Posts

What Part of the School Curriculum is Drag Queen Storytime?

,

I asked the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) whether Drag Queen story times are part of the curriculum.

Initially the answer was a firm NO from David de Carvalho, before circling back and side-stepping the issue by saying he was processing the question.

I asked what control or influence the national curriculum has over state schools and was told there is some freedom to adapt and adopt before implementing the curriculum.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for being here. We have a number of constituents—quite a few—who are very concerned about the story I’m going to tell you about. Can you please advise me which part, if any—because the ABC got it wrong last time—of the Australian Curriculum relates to drag queen storytime? Right, thank you. We have schools that are hosting drag queen storytimes where they’re getting drag queens in to read stories to children. It’s happening on the Sunshine Coast and in other parts of Queensland. It’s done on school time, so we thought that surely it has to relate the curriculum for them to do that. That’s why I’m asking in that section. My second question—because you’ve denied it, which I thought would be correct—is: what control or influence does the national curriculum have on state schools?

Mr de Carvalho: I’m not sure I denied your question; I was waiting for the full extent of it.

Senator ROBERTS: You indicated quite clearly that it doesn’t exist in the curriculum.

Mr de Carvalho: I indicated, I guess, that I was trying to process the question with a view to giving you a sensible answer. I may ask Ms Foster to contribute there. What was the second part of your question?

Senator ROBERTS: What influence does the national curriculum have over state schools, and is there any compulsion to follow the national curriculum? What are the responsibilities?

Mr de Carvalho: There is an agreement that states and territories will implement the Australian Curriculum, but each of them does that in a slightly different way. The terminology that we use in relation to this is that states and territories are free to ‘adopt and adapt’ the curriculum to suit their local circumstances. That is the agreement, and different states and territories are in different parts of the plan to implement the Australian Curriculum. They’re going through and looking at it and determining to what extent they can adopt it fully. Some states’ curriculums are very close to the Australian Curriculum, and other states adapt it slightly before implementing it.

Senator ROBERTS: Is it done on a state-by-state basis, or are individual schools free to go wherever they want?

Mr de Carvalho: We have three sectors in the country. Jurisdictions—certainly in the state school systems—tend to take a uniform approach for their jurisdiction. Different jurisdictions have different mechanisms for adopting and adapting the curriculum. For example, in Victoria there is the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority; in Queensland you have the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority; and New South Wales has the New South Wales Education Standards Authority. These are the bodies in those major jurisdictions which have a close look at the Australian Curriculum and then determine how, if at all, it should be adapted for those jurisdictions. WA have their School Curriculum and Standards Authority, and they also undertake that adaptation approach. The other jurisdictions tend to be closer—Queensland is closer, as are Tasmania, South Australia and Northern Territory—in terms of their implementation.

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you.

/5 Comments/by

New NAPLAN Scoring Developed By Expert Teachers

,

In the May-June Senate Estimates, I asked David de Carvalho, CEO of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) why the National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) will no longer report progress through the NAPLAN ban system so that parents can see how their child is progressing relative to others?

In light of the latest disappointing NAPLAN results, which shows one in three children failing literacy and numeracy, I thought you’d be interested to hear his response.

Transcript

Senator Roberts: Thank you for appearing again. Why will NAPLAN no longer report progress through the NAPLAN bands so parents know how their child is progressing relative to other children?

Mr de Carvalho: Ministers decided on 10 February this year to move to a much better reporting system, which actually provides more meaningful information for parents. They will now be getting information that indicates where they are in terms of proficiency standards, which were agreed would be introduced as part of the national school reform agreement. The bands, if you go back to 2008, when they were set up, are essentially a statistical construct. We had a scale of around 1,000 points. The mean we set at 500. It was essentially divided into 10 bands. That number was relatively arbitrary. It could have been more. It could have been less. It’s a kind of a goldilocks number, if you like—a nice round number. The cut points in the bands themselves, unlike the new system, which we are introducing, didn’t have inherent educational value other than simply to be kind of marker points on a scale. It’s bit like telling a parent about their child’s height. They’ve moved from the zero to 20-centimetre band into the 21- to 40-centimetre band. Or, with weight, they’ve moved from the zero to 10-kilogram band into the 11- to 20-kilogram band. What parents really want to know is: is my child actually progressing at the normal rate or do they need additional support? These new standards—

Senator Henderson: I would disagree with that, actually.

