Pride in flag, Western culture, and soldiers in schools: Coalition unveils education plan

The Coalition has announced a plan to rewrite the national curriculum, slashing units on Indigenous history and culture, sustainability, and engagement with Asia, and instead emphasising “pride” in the Australian flag and Western culture.

The speech outlining the opposition’s plan to crackdown on behaviour and discipline in schools including by encouraging ADF veterans to become teachers, comes less than a fortnight after Australian students recorded their worst maths and reading results in international testing.

“Our academic performance is worse than ever. Our boys are disengaged and falling behind. Our classrooms are disrupted and, in some cases, dangerous. We don’t have enough teachers, but it’s also harder than it used to be to become a teacher,” Leeser told a Sydney event on Saturday.

“Parents and teachers are in a day-in, day-out fight against screens. And all of this is going on while we are pouring more money than ever before into our schooling system”.

Programme for International Assessment (PISA) results released earlier this month showed 15-year-olds are now two and a half years behind teenagers who went to school at the turn of the millennium. Australia’s results remained above OECD averages because other countries’ performance suffered sharper declines.

Nationwide NAPLAN results released last month showed little or no improvement on the previous year, with one in three students failing to meet national numeracy and literacy benchmarks.

“Our policy is a policy that is unashamedly framed around excellence. We want restoring excellence in school education to be the centrepiece of our discussions about school education policy all the way through to the next election and beyond if we win government,” Leeser said.

The plan seeks a “root and branch” reform of the syllabus, including the removal of the cross-curricular priorities of Indigenous history and culture, Asia and Australia’s engagement with the region, and sustainability, which Leeser said “by definition” were not being taught by people with subject matter expertise.

“When I think about the need for better classroom behaviour and more discipline in our classrooms, about the need for more support for Australian values, [creating a veteran to teacher pipeline] seems to make sense,” Leeser said.

“The Australian Defence Force is one of the very few organisations in our country which has no problem with discipline.”

As the shadow spokesperson for Indigenous Australians, Leeser said he wanted teaching on Indigenous history and culture to remain, but for it to be taught alongside “our British foundation and multicultural character” and kept in “discrete, carefully planned topics”.

The Coalition will also seek to emphasise “the foundations of Western culture” through the curriculum and ensure every school has an Australia flag to bolster national pride, which Leeser said was lacking.

Earlier this month Opposition Leader Angus Taylor pushed to criminalise burning of the national flag and defacing historical monuments, and moved to enshrine Australia Day on January 26 by making alterations to the date reliant on a national plebiscite.