Class Struggle

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Jacob, let me start with you. You're 17, tell me what your reading levels were when you dropped out of the state high school you were at last year?

 

JACOB ROGOWSKI – DANN:  They weren't very high at all, actually. They were quite poor.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  How poor?

 

JACOB ROGOWSKI – DANN:  Um, I was probably in 10th grade when I dropped out - probably a 7th Grader or lower.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Your reading was at the level of a 7th Grader?

 

JACOB ROGOWSKI – DANN:   Yeah, or lower.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Why so low? Why do you think that was the case?

 

JACOB ROGOWSKI – DANN:  Um:. I just had a rough time going through school - reading, learning. It's just hard for me to learn.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Mm-hmm. And what was the school like? How did the school deal with that?

 

JACOB ROGOWSKI – DANN:  The school helped me do the work, helped me read and write, but they didn't help me to learn for myself, to do it myself. They didn't really help me with it.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  So you were really depending on having a teacher with you all the time to be able to do it?

 

JACOB ROGOWSKI – DANN:  Yeah. Yeah.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  OK. We'll get onto what happened after that in a moment. Before we do, Emily, I know you've been talking to Jacob before we started tonight. How different is your experience of school to that?

 

EMILY BAIRD:   Very, very different. I mean, I think it's less to do with the school itself and more to do with just our backgrounds. I mean, I naturally took an aptitude to learn, and I never found school difficult, and I love school.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  You're in Year 11.

 

EMILY BAIRD:   Yes.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  At an academically selective high school in Sydney, a Government school.

 

EMILY BAIRD:   Yes. Yes.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  What sort of attention do you get at your school?

 

EMILY BAIRD:   A lot. Our teachers are very committed and I mean, I think it's partly because we're quite easy to teach. But I mean, they are, like, very, very dedicated and we're very thankful for that.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  OK. Before you went to that school, that academically selective school, you went to a country school on the coast.

 

EMILY BAIRD:   Yes.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:   How did they compare?

 

EMILY BAIRD:   Um... The teaching standard probably wasn't as high, and also the student standard wasn't as high.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  But you think there was a difference between the teaching at that school and the school you're at now?

 

EMILY BAIRD:   Definitely, but I mean, I think it would be better to compare my other primary school to that. In that case, I mean, it was hard because there were only two teachers. With my other primary school, if you got a bad teacher for one year, you'd be guaranteed to get a different teacher the next year, and chances are they'd be better. Whereas, in the country school, there were only two teachers, so there wasn't really much choice.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:   Matina, what about you? I mean, I just wonder, listening to those two - where did your old school fit in this?

 

MATINA KONSTANTINAKOS:  Um... Good question. My old school was pretty much between them both. 'Cause we had the points where there was, of course, the low point, and it got to the point where a lot of the students were down about it, as Jacob said, he had a rough time and there were a lot of students who did have a rough time. Then we also had a lot of students that were needing the challenge, and they weren't getting it.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Why do you think they weren't getting it? What was happening at the school?

 

MATINA KONSTANTINAKOS:  There was too much going on. There was a whole-round laziness throughout the whole school, and it became like a virus. The moment one person got lazy, everyone got lazy.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Where do you think it came from originally, that laziness?

 

MATINA KONSTANTINAKOS:  I don't like to blame it on teachers, but I would say the teachers.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Why?

 

MATINA KONSTANTINAKOS:  'Cause I believe that you need the teachers to be able to push you. The teachers want to be there to teach you and push you to do what you want to do, right? And say, if the teacher doesn't motivate you in maths, you're not going to want to do maths. You're going to hate the subject.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  What were you doing all this yourself, with all this laziness going on around you? What were you doing?

 

MATINA KONSTANTINAKOS:   I was... Don't want to use the word "bludging", but I will. Yeah, I took a lazy streak. I was just following along with everyone else, 'cause it seemed like the easiest thing to do.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Do you think it would have been different if you'd been at, say, another school?

 

MATINA KONSTANTINAKOS:  Yeah. It would have been way different.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Did you have friends at other schools and did you compare what it was like?

 

MATINA KONSTANTINAKOS:  I met people from private schools. They were saying how much homework they got and how much they were studying in class. I was sitting there going, "Where was my homework? Why weren't the teachers pushing us to do that sort of thing?"

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  What about you Jacob, were you hearing stories from friends at other schools about it being different?

 

JACOB ROGOWSKI – DANN:  Yeah, I saw some friends from my old area, where I used to live. They just had, like, pretty much worse than me. They had pretty much no homework. There was just - like with her school, there was a lot of laziness and stuff.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Not a great picture, Peter Garrett, is it, really?

 

PETER GARRETT, MINISTER FOR SCHOOL EDUCATION:  Look, I'm not sure that we can generalise about Australia's schooling system based on the experiences we've had here, although I know they're really real for our guests.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  They're mixed.

 

PETER GARRETT:  That's right. But the fact is that teaching effectiveness or teacher quality is a key inside any school. If you've got a teacher that's teaching you well, then you're gonna be interested and do well. I think that, on the whole, our teachers in schools, both government and non-government schools, do a great job.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  But we also know there's a gap. We know that there's a big gap between students' performance. We've had that shown in the Gonski report, the recent report that the Government commissioned into schools. For a rich country like Australia, why is it that we have such a big gap, do you think?

