The PM's “values” gaffe has backfired, rallying strong community support for public education and highlighting the federal government's funding cuts. Diny Slamet reports.

To some the remark was politically strategic. To others it was simply insulting. But, for many, it was a comment that reflected ignorance and an arrogance of the worst kind. Earlier this year, Prime Minister John Howard stated that parents were increasingly moving their children out of government schools because they were “too politically correct and too values-neutral”. Howard's parliamentary colleague, acting Education Minister Peter McGauran, chipped in with his belief that many government schools were “hostile or apathetic to Australian heritage and values”.

The flood of indignation that greeted these views certainly had many observers wondering whether the old political fox had misread the public mood. Across talkback radio, in the letters columns of major newspapers, in editorials and commentaries, Howard's remarks were almost universally decried.

Even the principals of leading private schools were unwilling to back his claim.

For the leadership of the teachers' unions around the country, the public's outrage and its defence of state education were heartening. AEU Victorian president Mary Bluett couldn't even get through to talkback radio to respond. “As someone who has spent most of their life advocating on behalf of public education, it was so good to be in a position where you could just sit back and let the people do it.”

In South Australia, the president of the South Australian AEU, Andrew Gohl, says normally media-shy principals and school communities came out very strongly to refute the prime minister's opinions and to reiterate the values public education espoused: inclusiveness, equity, social justice, fairness and, indeed, excellence.

“It was a strong outpouring and response to Howard and, yes, I was surprised,” says Gohl, “Apart from the parents of public school students who were affronted, I was also surprised by the number of private school parents who supported better funding for the public school system. It was ridiculous of Howard to make those comments and he got well and truly put back in his box. What does values-neutral mean? That's a nonsense. What are Howard's values? Lying about Tampa, deceit about asylum seekers? Are they the values he espouses?”

Value to community

Maree O'Halloran, the president of the NSW Teachers' Federation, says government schools will always win the debate about the values they teach, even in a debate against a cynical PM. But the more significant question that needs to be argued is 'what is the value of our public schools to the community?'

“That's the question the public education constituency needs to raise as often as possible. Public education provides the opportunity for individual excellence, but also cohesion in society. Rather than separating people, it actually builds bridges between people and it's often said that public education has been the cornerstone of democracy. Our public schools are actually the future, because if you're going to succeed in a globalised world, you actually have to build bridges between different ethnic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds,” says O'Halloran.

Mary Bluett agrees, saying that public schools are where cultures in Australia's multicultural society mix. “It's in our public schools that children learn the values of mutual respect, the humanist values, the tolerance of others in the context of a multicultural society. That is where they learn to tolerate, celebrate and respect differences. And that is reflected in the very high levels of everyone getting along with everyone else, which is a remarkable feature of Australian society.”

It is a theme expressed by others outside the union movement as well. Jane Caro, convener of Priority Public, a non-party-political citizens' advocacy group for public education, wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald: “Far from being 'hostile to Australia's heritage and values', public schools personify bedrock Australian values. They willingly and enthusiastically educate every child who comes to their door—70 per cent of Australia's children—regardless of race, religion, ability to pay fees, or academic ability. The majority of indigenous students attend public schools, as do the majority of physically and intellectually disabled students.”

Funding cuts decoy

Many in the teachers' union suspect that Howard's comments were meant to divert attention from the union's new campaign to support public education. They also served to distract the public from the stripping of federal funding from government schools. In its funding plans for the 2005–2008 period, announced in March, recurrent grants expenditure on independent schools will, for the first time, exceed that on public schools ($7.6 billion compared with $7.2 billion, respectively).

When Commonwealth and state and territory funding for both public and private sectors are totalled and divided by the respective numbers of students, the figures reveal that expenditure per private school student is nearly $3,000 more than that on public students. In the 2005–2008 funding period, the federal government has allocated an average of approximately $4,000 to each private school student. Public school students receive less than $1,000 in federal funding each.

Maree O'Halloran says the federal government's arguments that public schools are the responsibility of the states and territories simply does not wash.

“The responsibility for our public schools is a shared responsibility between the federal and state governments. It's not primarily the responsibility of one or the other,” she says.

“The Federal Government at one stage gave no money directly to schools, then gave more money to public rather than private schools.

In New South Wales, the state government also spends large sums of money on private schools.

“In other words, there's no constitutional, moral or historical validity for the claim that the Federal Government has no responsibility for state schools. It's a shared responsibility for both governments to fund.”

The Howard Government's schools funding decision is clearly at odds with the findings of a recent OECD survey. The Program of International Student Assessment (PISA) survey found that the literacy and numeracy gaps between the highest and lowest achieving Australian students were among the biggest in the world, emphasising the link between socioeconomic background and achievement.

In its submission to the Senate Inquiry into Poverty, the AEU said the findings of the OECD survey made it even more vital for both equity and national interest reasons to improve the performance of low achievers. These students were generally from poor financial backgrounds who predominantly attended public schools. Indeed, among the senate inquiry's recommendations released in March 2004 was for the Federal Government to “provide additional funding for schools based on the socioeconomic profile of the school community to improve services provided to disadvantaged students.”

