AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE OF
GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS
PRESS RELEASE 945
MR DUTTON AND ‘SCHOOLS REFORM’
18 July 2022
Mr Dutton was reported in The Australian of July 2-3 2022 as saying that education will be a key battleground for the Coalition as it seeks to reassert Liberal Party values following its election loss.
But instead of perhaps reasserting the Gonski ‘Needs’ policy as Simon Birmingham attempted to do; instead of even considering the growing inequities in funding policy, Dutton plans to follow the New Right in America and attack ‘curriculum’ values. He is calling for a debate over the national curriculum that he says is at risk of being hijacked by unions and activists.
The problem is, the curriculum has already been hijacked – by the previous Coalition federal Government. Since the 1990s the Coalition, under Howard, have been attempting to gain control of the national curriculum, hijacking it out of the hands of State Education Departments, and schools themselves.
They have been on a crusade to control what ‘values’ are taught in our schools.
The imposition of the chaplaincy program on our public schools was one strategy used by the Howard government, but continued by all federal governments since, to promote their particular ‘values’.
But further centralised control of the curriculum has also been assisted by the Labor Government which established the administrative infrastructure, and established ACARA – the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Authority.
Rick Morton of The Saturday Paper of July 9-15 however, has revealed leaked documents that show the damage already done by the Coalition before they left office, in particular to the history curriculum.
THE SATURDAY PAPER
JULY 9 –15, 2022 | No. 407
DOGS COMMENT
For 150 years the private sector have derided our public systems for being too centralised and demanded they be permitted, at public expense, to teach according to their particular religious values. They have not only succeeded in raiding the public Treasuries to the tune of billions of dollars per annum. Their political representatives are now attempting to impose those values on the public system.
In the 21st century we now discover we have a highly centralised administration in Canberra which determines what our children are taught in school, and we are confronted with Dutton, the leader of the rump of the Liberal Party echoing the ‘values’ of the extreme American Right.
Parents and teachers need to carefully watch this space.
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