 

PETER GARRETT:  I think one of the reasons is that we've got what Mr Gonski and his panel identified, which was called compounding disadvantage. If you have a student from a low socioeconomic background, who perhaps doesn't have high levels of English-language proficiency, perhaps in a remote area as well, then they are clearly not going to be able to successfully travel through their schooling journey as much as, say, a kid from a better-off background would do.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:   Should they be able to?

 

PETER GARRETT:  Yes, of course they should. It's absolutely essential for us as a country to make sure that every student, no matter where they're living, and no matter how much money their parents are earning, gets the best possible education. It's partly why we commissioned Mr Gonski to do that work because we do want to have a system which will deliver that.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  We'll get onto the detail of what might happen, or not, out of that a bit later on. Marius, I wonder what you think, hearing about remote communities and education. You're the chairman of an independent secondary college in the Tiwi Islands. Do the kids in the Tiwi Islands get an equal chance at an education, do you think, to other kids in the country?

 

MARIUS PURUNTATAMERI, TIWI COLLEGE:  It's true what Minister Garrett is saying, and I think a lot is being done with good intentions. Unfortunately, those good intentions aren't really met.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Why aren't they working, do you think? What sort of problems are you having in the Tiwi Islands?

 

MARIUS PURUNTATAMERI:   Well, I think the best intention is to bring good-quality teachers, and we do get quality teachers to come there, but obviously, being away from the big cities, and the other things that come with living in a remote community, is a big problem for a lot of these teachers that come.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  So you can't keep them?

 

MARIUS PURUNTATAMERI:   We can keep them as long as they want, but there are other things that come into play in trying to retain these quality teachers.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  How many kids go through to high school?

 

MARIUS PURUNTATAMERI:   Not many, unfortunately. I'm talking about the top end. Those that do sometimes find it hard, because there is no career jobs and pathways that leads to these jobs in our communities.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Morganics, you do hip-hop workshops in schools around the country. You visit a lot of remote communities. How different are the schools that you visit doing those hip-hop workshops, one to another?

 

MORGANICS:  To be honest, in a lot of the remote schools I've worked in, or regional schools I've been in, sometimes I can walk into somewhere that's two hours drive from the next town or next community, and there might be like eight Mac computers sitting up the back gathering dust and a whole lot of amazing software that's all set up there which I drool over as a producer and a musician myself. But the problem, often, can be that the staff –

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Don't know how to use it?

 

MORGANICS:  Yeah. They might have the hardware, but they may not have the training and the software to be able to use that stuff.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  A lady behind you is nodding her head. Why are you agreeing so strongly with that?

 

TEACHER:  I'm a teacher, and I'm technologically inept so I understand this. I know that there is, certainly opportunities for teachers to be trained, but definitely not nearly enough.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Naomi, you teach at a government primary school in the western suburbs of Sydney. Let's have a look at what it's like in your classroom. 

 

 

HAMPDEN PARK PRIMARY SCHOOL STORY:

 

 

NAOMI WARLOND, HAMPDEN PARK PUBLIC:  We're at Hampden Park Primary School, which is a very large school in Lakemba. We've got 700 students. I teach a kindergarten class. There are 20 children in my class. It's got quite a varied cultural make-up. I think there's 98.5% non-English-speaking background. The majority of students start with very little English-language skills and very little understanding of how our language works, how we read a book...

 

 

TEACHER:  Listen carefully to my retell. "In the story, the very hungry caterpillar, there was a caterpillar."  Have I finished?

 

CHILDREN:  No!

 

The majority of them are unable to identify initial sounds in words. The majority of them can't write their own name yet. And they're generally speaking in single-word utterances. So that's the starting point.

 

TEACHER:  What kind of fruits did he eat?

 

CHILD:  Strawberries.

 

TEACHER:  Strawberries.

 

CHILD:  Chocolate cake.

 

TEACHER:  Mustafa?

 

MUSTAFA:   Watermelon.

 

TEACHER:  Watermelon. Yes!

 

I tend to have my lessons as very targeted, very explicit, very focused lessons. I use a lot of visuals, because they can see it. So even if they're not understanding exactly what I'm saying in English, the visuals are there to support that learning.

 

Although the students are coming from that low SES background, the only thing that we really need to be mindful of is that these students can achieve.

 

TEACHER:  High-five! Thank you for helping me. Beautiful.

 

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  You look very proud of those kids.

 

NAOMI WARLOND:  I am so proud of those children! They have come so far in the 8-9 weeks that we've been at school.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  So most of them, when they came to you, couldn't speak English at all?

 

NAOMI WARLOND:   Very little English, so there is a lot of effort that goes into providing them with the opportunity to increase their oral-language acquisition, so they are able to function in a class setting, in a school setting, in the local environment.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Did you have specific training to do this when you trained as a teacher?

 

NAOMI WARLOND:   No. I did a regular primary-education degree. I have been really fortunate in that the school I'm at puts a great emphasis on teacher quality. We have had a lot of opportunities for professional development.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  I'm trying to paint a picture of this gap. Like, in all its complexity. There's a lot to look at and I want to come back to you, just quickly, Morganics though, about you and your hip-hop workshops. How big are the contrasts?

