Improve remote teachers’ pay and conditions, Abbott recommends

Tony Abbott has recommended boosting pay and conditions for teachers in remote schools.

Tony Abbott in federal parliament yesterday. Picture: AAP

Tony Abbott has recommended boosting pay and conditions for teachers in remote schools, including wiping out their HECS debt, as the key to ensuring indigenous children can have the same health, income and education achievements as all other Australians.

The former prime minister also said parents’ fines for breaking ­truancy rules should be able to be ­deducted from “government ­payments”.

“Most jurisdictions are once more ready to impose fines on consistently delinquent parents and guardians but fines are often ineffective when jail is the only mechanism for making people pay,” Mr Abbott said in his report as Scott Morrison’s envoy on indigenous schooling.

“Hence, all debts to government, including on-the-spot fines — and not just those to the commonwealth — should be deductible from government payments.”

Mr Abbott said salaries and ­retention bonuses for teachers in remote schools should be “increased substantially” after two years, and that the federal government should “waive” their HECS debt, in his formal report to parliament that is due to be delivered today. He also said remote communities prepared to adopt welfare management to boost school attendance akin to the Family Responsibilities Commission should get fast-tracked Indigenous Advancement Strategy projects, and that the Remote School Attendance Strategy should be funded for another four years.

Mr Abbott said that “amidst all the generally depressing indicators on indigenous Australia, this one stands out: indigenous people who finish school and who complete a degree have much the same outcomes and life expectancies as other comparable Australians”.

Apart from funding the ­Remote School Attendance Strategy for four more years, Mr Abbott recommends the program have more local school “buy-in” and community intelligence as well as more engagement with housing authorities and police.

“The Good-to-Great-Schools program, that’s reintroduced phonics and disciplined learning to quite a few remote schools, should be funded for another year to enable further evaluation and emulation,” he said.

“The government should match the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation’s private and philanthropic funding on an ongoing basis,” he said.

Mr Abbott defended a system of elite schooling because it created “an indigenous middle class”.

“Officialdom never likes selective schemes that send people to elite schools, but this one is undoubtedly working to lift people’s horizons, to open people’s hearts and to create an indigenous middle class,’’ he said.

Mr Morrison offered Mr ­Abbott the role of indigenous envoy when he took over as Prime Minister from Malcolm Turnbull in August.

Mr Abbott said when he was first offered the job he feared there would be little he could do as a backbencher but thought “fresh eyes” on an old problem could help, and he was encouraged by communities taking responsibility for themselves.

“On my recent swing through remote schools, all classrooms — every one of them — were free of the defeated teachers, the structure-less lessons and the distracted pupils that were all-too-prevalent some years back on my stints as a stand-in teacher’s aide; even if ­actual attendance rates still left much to be desired,” he said.

“As the national government, we should be prepared to make it easier for state and territory action to attract and retain better teachers in remote schools; and we should reinforce the self-evident maxim that every kid should go to school every day.’’