no journalist point this out when they’re trashing the curriculum?” one noted.

Another took up a similar argument:

“ACARA V8 and V9 were both devised by the Coalition and seriously eroded if not outright eliminated indigenous and union/socialism content from the curriculum.

“So what are they on about?” they posed.

One educator was highly sceptical there would be great change afoot.

“The devil will be in the details. In principle reforming cross-curricular priorities is fine but given the tendency of coalition governments to play politics with the History curriculum over the last 30 years I’m not convinced this isn’t more of the same.”

 Removing the three cross curriculum priorities “changes nothing for a classroom teacher,” another quipped.

“Did any teacher in Maths for example wake up today and think “I’m going to make ‘Australia’s engagement with Asia’ the priority of today’s lesson or a lesson in general in their entire career?” they posed.

Another teacher said they simply couldn’t bear one more curriculum change.

“No more curriculum overhauls. Please. I can’t take it.

“Crossing out one line at the curriculum level means weeks of work at the teacher level. A complete overhaul means five years of work.

“At the very least let AC 9. bed in for a decade or so before we run with another change,” they implored. 

Last week Education Minister Jason Clare declared that the Australian curriculum had to be fixed, pointing to reforms made in the UK as the template to follow.

“The Poms did this over a decade ago, and their results went up yesterday, not down,” Clare said during an appearance on Sunrise where he discussed the latest PISA results.

“We’re starting with maths because maths is sequential, and we’re starting with the first three years of maths ... in a couple of weeks, we’ll get advice on the changes we need to make to the maths curriculum for those little kids.

“And then we’ll make a decision in a couple of weeks about the next chunk of the curriculum that we need to fix.”