Mr de Carvalho: The teacher view has been used to say, ‘What questions should children be able to answer to meet a challenging and reasonable expectation?’ We’ve used professional teacher judgement as opposed to a statistical or arithmetical division to identify the standard expected. That’s the one that we road-tested with parents. We asked them, ‘Would you prefer to see an individual student report with the numerical bands or this more meaningful information?’ They were quite unequivocal about it. They preferred the latter. It’s also not correct to say that parents won’t see their progress. Each individual student report has never reported progress. You need to keep the previous reports. Even if you are in year 3 and then year 5 under the new system, you may increase your NAPLAN score, say, from 250 to 300. You may still be reported in year 5 as strong whereas you were also strong in year 3 but the descriptors associated with ‘strong’ will indicate a higher level of capability. Parents will still be able to see that their child has progressed into a higher skill set. There will be more detailed information, more meaningful information, for parents through the new system.

Senator Roberts: Thank you for that. There are things in there that sound attractive, but I don’t understand it well enough. Perhaps you could tell me what is wrong with this description. Instead of providing a reading score in band 3, 4, 5 or 6, giving parents an idea of exactly where their child is in terms of progression, all of those bands will be replaced by the word ‘developing’. ACARA has said parents found the bands confusing. Isn’t that just an indictment on your failure to explain the more accurate band reports? Could you go into more detail? Tell me what is wrong with that.

Mr de Carvalho: I will go back to the point I was trying to make at the start. Those bands were simply arithmetically derived.

Senator Roberts: So a child was placed in there numerically?

Mr de Carvalho: There is a scale of, say, zero to 1,000. You set the mean at 500 and then you have your statistical categories, your differentials, set just by picking 100 or 200 or whatever the scale is to deliver 10 categories. But what we’re doing this time is using teacher professional judgement. We’ve consulted professional expert teachers about where on the scale they expect children to be based on what they’ve learned in previous years. We have asked which questions they should be able to answer to be able to say, ‘Yes, they’re meeting expectations.’ That was not the case under the previous 10-band regime. Parents will be able to see at a glance. What is really important about the new system is that particularly those children who are genuinely struggling will be identified as needing additional support. That is crucial, because under the old system, we had a category called the national minimum standard. It was broadly recognised that the national minimum standard was set too low. There was a relatively small percentage of children below the national minimum standard. It wasn’t really a call to action. Now we will have more students identified in that bottom category and it will be clear through the name of the category or the name of the level that those children need additional support. It will be a prompt to parents to have a discussion with their teachers about what needs to be done. I think that is a  real, important change.

Senator Roberts: So the parent will be able to see the areas in which the child is deficient or strong?

Mr de Carvalho: The descriptors will also be part of the individual student report. It is a paper based report, and you can only put so many words on a paper based report. There will be high-level descriptions for each domain—that is, reading, writing, numeracy, spelling and grammar—and what it means if you are in each of those levels. If you want more fine-grained information, you will be able to go to the ACARA website and get more and more fine-grained information. With that, teachers will be able to have good conversations with parents about what needs to be done.

Senator Roberts: Thank you. It looks like there is more understanding to be gained on my part.

/6 Comments/by

School Survey Questions Aussie Kids About Parents’ COVID Compliance

,

Parents contacted my office with concerns they had about a National Assessment Program (NAP) science quiz survey, which targeted children in Grade 6 (11 and 12 years). One of the survey questions was about families ‘compliance’ with the government’s COVID guidelines/regulations.

In Senate Estimates, I asked how relevant this line of questioning was with the stated NAP science objectives and whether the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) believes this is appropriate questioning for school children, who authorised the questions and who sees the results of the survey.

