Interview - ABC Afternoon Briefing

TOM LOWREY: Earlier I spoke with Federal Education Minister Jason Clare. Jason Clare, thanks for joining Afternoon Briefing.
JASON CLARE, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: Thanks for having me.
LOWREY: The school funding puzzle is now somewhat complete, with Queensland having signed on. With this whole picture now in place, is money the solution to the problems education’s facing broadly? Is that sort of the message here?
CLARE: It’s two things. It's funding, but it's got to be tied to real reform, reforms that are going to help our children who fall behind to catch up at school and to keep up and to finish school. You know, the big challenge that we're confronting at the moment is the number of kids finishing high school is dropping. Not everywhere, not in the non-government system, but certainly in our public schools. It's dropped from about 83 per cent about seven or eight years ago down to 73 per cent. And as you know, as everyone watching knows, it's more important to finish school today than it was when we were at school. We've got to turn that around. And that's why - I was, we have been insistent that this can't be a blank cheque. This is the biggest investment by the Commonwealth Government in public education ever. It's worth about $16.5 billion over the next 10 years. But it's not a blank cheque. It's tied to the biggest set of reforms to education in decades.
LOWREY: I wanted to touch on those targets. I think you have a Year 12 completion rate target of around 84 per cent or so by the end of the decade. Is that achievable? That would be a record high.
CLARE: The key to achieving that is making sure that the young people who are falling behind in primary school get the extra support they need. What NAPLAN data shows us is that the children who fall behind in their first test when they're eight years old, four out of five of those children are still behind when they sat the NAPLAN test in Year 9. In other words, 80 per cent of the children who are behind when they're little are still behind when they're in the middle of high school. They're the children most likely to not finish high school. What we also know is if you intervene early, if you identify those children early, even before they sit that test, maybe in kindergarten prep year one, and you provide them with extra individualised support, then they can catch up faster. Things like catch-up tutoring, where a child gets taken out of a class of 30 children into a class with three or four, four days a week for 40 minutes. If it's done right, then a child can learn as much in six months as they normally learn in 12 months. In other words, they catch up. That's the sort of real practical reform that's going to make a difference to help more young people finish high school.
LOWREY: Yeah. There's a clause in these agreements that requires, I think evidence-based teaching is the language. For those that don't know, what are you sort of referring to there? And are you intervening in how teachers should run their classroom?
CLARE: No. I think the reading wars are over. I think the evidence is now pretty clear about how to teach children to read about all of the techniques that really work. Synthetic phonics is a classic example of that. All of the evidence shows us what works to help young people learn. We're embedding that in the curriculum, in the university degrees. But this will help to roll that out in classrooms across the nation as well. And state ministers, state governments are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in that regard right across the country.
LOWREY: Public schools aren't going to be fully funded nationwide still for some time. There's still a process to grow the funding to get to that point. And at the same time, we always hear stories about private schools building new pools or orchestra pits, or, I think, someone has a Scottish castle. Is there work to do on the private school funding side of ledger, do you think?
CLARE: First this is not about building classrooms. It's about the children in the classrooms. It's the investment in the children.
LOWREY: Is there something about school funding?
CLARE: Yeah, no, absolutely. This takes us back to the work that David Gonski did more than 10 years ago. And he set a formula for how we should fund our schools, private schools and public schools. Private schools are funded at that level that David Gonski said they should be at all those years ago. Public schools aren't, not until now. That's why today's a big day. You know, this is a big deal. No government has ever done this before, ever. This agreement that we've now struck with every state and territory means that every public school across the country is going to be funded at that level that David Gonski said they should be at. And it ratchets up year after year after year to get to that level. You know, I'm a kid from a public school in the western suburbs of Sydney. I'm the first person in my family to finish school, first person in my family to finish Year 10. I'm only here because of the schools I went to, the teachers who taught me. I understand how important it is. This sort of investment tied to these sorts of reforms are going to help kids like the kid I was, the kids that I went to school with. It's going to help to make sure that every child in the country, wherever they go to school, whether it's a non-government school or a government school, get the resources and the support that they need to get a great start in life.
LOWREY: I want to touch on another issue going on in education, higher education. In fact, the US has been reviewing funding agreements with Australian universities. Do you have a picture yet of the impact of those reviews? I think they're being sent questionnaires almost on their ideological positions to try and justify the funding they're receiving.
