Acting Education Minister Stuart Robert said the quiet (and elitist) part out loud yesterday when he blamed the “bottom 10% of teachers” who “can’t read and write” for Australia’s plummeting performance in international education benchmark tests.
His comments were widely reported and came in a speech to an independent schools conference, where he also made it very clear where these “dud” teachers can be found — and it’s certainly not in the independent school system.
“You just don’t have them — you don’t have the bottom 10% of teachers dragging the chain,” he said. “But for every teacher you don’t have in your organisation, guess where they go?”
Government schools, apparently.
Robert, who presumably has a lot of knowledge about how the education system works after being in the education portfolio for all of 10 seconds while his dud colleague Alan Tudge is on the backbench after allegations of breached ministerial standards, put it down to independent schools being able to hire and fire their own teachers.
“I don’t think it’s a problem in your schools because, frankly, you can hire and fire your own teachers,” he said. “I’m talking to the heads of your schools here, and there’s no way they will accept a dud teacher in their school — like, not for a second.”
The online pushback was swift. Twitter users were quick to point out the Coalition’s failure to deliver needs-based funding for schools, the incredibly divisive nature of this attack after the trying time teachers have had during the pandemic, and the inevitability of comments like these when “spoilt private school boys” are “overpromoted” in the government.
Dr Jordana Hunter, the education program director at Grattan Institute, told Crikey that Australia’s exceptional teachers are not limited to non-government schools.
“Some of the best teaching and learning we have seen has been in government schools, including schools in challenging areas,” she said.
Hunter also said the government should be focusing on building a high-quality teaching workforce across the country (presumably instead of tearing public school teachers down).
“Creating new teacher leadership roles for our top teachers that have a clear focus on building teaching expertise across the profession, through great practice, classroom observation, coaching and feedback, should be a top priority,” she said. “This would benefit all school sectors, including independent and Catholic schools.”
As one who has so convincingly proven the Peter Principle, Mr. Robert is well acquainted with the lower cognitive end. He amply demonstrated that when he was unable to accurately assess his entitlement to reimbursement of internet costs. Or was that more an issue of personal ethics ?
An example of the bottom 10% in politics recognising another category…?
Prof. Peter wrote another book named ‘The Peter Pyramid’.
It explains what happens to an organisation when all key personnel are beneficiaries of ‘The Peter Principle’.
To summarise the key element, nothing is achieved due to an indolence generated morbidity.
Any organisations come to mind?
What an appalling little grub. This Morrison government goes out of its way to create division and inequality. They are always looking for someone else to blame for their own shortcomings.
Too kind.
His taxpayer funded internet bill confirms that-if nothing else-he is useless at mathematics.
This Stuart Robert goose demonstrates – like his happy-clappy friend and ‘leader’ Morrison – an unparalleled lack of self-awareness and inability to discern irony. As he lectures about the false, conjured-up belief that government schools are teeming with dud teachers, he fails to grasp that he is widely perceived as perhaps the duddest of the dud in the government itself. I’d like to see Robert in front of a year 10 class in the outer suburbs of one of our big cities. If the students were to react like I do to this drongo they’d be rioting.
Dunning-Kruger effect writ large – he’s too stupid to realise how stupid he is.
And that is a key point. Go and front up to a class, and you will soon learn who the real duds are. Teaching is a wonderful job, but more and more you only get to teach for some of the time, and the rest is spent in classroom management (behavior).
I would pay real money to see this oxygen thief face up to a tough class from a low SES. Then the true dud would appear.
Dud teachers do exist in private schools. Duds exist everywhere. They’re like bacteria. Even so, this tirade deserves a entitlement and privilege ranking out of 10. I’d give it 9.5.
Public schools actually outperform private schools and with a lot less money.
And I can’t help thinking, that some independent Christian schools, may have a few dud science teachers. “Now today I have to teach you about evolution, but remember, it’s just a theory”.
Was the head of physics in a city academy in the north of England. The used car salesman who donated one million pounds to the government was rewarded with a knighthood and control of a newly rebuilt high achool that was ‘failing’. He was a Christian fundamentalist and senior management were chosen accordingly. At full school assemblies (I called pools of silence, such was the authoritarian nature of the place), senior management would happily tell the student assembly that ‘science was wrong’. But, no doubt to their chagrin, science was a compulsory part of the curriculum.
Exactly. In the current list of Australia’s top-performing secondary schools, there is only one independent (private) school in the Top 20 – and it is in 10th place.
Right. And actually, Billy, some of the most dudly teachers retreat from the government sphere – where they can’t cope – into the private, where they find the going easy and they can keep their failings ‘private’. Some even get good references from school principals who are keen to get rid of them.
Funny how the good teachers were also good coaches and dud teachers also dud coaches. That was private. A grammar school.