MORGANICS:  I work in a lot of different schools. I do remember one day I turned up to a very wealthy private school. I walked into the room, and someone said to me, "Check out the new tympanys." I was like, "Wow, these shiny tympany drums. These look amazing." They just had a very expensive refurbishment that had gone on. I knew that a couple of kilometres down the road, there was a primary school where classes were being held in sort of pre-fab buildings that were dripping. For me, I just sort of felt like it was quite criminal to sort of see, in that context, that this school is probably getting as much funding, if not more funding, than that public school down the road, which is very difficult for the teachers to run a basic class in.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Naomi, you're nodding your head. You agree with that?

 

NAOMI WARLOND:  Well, it's true. I mean, if you think about having a strong P and C, there's a lot of schools who receive additional funding for teachers, for resourcing, for excursions, through a strong P and C.

 

JENNY BROCKIE: And a strong P and C, with resources, is going to be in a wealthier area.

 

NAOMI WARLOND:  Of course, with a parent body that's able to contribute time and money.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Jane?

 

JANE CAROM, PUBLIC EDUCATION FOUNDATION:  There's something else that makes a big difference between schools. Of course it's resourcing, and of course it's all of those kinds of things. But it's also cultural capital. It's the kind of confidence that middle-class parents pass onto their children about how you're going to be able to negotiate academia, about schools, about those kinds of things.

 

My daughter is a teacher in a western suburbs high school. She went to a co-ed comprehensive public school on the north shore of Sydney. She just went back to talk to her old drama teacher on how to get tips on how to work with drama students. She said, "I'd forgotten how privileged my old public school was in comparison to the one I'm working in now in Emu Plains, and the aspirations that teachers have for their students are completely different from the two different areas." That's all about cultural capital, not resourcing.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:   What can you do about that? Kevin, you advocate choice and more competition between schools. How much do you think we can bridge this gap?

 

KEVIN DONNELLY, EDUCATION STANDARDS INSTITUTE:   Well, firstly, if I could, I disagree that wanting your child to do well is simply a middle-class attribute. I grew up in a working-class area in Broad Meadows in Melbourne, and working had-class people can have aspirations for their children. I think we need to be careful that we don't talk about disadvantage as being something that determines your fate.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  I don't think that's what Jane was saying. What Jane was saying was cultural capital - the idea of valuing education - that for a start that gives you an advantage.

 

KEVIN DONNELLY:   It does. I was driving in today in the taxi, a guy from Bangladesh who'd been here for four years, married, two children, and he probably did it hard in Bangladesh, but he was very thankful to be in Australia, like many migrants are. And his view is that he will give his kids a good education.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  I want to ask a question about choice, though.

 

KEVIN DONNELLY:  If you have books in the home, if you talk to your children over dinner, if you turn off the Game Boy and the laptop and the computer and actually interact with your children, take them to museums, to galleries, take them to theatre, give them books to read.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  That all costs money, Kevin, that all costs money.

 

KEVIN DONNELLY:  I think E-books are pretty cheap these days.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Is it that easy, Blake?

 

BLAKE OSMOND:  It's not that easy. What about the parent – there are children whose parents really aren't as committed to their child's future? It's them that fall through the crack. And it's them that, currently, the system allows to fall through the cracks.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  What do you think, Jacob, listening to this?

 

JACOB ROGOWSKI – DANN:  I think what he said - reading books and going to the movies, and like she said - they're normally in their native language, not in English - it's hard to teach them English to get them started at school.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  You grew up in a bi-lingual household - Polish and English. Was that difficult for you in terms of education?

 

JACOB ROGOWSKI – DANN:  Very. My Mum would speak in English, a few words in English, then change back to Polish and then English. My vowels got mixed up because of the different languages.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Do you think you've all got an equal opportunity for a similar education?

 

MATINA KONSTANTINAKOS:  No way.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  No, Matina? Why?

 

MATINA KONSTANTINAKOS:  Like, there's - it's just so different I reckon, if I was to go to Emily's school, I wouldn't cope because it would be throwing me into the deep end. I was never prepared, from a young age. Jacob, being thrown into a school like Emily's - I'm thinking he wouldn't have been prepared, from what he said before. There's such a difference that it's ridiculous.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Do you think you could have done better at a different school?

 

MATINA KONSTANTINAKOS:  Mmm, maybe, yes, if I did go to Emily's school, and I had started with a better education when I was younger, and just carried through, then yes of course I would have aimed even higher, I would have been pushed... who knows what could have happened.

JENNY BROCKIE:  Tonight, we're talking about how to give our kids an equal chance of a good education. Emily, I just wonder how you feel about having all the smartest kids concentrated in your selective government high school. What's the benefit for you, of being in a selective high school?

 

EMILY BAIRD:   Well, we're all like-minded people. I mean, everybody in my school has a genuine interest for learning. Like, in any other environment that I'm in - like, I do dancing, so when I go to dancing, me and my friends who also go to Sydney Girls are sort of labelled as the nerds - like we use big words and we're on a different level of conversation to them. Like, not a better level in any way, just a different level. Like, I can't connect with them in the same way that I can with my classmates.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Shuming, you go to the academically selective government school next door to Emily's. What do you think of the boy’s school?

