HECS relief: Morrison’s bid to close education gap

Teachers will have HECS debts waived if they work in remote indigenous communities, under a major initiative.

Scott Morrison: ‘I want to get kids into school and to stay in school for longer’. Picture: Kym Smith

Teachers will have HECS debts waived if they work in remote ­indigenous communities, under a major initiative aimed at improving education outcomes and reforming the Closing the Gap process, which has failed to achieve almost all of the targets set more than a decade ago.

Scott Morrison will today announce a wide-ranging education package to attract teachers to ­almost 300 schools and implement a $200 million program to keep indigenous children in school as part of a redesign of the existing system.

The 11th Closing the Gap report card, to be handed down today, ­reveals a decade-long failure with all but two of the seven targets set on health, education, employment and life expectancy outcomes for indigenous communities not having been met.

Claiming that the targets set in 2008 had been unintentionally “doomed to fail”, the Prime Minister yesterday told The Australian that he would take a practical approach to delivering real outcomes rather than delivering moral lessons. “This has been an acute disappointment for a lot of people for a long time,” Mr Morrison said.

“The idea of Canberra being able to fix it all has been mistaken. I’m not coming in as a saviour or with great moral lessons for the country. I am taking a pragmatic and clear-eyed approach.

“As Prime Minister, I’m not going to make a long list of pledges to add to a long list of disappointments.”

Acting on a series of recommendations made by Tony Abbott in his role as the government’s envoy on indigenous affairs, Mr Morrison will unveil a three-tiered education program that he claims will make a real difference to the lives of indigenous children.

The HECS-HELP debt for 3100 teachers would be wiped for those who committed to working in a very remote school for four years and would apply to the 292 schools in remote communities.

There would also be a $177m support program for access to secondary education opportunities, including mentoring.

“While all the other things are important, my focus is on wanting to get kids in school and them longer in school,” the Prime Minister said.

The employment target is among the failures over the past decade — Australia aimed to halve the gap in employment between indigenous and non-indigenous people but, nationally, the indigenous employment rate has increased by 4.2 percentage points over the decade to 2016.

The target to halve the gap for indigenous children in reading and numeracy is also not on track but the share of indigenous students at or above national minimum standards has improved.

The gap narrowed between 2008 and 2017. In particular, the share of indigenous students at or above minimum standards in Years 3 and 5 reading, and Years 5 and 9 numeracy, increased by about 11 to 13 percentage points.

The report acknowledges the current statistics are measures of inequality, but do not tell the full story.

Mr Morrison will today point to some of the stories of achievement including that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are living longer, 95 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander four-year-olds were enrolled in early-childhood education in 2017 and that more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are staying in school for longer. Also, more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have Year 12 qualifications than ever ­before.

In his speech today, Mr Morrison will say the only way forward is for greater involvement of indigenous bodies in the Closing The Gap process and greater accountability of state governments.

“I am aware that many have ­entered this place with grand plans and lofty promises — all soon forgotten,” Mr Morrison will say.

“As Prime Minister, I am not going to add further well-­intentioned promises to what is a long and disappointing list. The Closing the Gap initiative seeks to promote action across a broad range of fronts. It must and will continue to.

“I am not overclaiming or overpromising on this. We’ve got to fix the process, we’ve got to acknowledge the progress we’re making.

“As Prime Minister, I intend to have a more specific focus: to seek to make an impact in just one area that I believe can achieve generational change. And that’s education. I want to get kids into school and to stay in school for longer.”

As part of the overhaul of the Closing the Gap process agreed to at a meeting of the Council of Australian Governments late last year, indigenous bodies would be given greater involvement in the process. State governments for the first time would be subject to greater accountability in meeting targets.

Roy Ah See, co-chair of the Prime Minister’s indigenous advisory council, said last night that the decision to involve state governments and to work closely with Aboriginal organisations were ­important changes.

“We had bureaucrats that were stepping into this space and really had no idea about how to deliver services for the benefit of Aboriginal people,” Mr Ah See said.

“What the PM has done is he has taken people on a different direction. He’s said ‘no I want to hear from the Aboriginal communities themselves’. It is overdue. It is finally engaging the organisations that are doing the hard yards on the ground … I believe if you are from the red side, the blue side or the green side you have got to give credit where it is due and this is a credit to the PM.”

New and more realistic revised targets were also currently being drafted with a view to being finalised by July.

“There has been a senseless dysfunctionality at the heart of this which has defied a policy response. Things keep failing,” Mr Morrison told The Australian.