The COVID response has eroded many people’s faith in the government. Asking children to judge matters of civil compliance does not help build back trust in the wake of the last three years of hell that many families have gone through.

We have yet to receive responses from #ACARA to our questions, but hope to have them before the next Senate Estimates in October.

/20 Comments/by

Indoctrination curriculum sent back to the drawing board

https://youtu.be/hXynA4dlLEo

Our education standards have been slipping for years, yet ACARA’s draft curriculum was more focused on erasing facts about our judeo-christian heritage and implementing Critical Race Theory.

Curriculum should be focused on ensuring our kids are skilled in reading, writing and numeracy first, not political ideas.

The ditching of the draft curriculum follows two successful One Nation motions on heritage and critical race theory drawing attention to the draft’s shortcomings.

Transcript

With the steady downward trend of education all standards for reading, mathematics and science for Australia’s children over the last 20 years, ACARA needed to deliver a curriculum review that reflected proven teaching methods.  Rather than provide a robust review that would turn the tide, ideology got the better of ACARA and their efforts have been binned, as it deserves to be.

One Nation put forward two successful motions which highlighted significant fundamental flaws in ACARA’s reviewed curriculum.  Instead of focussing on proven methods for teaching mathematics and reading, ACARA thought it more important to demolish out our Judeo-Christian heritage and the role of Western civilisation in Australian society, laws and customs. 

Australia is proudly a liberal democratic society and these values should be at the very basis of our national curriculum.

I acknowledge that Minister Tudge has ditched the reviewed curriculum.  He has recognised that ACARA has tried to turn our curriculum into a tool for indoctrination for left-wing ideologies that denounce Western civilisation as something to be ashamed of, by promoting notions of imperialism and re-packaging significant and defining Australian historical events.

There is an urgent need to lift the educational outcomes for our children and One Nation will continue to monitor the efforts of ACARA to ensure that our cherished western liberal democracy is enshrined in the national curriculum.

It is not by accident that Australia is one of the most sought after places to live.  Safeguarding our way of life comes from the teachings we give our children, either at home or through the curriculum, which reminds them of what Australian men and women have defended in past decades – our right to a free society with laws and customs of Judaeo-Christian origins, and only when our children know that can they defend and uphold those values.

/by

Ivermectin – 2SM with Marcus Paul

I talked to Marcus Paul last week about our motion to keep our Judaeo-Christian values in our education system and questioned why ivermectin wasn’t available in Australia when it has been proven safe.

Transcript

[Marcus Paul] Tell me about this motion you put in front of me here. I give notice that on the next day of sitting, I nearly said another word then. I shall move that the Senate, what?

[Malcolm Roberts] Well, that the Senate actually makes sure that the national curriculum, includes Judeo-Christian heritage as the basis for our laws and customs.

[Marcus Paul] Right?

[Malcolm Roberts] We want that in the national curriculum, because in 2014, there was a review by two people called Donnelly and Wiltshire, into the national curriculum. And they recommended more emphasis, more emphasis on our Judeo-Christian heritage Because that’s the role it played in Western civilization and contributing to our society and making our laws and our culture. And lo and behold, when the 2020 national curriculum recommendations came out, they had a de-emphasis on our Judeo-Christian heritage and going over a bit more to the, what could you say, the flavours of the month? You know, the fads.

[Marcus Paul] Like?

[Malcolm Roberts] And so what we wanted the basics back.

[Marcus Paul] Hang on. Like?

[Malcolm Roberts] Well they want to emphasise that the First Nations people think that there was an invasion. They want to emphasise that there are other multicultural aspects of Australia. Now we’ve got no problems with that at all but we’ve got to make sure that the basis of our culture the basis of our laws, gets prominence and not, is not removed.

[Marcus Paul] Yeah, or we could just focus on teaching kids how to add up and to construct a sentence.

[Malcolm Roberts] Ah Marcus, that’d be wonderful.

[Marcus Paul] All right. The federal budget, you say that there’s been a lack of spending on visionary infrastructure to improve our productive capacity. We’ve continued to ignore the basics, energy and tax which are vital for manufacturing.