 

SHUMING WANG:  It's all about the cohorts and, like, your students. With a selective school, your students - the people around you in your year - really push you to be your best and achieve your best academically.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  And you guys, just for the benefit of people in other states, all have to sit a test at the end of Year 6, yeah, to get into these schools, and you've got to get right up there to get in?

 

 SHUMING WANG:  Yeah. It's all about the students that you're with. They create the academic atmosphere that you're in. Their academic pursuit - because they want to do that, you want to do that, and you want to beat them. With 180 students, it's just "Beat, beat, beat, beat, beat," and this big chain of competition.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  What about the other kids left behind in the other schools? How do they go, do you think?

 

SHUMING WANG:  I think the other government schools - there's an opportunity for them to go into selective schools, like everyone has an equal opportunity to sit the test. It's all about your individual effort into whether you want to do that.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  There are heads shaking over here - Disagreement in the back row. Yes? You're Emily's mum.

 

CATHY SHERRY:  I'm Emily's mother. I shocked Emily in the car on the way. I said, "If I had a choice, I would abolish selective schools." She's horrified by this. She loves her school and enjoys it, and it's a wonderful school, and the teachers are really good. But they are no better than the teachers in other government schools.

 

I have three children, three daughters. I have one who goes to a selective school. I have one who got into a selective school and went to a private school on a scholarship - I cannot begin to describe how much we disliked it. The other two go to the local comprehensive public school. The teachers are similar in the schools. The local comprehensive school has better facilities than Emily's school in many ways - two dance studios, extraordinary opportunities in performing arts, and they do very well academically. It's a very good school.

 

I also have spent 20 years teaching law at UNSW so I have seen the kids who come out of the selective system and I think there are real problems with the system.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:   What do you think they are? Why don't you two just go at one another here.

 

EMILY BAIRD:   I agree – there are massive problems with the system.

 

CATHY SHERRY:  The selective school system, but very much the coaching system that feeds into it, gives a very distorted perception of education. Education becomes a game which you win by getting the highest marks that you possibly can and the way you do that is making sure your strategy is to predict, as accurately as possible, what is on the exam, and to give the examiner what they want.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  I want to ask Shuming’s parents whether they agree with this,  Li and Jason - is it a game to get in?

 

CATHY SHERRY:  I meant a serious game, not a funny game.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  I know you mean a serious game.

 

JASON WANG:  One thing I want to say - when we talk about equal opportunity, are we in the back of our minds, thinking about equal outcome?

 

MAN:  You have to differentiate.

 

JASON WANG:  It has to be based on the kid, whether he or she wants to do it. I have two boys - one in private school, one in public school. The kids are different. It's the kids that determine it.

 

KEVIN DONNELLY:  I don't think "equality" ever meant everybody being the same. You can be equal but different.

 

JASON WANG:  Yeah.

 

KEVIN DONNELLY:  Some, where I grew up, I mentioned before - we had a technical school, a high school, a Catholic school - people chose. We live in a country where we celebrate that choice. And many people come to live here because they can do so much for their children.

 

JANE CARO:  The trouble with that is that, all over Australia, we have the same basic hierarchy of schools in every area - regardless of whether the area is rich or poor. It goes basically like this. At the top of the academic tree is had public selective school, if there is one. The next one is the highest-fee private school. Then the next one after that is usually the girls' school, either public or private, with the highest academic results. Then the co-ed comprehensive - could be Catholic or public. Then we go down to the boys' school, usually the public boys-school, the least-high achieving. If that is the hierarchy of results in most areas of Australia, then we're not talking about choices, we are not talking about anything else. We're talking about predicting of how kids are going to do, which is nothing to do with, you know, their determination.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  You're saying it's the structure of the system that's the problem

 

JANE CARO:  The system is actually advantaging some families.

 

EMILY BAIRD:   Surely boys at an academically selective school are more determined to achieve in their HSC …

 

JANE CARO:   Because they come from socioeconomic backgrounds disproportionately - I'm not making it up. We've got the evidence.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Jason, what did you want to say?

 

JASON WANG:  We are looking at this background - the social-economic background rather than looking at the process of making them change.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  But Jane's point - Peter Garrett, I want you to answer Jane's point, which is that the structure of the system is part of the problem.

 

PETER GARRETT:  Well, look, this is a really useful, healthy and fascinating discussion. It's one we quite often have when I do the forums, and sometimes with the Prime Minister, about what we're doing in education reform. I'm the product of both systems. I went to a public school at the primary level, and a non-government school at the secondary level. As a minister, what I'm very interested in is how we can create the best opportunities for kids to do the best that they can in whatever school that they're in.

 

We're not looking at schools on a systems basis. We're looking at schools on a "kids in the school performing the best that they can" basis. We've provided a lot of support for low socioeconomic schools for national partnerships, and teacher quality because we know that's really important. We do need to look at whether the way in which we fund schooling is about funding the effectiveness of the education outcome, and on what basis we should do it. One of those basis should be need. We should address the question of need. I think that's a very exciting thing that we're just about to look at.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  And we're not now?

