Education Minister Simon Birmingham hits out at ABC over ‘deliberately provocative clickbait’

The Education Minister has hit out at the ABC over an interactive tool he described as ‘deliberately provocative clickbait’.

Minister for Education and Training Simon Birmingham. Picture: AAP

Education Minister Simon Birmingham has hit out at the ABC for publishing an interactive online tool that tries to convince parents that they’ve made the wrong decision in sending their child to a private or public school, saying “the piece is clearly designed to pit school sectors against one another”.

Users are first asked if they are leaning towards a government or non-government school, after which they’re provided with statements that argue in favour of the alternative.

Parents are then given the options to change their mind at the end of each section, which are given titles that include “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” and “Do you really get what you pay for?”

Senator Birmingham said Australia should be proud of both government and non-government schools “rather than demeaning them with such rubbish”.

“It’s deliberately provocative clickbait that has factual inaccuracies. The ABC should hold itself to a higher standard and pull the whole thing down,” he told The Australian.

Within the “So you think Gonski 2.0 will fix funding?” section that argues in favour of public schools, it claims that the federal government is spending an extra $18.6 billion over 10 years, while the government has regularly said that spending will increase by $25.3 billion.

Kevin Donnelly, a senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University, said the ABC’s publication was a “perfect example of fake news” that reinforced pre-existing stereotypes.

Dr Donnelly said the use of social commentator and author Jane Caro, “a known critic of Catholic and independent schools”, to argue for public schools reinforced the ABC’s intention to “make parents believe that there’s no benefit in attending non-government schools”.

He said it was factually incorrect to claim that there was “a growing body of evidence to suggest that the type of school does not make much difference to scores if socio-economic differences are taken into account”.

“It appears to be objective, but what it’s really doing is setting up the doubt in a parent’s mind as to what they’d want to invest in,” he said.

“It’s ironic that ABC prides itself on objectivity, fact checking, when all they’ve done here is reduce to stereotypes, particularly with non-government schools. All in all I think it’s a shocker.”

But the ABC raised the ire of not just private schools proponents, with the NSW Teachers Federation tweeting: “Federation is extremely disappointed in ABC Australia’s efforts to reduce the complexities of public/private schooling into a simplistic game-like interactive article, and especially the public broadcaster’s apparent bias in favour of private schools.”

An ABC spokeswoman said the article was aimed at demonstrating how fraught the decision about schooling can be for parents, and to present the audience with arguments and opinions which they may not always be presented with.

“The article emphasises that there is no perfect answer, and that the answer will be different for different families, and provides resources and tips for choosing a school which is the right fit,” she said.

“We have made some alterations to the story following feedback and any factual inaccuracies brought to the ABC’s attention would be promptly corrected.”