CLARE: Yeah, we're starting to get more information. This emerges out of a review that the US Government has initiated into foreign aid and research has been caught in that. We understand that at least seven Australian universities have been affected by this, that they're conducting research that's either been suspended or stopped. I've asked my department to work with those universities, get more information from other Australian universities about potential research that might be affected. The Australian Embassy in Washington is working with US departments to get a better understanding of this. We expect that the outcomes of that review that the US has initiated will be clearer in the second half of April. 
Australian universities do great research. To put it in perspective, we're a nation that represents about 0.3 per cent of the globe's population, but we do 3 per cent of the world's research, so we punch above our weight. It's the reason that countries like the US want to work with us and work with our universities. Ultimately, the US will make their own decisions about the research that they want to fund. But we think it's worth working with Australia because we've got great universities.
LOWREY: Yeah, look, some of these questions that academics are being asked, things like, can you confirm that your organisation does not work with any party that espouses anti-American beliefs, or that this work is not climate or environmental justice sort of projects. Is that appropriate to be asking Australian academics those kinds of questions about their research? Is it foreign interference even?
CLARE: No, I don't think it is. This is US-funded research of US universities working with Australian universities. Ultimately, it's up to the US about what research it wants to fund. I would advocate for the US to want to work with our universities because they're some of the best in the world. And that's why the Australian Embassy is working with US officials to get a better understanding about this issue.
LOWREY: What's your advice to those universities? Should they write back? Should they fill in these questionnaires?
CLARE: They are, they are. I think overwhelmingly, it's not universities themselves, but it's individual researchers in our universities that are responding to requests from individual researchers in individual US universities. But it's not just the universities that are answering these questions. We're seeking further information from the US.
LOWREY: Would you consider, or the Australian government consider stepping in to fill the breach if some of this funding is pulled? You mentioned the sort of notable work they're doing.
CLARE: No, I don't think it's practical for the Australian Government to underwrite this sort of research. But whether it's the United States or whether it's Europe or anybody else that collaborates with Australian universities, they know, like we know, that our universities are some of the best in the world. Our researchers are extraordinary. I encourage them to continue the work they're doing.
LOWREY: Just quickly on the Budget we're going to see tomorrow, anything in particular to look out for in the education space? And do you think there's broadly concerns about the government handing down a big spending budget? Is that what Australians want to see at this point in time, with inflation still a concern?
CLARE: I think most Australians want to make sure we're investing in the areas that are going to set us up for the future, and that's what education does. Three big things in my area. One is cutting the cost of childcare for more than a million Australian families. We announced that almost two years ago, implemented that almost two years ago. That continues to have a big impact for families across the country. For the average family with one child in childcare saves them more than $2,000 a year. Then there's this, the big investment that we're making in our schools that are going to help more children to finish high school. We want more young people to be able to finish high school, then go on to TAFE or to university, and that's where free TAFE comes in. And that's also where cutting the cost of HECS comes in. We've said that if we win the next election, we'll cut the cost of HECS debt for 3 million Australians by 20 per cent. I'll give you an example about what that means. The average HECS debt today is about 27 grand. If we win the election, will be able to implement that change that will cut that debt for that individual by $5,500. That's a lot of money in people's pockets. You'll see that in the Budget tomorrow night.
LOWREY: Just quickly, on your part of the world, in Western Sydney, there's been a lot of talk about how the conflict in Gaza is cutting through to voters, particularly in your electorate and the electorate surrounding it. Are you concerned that issue might see Labor bleed votes to the Greens and to some high-profile independents as well?
CLARE: I don't take any vote for granted. I've had the privilege to represent Western Sydney, the area that I grew up, now for a long time. I work my guts out for my community every single day, but I also know that my community is hurting in a way that not every community is. This isn't a conflict on the other side of the world, for my community it's much closer to home. The dead bodies that they see on television sometimes are family, they're relatives, and so it affects my community in a very unique and personal way, and so I'm very conscious of that. My job is to represent my community every single day the best I can, and I'll continue to do that.
LOWREY: Jason Clare thanks for joining me. 
CLARE: Thank you.