 

PETER GARRETT:  Not specifically, no

 

BRONWYN HINZ:   Can I jump in on that point? I think the interesting thing here, as the minister was talking about - it's funding based on need. I think public and private labels can sometimes cloud more than they clarify. There are some private schools that get money that perhaps they don't need. There are other schools public and sometimes private schools that could do with much more, based on the needs of the students.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Is that a good formula, Kevin - need?

 

KEVIN DONNELLY:  As we know, the current model is based on need.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  The minister just said it wasn't.

 

KEVIN DONNELLY:  If I can finish - the socioeconomic status model introduced under the Howard government - if you're a school like the Kings or Melbourne Grammar, you would be lucky to get 13.7% in Government funding, as to what a Government student would get.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Peter, I just want you to respond - different views here. You're saying it's not based on need at the moment and it should be. Kevin is saying it is already based on need.

 

PETER GARRETT:  Look, I don't think that it is, although there is a need component in it. But governments haven't traditionally looked at funding education according to what the education outcomes they're seeking for the kids in their schools. That hasn't really happened, specifically. Of course it's been part of the policy framework but it hasn't been a specific thing that governments have done and I think they can they should.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Blake, you wanted to jump in?

 

BLAKE OSMOND:  What Kevin says about it being based on a needs basis is absolute rubbish. We can look at the comparison of My School - where I go, Illawarra Sports High on the south coast - my school gets less money than Knox Grammar. I go to one of the lowest schools via socioeconomic status in the state, and Knox Grammar gets more money from the Federal government – where is the equality in that?

 

KEVIN DONNELLY:  You're misleading people. If you add Government and State funding - if you look at Government funding from both, your school actually gets more money. The other school, the parents put in and I don't think we're at a stage where we say to parents, "You lose money because you're working hard and want the best for your children."

 

JANE CARO:  You can get the best for your children in a government school. I really hate the way people say “Oh, you want the best for your children, you will have to pay and go to a private school.”

 

KEVIN DONNELLY:  I didn't say that. I'm in favour of choice.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:   Blake, I want to pick up on your story though. You're a Year 12 student, a smart kid in a below-average-performing state high school. How have you managed to perform well at that school?

 

BLAKE OSMOND:   It's through hard work. You have to have extreme personal determination. Even then, it's hard. I can confidently say that I believe that I would have done better if I was at a higher school or a private school.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  You had a chance to go to a private school?

 

BLAKE OSMOND:  I did and I didn't do it because, at the time, I think I was a little bit naive and thought that I probably could get the best from my public school. At the moment, I don't think the resources are there for me. The other day, I had to go out and buy a textbook because school can't afford it.

 

EMILY BAIRD:   It is it because of resources or the students? If you went to a private school, would you achieve better because you had smart boards or because the students were willing to achieve?

 

BLAKE OSMOND:   I think I would perform better because I wouldn't have to go out and buy the textbook - there would be a variety of textbooks already there, because the private school would have the resources.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  OK. Describe your school a little bit more for me. What's your school like?

 

BLAKE OSMOND:  It's tough. At the moment, we've had a if hole in the first layer of the roof all year - Still waiting for it to be fixed.

 

CATHY SHERRY:  I think that we are making completely unrealistic demands of schools. So that a lot of the really complex problems we are talking about - no schoolteacher is ever going to be able to solve. I have kids in the local government school. Emily's school is not better-funded than your school. Her school leaks. They have a lake in the middle of it that never drains.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  OK. We've still got the gap, though, and we still think the gap is unacceptable at the level that it’s at.

 

JANE CARO:  We need to fix that gap by actually looking at the amount of money that individual students may need to overcome the difficulties and disadvantages they bring through the gate of the school when they first arrive. We have some kids that are gonna cost us $30,000 or $40,000 a year to educate, and some kids that are gonna cost us $6,000 a year to educate because of the difference of what they bring with them as they come. We need to be doing something about looking at that. What we do now is we don't do that. We actually talk about equality as if giving all kids the same amount of money would be equitable. It isn't.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Gary, I'm interested in your perspective on this. You're principal of a small, private religious school. You've got 250 students?

 

GARY UNDERWOOD, ST ANTHONY’S COPTIC ORTHODOX COLLEGE:  When it rains, we run for the buckets because the roof leaks because we bought a Jeff Kennett school 15 years ago and haven't had any money to fix the roof. We have those physical problems. We also have students who got ATA scores of 99.4. We have 25% of our kids in the 90-ATAR score and above. We have huge results. Yet 98% of our kids come from Middle Eastern families. 50% don't speak English when they start at our school. How do we get good results?

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Bishoy is one of your students. Can you answer that question?

 

BISHOY:  Myself, I'm Egyptian - both of my parents are Egyptian. I think that, if a kid wants to learn, and wants to achieve in life, they will. We haven't got electives. We haven't got art, woodwork, metalwork, all that kind of stuff. But two years ago, every single one of our students went on to tertiary studies. Every single one.

 

GARY UNDERWOOD:  The national partnership scheme is a great development. The amount of money that Peter has put into the national partnerships to train my staff - from where they were two years ago when I started to where they are now is mammoth improvement in the quality of teaching that we have.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:   Louise, what do you think, listening to this? You're the acting principal where Naomi teaches. I just wonder - what happens with the kids at your school when they become high achievers? Do they stay in the government system, or do they leave?

