Indigenous leader Noel Pearson lashes ‘lurid’ report on literacy program

Indigenous leader Noel Pearson has rejected a “torpedo hit” in Nine newspapers on his signature Good to Great Schools Australia literacy program.

Noel Pearson has hit back at claims levelled against his Good to Great Schools Australia literacy program. Picture: Sean Davey.

Indigenous leader Noel Pearson has rejected a “torpedo hit” on his signature Good to Great Schools Australia literacy program, accusing Nine newspapers of misrepresenting departmental advice to a federal minister over the scheme’s funding.

In a detailed rebuttal, Mr Pearson says the “lurid” treatment of the weekend story in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age damaged his work on behalf of disadvantaged remote Aboriginal communities.

The article by education reporter Natassia Chrysanthos claims “millions of taxpayer dollars were being poured into” Good to Great Schools against advice to then education minister Dan Tehan that funding should be stopped.

It also accused a senior manager of the not-for-profit of bullying and humiliating staff, leading to an exodus of people that compromised operations.

Good to Great Schools, part of a group of ventures overseen by Mr Pearson, has been trialling the back-to-basics teaching techniques known as direct and explicit instruction to improve literacy for primary-age students in remote areas. The participating children were mostly but not exclusively Indigenous.

Writing in The Australian, he disputes the accuracy of a 2019 warning from the Education Department to the government, cited by Nine newspapers, that the program was achieving poor outcomes and its funding should be reconsidered.

Documents obtained under Freedom of Information law show that Mr Tehan had been urged by a departmental officer to tell Mr Pearson that 2020 would be the final year it would be supported.

But Mr Pearson insists the situation was misrepresented.

After the initial two-year period of the literacy trial in 40 schools ended in 2017, the program was extended in 20 schools in 2018 and 10 in 2019, he writes.

But an evaluation by Melbourne University would not be finalised until 2020.

“How could the departmental officer expect the minister to predetermine the government’s response ahead of the evaluation?” Mr Pearson writes.

“Essentially the officer was telling the minister to tell us: ‘This is the last of the money. You won’t be getting anymore next time. No matter what the evaluation says. Go and talk to the states and territories’.

“Chrysanthos misrepresents these circumstances.”

Defending the program’s outcomes, Mr Pearson acknowledges that results were mixed – “across Catholic and state schools. Across Western Australia and the ­Northern Territory. At schools with higher attendance and lower. At schools with stable teaching forces and those with annual turnover.”

But with all these qualifications, the evaluation found that the program had succeeded in meeting its goals to lift student achievement and to improve teacher skills, he maintains.

“The problem for remote schools is that teachers upskilled in the program then leave these communities,” he said.

On the allegations that the behaviour of a senior manager at Good to Great Schools had caused high staff turnover, Mr Pearson writes: “Not many organisations are immune from disgruntled staff who gather on social media sites and complain about their experiences.

“All organisations must comply with the law concerning employment.”

SMH editor Bevan Shields said the paper gave Mr Pearson, the manager concerned and the board of Good to Great Schools Australia “every opportunity” of a detailed right of reply.

“These opportunities were declined,” he said.

The offices of Mr Tehan, stood-aside education minister Alan Tudge and Mr Tudge’s stand-in, Employment Minister Stuart Robert, did not respond to requests for comment.