Reconciliation, harmony and diversity

Howard's comments have been a slap in the face to teachers like Leanne Meldrum and her colleagues at Merredin Senior High School. Meldrum is the coordinator for students at educational risk at this school in Western Australia's wheatbelt region. Seven per cent of the 330 students at the school are Aboriginal and a significant proportion are in the “at-educational-risk” category. John Howard could probably learn a few lessons from the staff and students at the school, who, over the past five years, have worked on the values of reconciliation, encouraging harmony and accepting diversity.

Five years ago, Meldrum remembers, the Aboriginal students congregated in their own corner of the school. Although at primary school these students had mixed with the general population, at high school, through lack of support and confidence, they stuck together. In turn, they became an intimidating bunch and fights would occasionally flare. Today, there is no “Aboriginal corner” and Aboriginal students mix freely and confidently with their non-Aboriginal peers.

The school has achieved more harmonious relations through a wide range of programs and, while there is no single “values program”, values are lived, modelled, celebrated and taught explicitly in many forms. Students are encouraged to choose pathways for a career, to value health and lifestyle, to be role models for younger students and to develop skills to live drug and alcohol free.

These programs have included the Resourceful Adolescent Program, the Rock and Water program, Promoting Adolescent Sexual Health, a Drumbeats program, wilderness intervention and anti-racism programs.

The programs are not just directed at Aboriginal students. The school recognises that changes happen more readily if intervention is applied across as large a group as possible, so the Resourceful Adolescent Program is done by all year 8 students, and the others by sections of the population which include the “students at risk” while not singling them out. As Leanne Meldrum says: “We would never allow a program to be set solely for boys if it wasn't also going to benefit the girls. There hasn't been a single program that hasn't been a benefit for everybody, boys or girls, weak or strong, black or white.”

Teachers at the school are actively involved in the Merredin Reconciliation Forum, the only rural reconciliation group remaining in Western Australia. Through their participation, reconciliation is kept high on the agenda at the school.

As a result of these efforts, the school was a winner of the AEU's 2003 National Reconciliation Award.

Nonsensical attack

In Tasmania, Mike Brakey, the principal of Hellyer Senior Secondary College, believes that “Australian” values run far deeper than the “traditional values” that John Howard and his ilk espouse. Angered by the PM's comments, Brakey was moved to examine the values embedded at his school and concluded that Howard's attack was nonsensical.

“At the college we have students from China, Thailand, exchange students from the United States and Europe and Eastern European refugees. It always amazes me how [some students], particularly the Bosnians, have come from the most horrendous experiences but they very soon pick up on those core values. They say things to us that would show that the way we live and breathe values here actually infiltrates them too. And that is the thing that makes them Australian,” he says.

“Any democratic society is underpinned by these values. We are concerned with the truth, not just political truth. We are concerned with beauty, not just in the arts, but in our deep concern about protecting the planet and our environment. We are concerned with morality, what is good and what is right and with equality and social justice. We are teaching our students to act ethically; to appreciate individual rights and the responsibilities that come with those rights; to understand the importance of community, because an individual is nothing if not part of a community. As a member of a community they have to accord respect to other people and to respect their environment. The students get a real sense of that.”

Brakey says that, when discussing values education, people expect it to be presented as a subject that will deliver these ideas. But values education, he says, is imbued in the curriculum and in everything done at the school. “The values and purposes of an institution are really about how teachers, parents and students interact. If we say we value the individual, we demonstrate that in every encounter with those individuals. In this school we don't have anyone yelling at anyone else in anger. We don't have people being spoken to about private matters within earshot of anyone else. We don't have confidential information given out unless individuals give consent. We live those values within the encounters we have. If we say we value the environment, then we take stands against litter and vandalism and graffiti.”

Core set of values

Terry McCarthy was more bemused than angry when he heard the PM's remarks because he knew how baseless they were. “Not only were his statements incorrect in a local sense, they were also wrong at a system level,” says the principal of Table Cape Primary School.

“Our Department of Education in Tasmania has developed a new curriculum underpinned by a core set of values. Every government school in the state was involved in the development of those values. How can he say that public schools are “values-neutral” when the state's Essential Learnings Framework has, at its core, the values of connectedness, resilience, achievement, creativity, integrity, responsibility and equity? John Howard's statement simply doesn't reflect the facts.”

Table Cape's Values for Living program, by necessity, is far more explicit than the values education program at Hellyer Senior Secondary College. Each month, a different value, such as respect, is made the focus of discussion and action across the school. The value is featured as an A4 poster in the school newsletter and parents are encouraged to display it at home. In the classroom each day, teachers might invite students to reflect on their success or otherwise in living the focus value and how they might “live” the value during their day.

“We actively foster in students their sense of community and belonging. Our school is about relationships that are based on mutual respect. Table Cape also has a strong sense of social justice, especially in seeking to make things better for our indigenous friends,” says McCarthy.

DINY SLAMET is a freelance writer.