[Malcolm Roberts] Yes, that’s right. You know, we talked many times about tax and about energy costs. The energy costs are artificially high. We went from being the cheapest electricity in the world, Marcus, to being amongst the most expensive all because of artificial regulations that are not needed. We are exporting our coal to China where they sell electricity made from our coal at 8 cents a kilowatt hour. Our cost here, our price here is three times that all because of the rubbish regulations.

[Marcus Paul] Yeah.

[Malcolm Roberts] And so what we’re really doing is we’re exporting jobs to China because our manufacturers leave here and go to China or other places in Asia that use our coal and don’t have our stupid governance. So what we’ve got to do is get back to basics and stop all the subsidies destroying our electricity sector and also fix the tax system because, you know, we talked about that at length last week. So probably don’t need to go into that, but they’re the things that are really destroying our country. And instead of killing jobs, we need to create jobs and we need to build our productive capacity in terms of our infrastructure, things like dams in particular, power stations, so that we have cheap reliable water and cheap, reliable, stable power. They’re the basics for any society. And, you know, we’re letting the UN, Warragamba Dam wall. They wanted to raise that and they’re not allowed because of the UN’s world heritage agreement. Well, I didn’t elect the UN I want, I want to budget for us.

[Marcus Paul] Yeah. Very true. All right, mate, now there’s plenty in there for women’s services in relation to domestic violence, which all of us agree is worthwhile. You say, but nothing for men. What do you mean by that?

[Malcolm Roberts] Yes. And that’s a really good point that you raised Marcus. I know an outstanding group. That’s doing phenomenal work on a voluntary basis and they’re really supporting men and women. They’re not specifying only men, just men and women and also kids and families. Family law system is really crook and it’s devastating people’s lives. It’s the slaughter house of the nation. And what he’s finding is that he can get no support from the federal government in terms of providing counselling services that he is putting on voluntarily and getting volunteers to do. I mean, it’s an amazing network that he’s got. He’s just opened offices in Newcastle, Australian brotherhood of fathers. So, but the point is that we know domestic violence is perpetrated by men on women. We also know that domestic violence is perpetrated by women on men, but only one side of the story comes out. And only one side of the equation gets the funding. So men are vulnerable too, and they need to be protected and need to be funded.

[Marcus Paul] All right, there was plenty of money for mental health, the national disability insurance scheme, aged care. But the reality is, is that the money will never get spent. You say.

[Malcolm Roberts] Much of it won’t get spent Marcus, because we don’t have the professionals. I mean, I was at an aged care rally here, aged care health and safety, health services union on Monday. Sorry. Yeah. Monday morning.

[Marcus Paul] Yeah. Monday it was.

[Malcolm Roberts] Here in Canberra and I mean they’re wonderful people I know from my parents care is they’re wonderful people and they work very, very hard. They’re under extreme emotional stress but they can’t get enough because of the pay rates. But the other thing is they can’t get enough of the professionals and registered nurses and they can’t get enough of the psychologists in when it comes to the NDIS and other professionals. So we won’t be able to have the services anyway. We’ve got to focus on getting these areas fixed.

[Marcus Paul] Okay. Well, I mean, I don’t disagree at all. I mean, the whole thing in particular, in my opinion has been packaged to look pretty good. You know, it’s a, it’s a budget that’s full of plenty of promises, almost like a labor-esque budget if you like, but there’s apparently more money. And this is what, a point I wanted to come to. And this is where I think people like you and Pauline Hanson need to really hold these people accountable in parliament. Apparently there’s some sort of war chest. So there’s billions of dollars that’s been set aside for, you know, the election campaign not too far away. So in other words, they’ve held off on some things and rather than spend the money now or put it toward, you know, extra money toward mental health or extra money toward the aged care sector, et cetera people suggesting that they’ve kept it aside for, I dunno future pork barreling or promises ahead of the next federal election.

[Malcolm Roberts] That could be right. And you raise a fantastic point there because what’s happening is that with both the main old parties the tired old parties, they do exactly what you’re saying. And what voters don’t seem to realise is they’re having an auction with the voters money.