 

LOUISE CHALLIS, HAMPDEN PARK PUBLIC:  Look, our parents are extremely inspirational for their children and any suggestion that children who come from communities that serve low socioeconomic families aren't ambitious for their kids is absolutely nonsense. But they do skim the cream off –

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Who skims the cream off?

 

LOUISE CHALLIS:   Our parents certainly have a perception that, if I can make a choice about where I send my child - whether to the hierarchy that Jane described, pretty much I would say our parents feel exactly the same way. If they can make a choice, it's implied that that comprehensive public school, there must be something wrong with it, if I've got other options.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  So private schools are a better option for their kids - is that the assumption?

 

LOUISE CHALLIS:   Private schools certainly have that social capital about them. They do. When you've come from a disadvantaged area yourself - many of our families have not been through school themselves here in Australia. They aspire to that. There is this social cachet around private schools.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:   What does that mean for your school?

 

LOUISE CHALLIS:    I don't want to get into a public-versus-private thing.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  I don't either. But I think it's interesting if we're looking at what happens structurally with the system.

 

LOUISE CHALLIS:   It's very difficult to see 20 Year 1 children walk out the door when you quo they've performed really well and teachers like Naomi have worked really well throughout kindergarten to raise these students coming in speaking very little English to leaving at a level of 9, ten and above. It's very hard to see them leave. But it's not as simple as "The good kids go to the private schools and other kids stay with us." It's not as simple as that.

 

JANE CARO:   From a marketing perspective, there is one universal thing - anything that is difficult to get into, like buying a first-class ticket as opposed to economy - is more inspirational. People want what's hard to get into. They want to get to the selective and the fee-charging schools because they see it as something to aspire to. Comprehensive schools labour under a market problem, in that they are open to everyone that has, across all markets, the tendency to make people think "It can't be as good." I happen to think that is wrong. Maybe I've been in marketing long enough to know how superficial those judgements are.

 

KEVIN DONNELLY:  Why is it, if I want to go to Baldwin High with my child, I need at least $1.4 million to buy a house in the enrolment zone.

 

JANE CARO:  Public schools operate in their local area.

 

KEVIN DONNELLY:  We're differentiating between non-government and government but in fact it's not just selective schools in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide.

 

JANE CARO:   No system is perfect.

 

KEVIN DONNELLY:  If you want to go to the best –

 

JANE CARO:  Baldwin High will be the same as - very hard to get into.

 

KEVIN DONNELLY:  To stop people buying those homes on the grounds of equity and social justice.

 

JANE CARO:  Yeah, you'd be right, Kevin.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Peter?

 

PETER GARRETT:  Well we are certainly not going to buy into that particular suggestion.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Education and real estate, what a good combination?

 

PETER GARRETT:   That's right. One thing that strikes me as the Education Minister - Australia has a very diverse education system. I think the fact is that the Australian public accepts that. There are a lot of complexities in the culture and the exchange and how kids do in the schools and so on. But the challenge for us is to recognise that we've got that diverse system and to make sure that the way in which we fund schools delivers to the kids, whatever school system and whatever school they're in, the best opportunity to succeed to their potential. You're focusing, quite rightly, on the equity gap. That's one of the things the Gonski panel showed us but it also showed us that our best-performing kids are performing as well too.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  What about the idea of being able to choose the kids who go to a school? Jane? What do you think? Private schools can theoretically choose the kids.

 

JANE CARO:  With that hierarchy that I described before of the aspirations of parents from various different types of schools, basically what that means is that the more desirable schools, both public and private, can pick and choose which kids they will accept and which kids they won't.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Are you saying they shouldn't be able to do that?

 

JANE CARO:   I don't know whether they should or they shouldn't, but they can. Let's be realistic about the effect that that has. Basically, that means, when we talk about choice for parents, what we're really talking about most of the time is actually choice for some schools because there are certainly many parents who have little or no choice. If you don't have enough money to pay fees, if you've got a boy who's "Good with his hands," you will find not much choice in terms of where you'll send your kids and the same for parents with kids with disabilities who don't have the money to pay fees.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Blake, what do you think about the whole idea of choosing –

 

BLAKE OSMOND:  I think part of it is morally wrong, that a private school should be able to, maybe, reject a kid. I know we've had reports of some schools rejecting kids because they're gay or not so smart - I mean - they're kids. At the end of the day, they should be able to gain the best education possible.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Up the back, you wanted to say something?

 

SCOTT COLEMAN, EAST SYDNEY HIGH:  When we talk about this, we shouldn't say it's public or private. We're a private school that daters for kids that don't fit in the mainstream. Most of our kids are low socioeconomic background. Jacob is from our school. They wouldn't last in a mainstream school. They need a one-on-one teacher. They need a class of four. They need a small environment. They need flexible hours and flexible welfare issues to help them. So I don't think we can say that all private schools are like this and all public schools are like this. We should clarify and say "disadvantaged."