[Marcus Paul] There we go.

[Malcolm Roberts] And the voters are bidding those prices up. So we’re doing it to ourselves as voters but we need to hold these people accountable. And that’s what Pauline and I will be doing. She was, budget papers are very, very thick and detailed. So she was already discussing with me in the Senate in a quiet moment, some ridiculous expenditure. I can’t remember the exact one that, that she raised but it was just outlandish. So they’re the things that we will do in the coming weeks going through the details and exposing them. But you’re absolutely right. We’ve got to stop this budget that puts us on an annual cycle of making promises and stealing money from taxpayers to give to other tax payers.

[Marcus Paul] Some of it, to be honest is borrowed anyway but we’ll deal with that another time. We can’t travel overseas as we’ve learned probably until mid 22. The budget itself, many of the promises and many of the figures announced you know, predetermined on, you know the whole joint being vaccinated in time, et cetera. International students will be let back in in small phase programmes later this year. I mean, and I noticed yesterday in question time in the house of representatives, that we couldn’t get a straight answer from the prime minister. And even the health minister had to jump in and have his say. And he just muddied the waters further. Vaccines and whether or not our borders will be reopened is something that the government just can’t seem to answer at the moment.

[Malcolm Roberts] Yes. And that’s right. And there are too many uncertainties here and too many unknowns Marcus. First of all, the vaccine that the prime minister himself has come out and said it may not stop the spreading of the virus. What, well, hang on. It’s all based on that, and yet he’s admitting that it won’t necessarily stop the spread of the virus. The other thing Marcus, that people may not be aware of, is that there’s a drug called ivermectin. It’s been used for treating people in Africa all over the world. In fact, I’ll tell you someone else who’s been treated by it in a minute. This ivermectin is an antiviral and it’s been used for around six decades, 60 years ago.

[Marcus Paul] This was the stuff that Craig Kelly was spruiking. Yes?

[Malcolm Roberts] Well, he’s just picking it up from overseas. I mean, Craig’s doing a wonderful job that man I can tell right now, every interaction I’ve had with Craig, he’s solid on the data and he doesn’t open his mouth. But anyway, without the data, now, the thing is that ivermectin has been given in 3.7 billion doses to 3.7 billion people. It’s proven safe. It’s an antiviral.

[Marcus Paul] Why then, why then Malcolm is not on the list as a as a well I don’t know, as a as a vaccine for COVID-19. I’ve heard ivermectin, we’ve had we’ve heard all of the stories that was originally criticised as a bit of a conspiracy theory vaccine proposal. I respectfully understand that there are many scientists who agree that it could be used, but I just wonder, I mean we’ve just spent, what we’ve just bought another 25 million cases of a new vaccine, Moderna from the United States. If ivermectin was all it was cracked up to be, surely it would have already been authorised.

[Malcolm Roberts] Well, that’s the real point Marcus. That I was getting to. In many countries now ivermectin is legal and is being used and they’re desperate to get it into into place because it’s very safe. I went to India and developed a condition in India as a consultant over there in the mining industry in 2014. And I was given ivermectin by an Australian doctor here quite legally, I had no side effects. It was fantastic. So we know it’s proven around the world. There are more and more countries that are doing two things, bringing ivermectin in and more and more countries are now stopping the use of some of these vaccines for COVID vaccines because the blood clotting and other issues. So the reason I believe, well we’ve got to ask this question why aren’t we using ivermectin when it’s completely safe? It’s got no side effects. It’s killed no one. And, and it’s also being proven as effective with the virus. Why are we not using that when these unproven, untested vaccines or partially tested vaccines? And when we know so much, so little about them, why are we doing that? Is it because if there is a viable solution in ivermectin that the vaccine makers wouldn’t get their money?

[Marcus Paul] I dunno it could be you’re the Senator. And these are the questions that you will ask. I’m sure. Mate, I’ve got to go. I really appreciate it. Talk soon. There he is. Malcolm Roberts.

/by