 

MORGANICS:  I think one thing that bugs me a bit about the debate is it seems all about more money and our kids getting the top of the top, selection. I think some more pressing issues is actually getting young people to school – literally - like, in Tiwi Islands or Top End, driving around and picking up kids and getting them to school, wanting to attract them and wanting dudes like yourself to come to the school because you dig it, because it's interesting because they can engage with it.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Jacob, you were agreeing when Morganics was talking about how to get kids more motivated.

 

JACOB ROGOWSKI – DANN:  Yeah. When I was attending East Sydney High, I travelled from the Central Coast to the city. It took 2.5 hours to get to school.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Tell me more about that. You talked earlier about dropping out of school last year. You had a reading age of eight when you dropped out at the beginning of last year and then you went to East Sydney High, an independent school. What was it like? How was it different?

 

JACOB ROGOWSKI – DANN:  Um, it was more one on one. They would help you, silt you down - like with my English, they would actually sit me down and make me say words over and over again until I got it right - they would help me with it. If I had any problems, like travelling - they would help me with bus fares. Everything altogether, they would always help me, no matter what it is, they would help me somewhat.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Did you have to pay fees to go to that school?

 

JACOB ROGOWSKI – DANN:  Ahhh... No, you don't have to.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  No, shaking your head up there?

 

SCOTT COLEMAN:   $50 a term if they can afford it.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  So how can you afford it, as a school?

 

SCOTT COLEMAN:  We get grants through - we're a charity organisation as well. We get grants - people donate money. We get Government funding as well, the same as any other private schools.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  How many kids at the school?

 

SCOTT COLEMAN:  At the moment there are about 27 kids - so far this year. Last year when Jacob went through – 52 - So very small numbers - Very limited classes. The main thing is trying to deal with the welfare issues as well. With Jacob, he had a lot of stuff going on. Education was secondary to everything else that was occurring for him.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Do you want to talk a little bit about what else was going on?

 

JACOB ROGOWSKI – DANN:  I recently got kicked out of my mother's place. I was actually living with another kid who went to that school, on his couch for a few months. Then I moved to the Central Coast with me and my sister. Yeah, I just travelled to school every day.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Every day, you'd travel from the Central Coast to the inner city of Sydney, which took how long?

 

JACOB ROGOWSKI – DANN:  2.5 hours. 30 minutes by bus to the train station, and then two hours on the train. And back.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  That's motivation, yeah? What's your reading and comprehension like now?

 

JACOB ROGOWSKI – DANN:  Oh, I would say it's - they said it was up to about - I got 90 own my English test.

 

SCOTT COLEMAN:   70. 70 in your English test. In his school certificate test, he got 70 in English.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  So you got your school certificate?

 

JACOB ROGOWSKI – DANN:  Yep. My old school before that, I probably would have got maybe 40, 30. Wasn't that high.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:   Why is it, though, that it takes a school of 27 kids that's a charity to be able to deliver that result rather than our Government-funded comprehensive system? Why does it take that to deliver an educational outcome that's better than our Government system? Peter, why do you think it is?

 

PETER GARRETT:  I'm not sure it's always going to be better, although I think you're doing a great job. The question here is a simple one - there will be a number of kids, like Jacob for whatever reason, who will require a certain amount of extra support and effort to be focused on them. Depending on the range of issues or challenges that they have, they may require the opportunity to have specialised help in the system. In this case, clearly it was on offer there.

JENNY BROCKIE:  Matina, you talked much earlier about how difficult it was at your government school in Melbourne. Tell us what kept you at that school, and what changed.

 

MATINA KONSTANTINAKOS:  Well, I stayed up until about Year 9, and then I started thinking to myself, "I've got to do something about this." I saw some of my friends from other schools getting a better chance at things. I thought, "Why should I be kept back?" That's all we were thinking - by the end of that year, I was gone, moving to another school.

 

Then, Mr Napoli came to the school. We had a whole new principal. Mind you, we had changed principals about three times within three years. So when Mr Napoli came to the school, my Mum went to speak to him. When she did, he goes, "I've got plans. Hold off with the move - something's gonna happen." My Mum's thinking, "Alright, he seems confident. So we will." I stayed, and it was one of the best decisions I made.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Why?

 

MATINA KONSTANTINAKOS:  With the change, everything changed. You had students that left, and we had other new students that came in, that were more willing to put everything aside that was happening outside of the school. The reputation we had - they deputy care anymore. Then, everyone had more of a positive attitude to come to school. That's on the topic before of how everyone was saying, "You, just leave and go to a private school if you've got that higher intelligence" or whatever. Everyone that stayed behind, we were helping each other. If someone was –

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  What made this change? It sounds huge.

 

MATINA KONSTANTINAKOS:  It was a big change. It was just that everyone was sick of being the low-rep school. So the moment Faulkner College closed down and reopened as John Faulkner College, everything was new. Even walking into the school with a new uniform - blazers, shirts, ties - we felt new. We felt like we belonged to somewhere.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:   Mohamed, you go to the school as well. What was that change like for you?

 

MOHAMED NAHI:  Um, the change was a big one, one that I wasn't actually expecting. Coming to the end of Year 9 and going into Year ten, I was convinced I wanted to leave. Absolutely 100% sure. Going into Year 10, I was advised by several teachers, like Matina, to stay and things would change, and that things would look up. I did, and here I am today.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Mr Napoli, what did you do?

 

GUS NAPOLI, JOHN FAWKNER SECONDARY COLLEGE:   Goodness. It's not me. I mean, it certainly was very much involving the community.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  This was an experiment in Victoria, wasn't it? It was. How much extra money did you get?

 

GUS NAPOLI:   Basically, there's been funding for the last three years with national partnership, which would have been along the lines of $200,000 a year. Then there would have been some money from the State, which would have helped in terms of the initiative. The closing of the old school, the reopening of the new school on the same site - that was a symbolic component of it. It was internally what we were doing.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  How many of the staff did you keep?

 

GUS NAPOLI:  We changed roughly 45% of the staff.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  That's a lot of people.

 

GUS NAPOLI:  It was a massive change, and it wasn't an easy thing to do.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Could you have done that without this being an experiment?

 

GUS NAPOLI:  The short answer to that is no. Without the support - both State and Federal funding to support this initiative here - I think it's almost impossible for any principal or school community to do it on their own.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Were the teachers, the motivated teachers, the key to getting the kids motivated? Or were you getting the kids motivated separate to that?

 

GUS NAPOLI:   It was a combination of, but clearly having the right type of teachers and professionals that could really embrace what the change agenda is, that could ensure the fundamentals were being delivered in the classroom of really good teaching and learning - that's key.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  What are your outcomes like?

 

GUS NAPOLI:   Outcomes have certainly improved over the last couple of years. Mind you, this has only taken place from the start of 2010. So it's still a relatively fresh journey.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Peter, would you like to see all schools to be able to do what John Fawkner did?

 

PETER GARRETT:   I'm proud of the fact that we are actually encouraging principal autonomy. We expect around 1,000 pilot schools around Australia to do the kind of things we're hearing about in John Fawkner - in other words, give the school leaders to take charge of their school environment and determine how they want to make the school go better, basically.

 

JANE CARO:  We mustn't ignore that you got extra money, you got $200,000 extra money. A lot of principals out there would love to do something similar, but they don't have the money. What we find, when principals are given autonomy, say with the Kennett revolution, a lot of the things they were able to do, they were able to do because they got more funding.

 

MAN:  He got rid of 45% of the staff!

 

JANE CARO:  Yes, but he had the extra money. And you said, didn't you, that it was incredibly important to have that extra funding. People always say, "Money is not the answer." Only people with lots of money only ever say "Money is not the answer." People with no money are saying, "Yes, it'll help a lot, thanks!"

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Peter Garrett, David Gonski says our schools need $5 billion extra money. Are they going to get extra money? I know you're not committing to the $5 billion but can you say that they are going to get extra money on top of what they get at the moment.

 

PETER GARRETT:   I'm not saying at this point Jenny, I’m not ducking the question, but I'm getting the right way around. Mr Gonski made an estimate of the amount that he thought would be needed. We now need to work that through with State governments, who run the government school system, and through the independent school sector. There's a lot of work to be done. Once that work is concluded, if we can reach consensus as a country on a new schooling resource standard, then we will look closely at what it will cost.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Can you close the gap without more money?

 

PETER GARRETT:  Well, probably not. But it's just not about money only. I'll make one point here to Jane and others - I look at the amount of money that we do spend - for example, on Indigenous education and I think we can safely the say that that money is not doing the job we want it to. We know that money applied well, and where you've got good teaching, a focus on good education in place, can make a difference.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Blake, you're in the NSW Youth Parliament. You want to be Education Minister -da-da - watch out. If you had his job –

 

PETER GARRETT:  Careful what you wish for!

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  If you had his job, what would you do - if you had Peter Garrett's job

 

BLAKE OSMOND:  $5 billion. The full Gonski review. For us to ever get anywhere in education reform, we need to look at what Gonski said, we need to take it seriously, and we need to implement it in its full recommendations.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Gus, I want to go back to you for one minute. How did you attract good teachers to teach at your disadvantaged school? Because that's key to this - How did you do that?

 

GUS NAPOLI:  Look, it's taken time. It's about investing in your teachers as well so some of the teachers that we had actually attracted to the school - it was about investing in them as well, and developing their capacity. That is key.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Did you pay them more?

 

GUS NAPOLI:  No, absolutely not. As a State Government school, we're set on certainly realities.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Emily, why are you frowning?

 

EMILY BAIRD:   I think an issue being avoided here is what is the purpose of education? A lot of what we're talking about is - we're measuring the success of schools by their ATAR school or whatever it is. But look at Jacob - he has succeeded in his education because he achieved his Year 10 school certificate and that means he can get an apprenticeship and do what he wants to do. The purpose of education should be education for life, rather than education for being a doctor or getting 99.95.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:   Matina, what did you want t o say?

 

MATINA KONSTANTINAKOS:  I was going to add, think of it this way - from going to a school that I thought I had no hope with, I'm actually studying right now to be a teacher so I want to be able to give - 'cause I absolutely love two subjects, right? I always found art very interesting, and I loved it, and sport. And I always thought I had great teachers in those two subjects. I always thought, "Why shouldn't I give that feeling to someone else?" I loved it so much, they can love it too.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  OK. We have to wrap it up here, I'm afraid. You can keep talking about this online - go to our website, Twitter, or Insight's Facebook page.