Transcript - TODAY Show

ALEX CULLEN: The New South Wales and South Australian Government will today hold a Social Media Summit focusing on the danger it poses to younger users.

Joining us to discuss today's headlines is Education Minister Jason Clare and 2GB's Chris O'Keefe. Good morning lads, thank you so much for being with us.

Minister, let's start with you. This as new data revealed almost every Aussie primary school student is on social media. They love it, it's extremely concerning.

JASON CLARE, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: It really is, and anyone who's a mum and dad with children in primary school or high school knows the damage that this social media cesspit can do to our kids. I see it as a parent as well. We've seen already the difference that we can make when you ban a mobile phone in schools. We banned mobile phones in schools starting this year right across the country, and it's having a massive impact, you know, kids are more focused in the classroom, they're having more fun in the playground.  

Alex, teachers are telling me that the playgrounds are noisier at lunchtime this year than they were last year because kids don't have their heads down looking at phones like zombies in the playground, they're playing with their friends, they're running around.

But when the school bell rings at the end of the day, the phones are turned back on and they're back in that cesspit of social media that has all of that mental health impact on our kids, as well as I've got reports that tell me it has a massive impact on their studies as well, if you spend a lot of time on social media after school, then it affects how you go at school.

And so that's why the work that Michelle Rowland is doing, the Minister for Communications, in setting a national minimum age for access to social media's so important, and the work that New South Wales and South Australia are doing today is an important part of that.

CULLEN: Yeah, too right. Minimum age limit, Chris, at 18, what do you think?  

CHRIS O'KEEFE: That's probably a bit high, but, well, 14, 16, whatever it is, just go and do it, they don't need to do a summit, a victory lap, keep talking about it, getting everyone around tables and, you know, the Labor Governments all around Australia effectively saying, "How good are we, we're cracking down on social media?" That's what this is about.

There would be no parents, no teachers, very few people in society who believes what we're doing with social media now is the right way forward. There needs to be a minimum age limit. Just get on and do it.

CULLEN: Yeah, too right. My kids especially, I don't want them on social media until they're a lot older, let me tell you.

But the Australian Education Union has been accused of putting kids last after imposing an immediate ban on the roll out of the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement.

Minister, let's bring you in. The AEU says your reforms will short change public schools and increase teachers' workload. What do you say to that?

CLARE: Today I'm going to introduce legislation into the Parliament, Alex, to increase funding for public schools, but I want to tie that funding to real and practical reforms to help our children.

The crux of this is that at the moment the percentage of young people finishing high school's going backwards, and it's particularly happening in our public schools. Seven or eight years ago, 83 per cent of students finished high school, now it's dropped to 73 per cent, and if we're going to fix that, we've got to go all the way back to the start when kids are really young when they're starting primary school, identify children who are starting behind or falling behind and make sure that we intervene with practical reforms like catch up tutoring. So you get children out of a classroom of 25 or 30, put them in a classroom with three or four, and we know that if you do that right, then children can catch up, they can learn as much in six months as they'd normally learn in 12 months.

I've got $16 billion I want to invest to increase funding for our public schools, but I want to invest it in these practical reforms so we can help children right across the country to catch up when they're little, and keep up, have more people go on and finish high school and go on to TAFE or go to uni.

CULLEN: Okay, Chris, just as we [indistinct].

O'KEEFE: Can we just be honest here for a second, and people might not want to hear this, but at what point are teachers going to hang a big mirror in their staff rooms and think, are we the problem here?

Because there's got to be some accountability. You've never had children dumber. You've got one in three kids who are failing NAPLAN when it comes to numeracy and literacy. That's not good enough in a country like Australia. The classrooms have never had more money in them. The Governments have never spent more on education, yet our kids have never been dumber.

So you can draw a straight line and say to yourselves, okay, who is responsible for this? It's not the Government. Is it the parents? Well, the teachers like to say so, but maybe it's the teachers.

So at what point is the union movement and the teachers' cohort more broadly going to sit with themselves and look, and say, well, are we going to take some accountability here?

Is it have we got something to answer for? Whenever you raise that, "Oh, no, no, no, but teachers are hard working". I'm not saying they're not hard working; I'm just saying they might not be doing a very good job.

CULLEN: Jason?  

CLARE: I'm not going to attack our teachers, they do the most important job in the world.

O'KEEFE: No, of course you're not, but it's true. Nobody wants to confront this problem, Minister.

CLARE: No, and Chris, don't talk down our kids either, they're not dumb. But the challenge that we've got here, and NAPLAN data shows it, is that one in 10 children are below the minimum standard we set for literacy and numeracy, but kids from poor families and kids from the bush, and Indigenous kids, it's one in three.

Now here's a statistic that will scare you: only 20 per cent of those kids that are behind when they're little, when they're eight, have caught up by the time they're 15. That's why I say you need practical reforms here that we know work.

O'KEEFE: And the teachers are holding you over a barrel and trying to stop these reforms from happening, and I think it's shameful.

CLARE: Well, and I'm determined to act, and I've got $16 billion to invest in these reforms to help to make sure that more children catch up and keep up    

O'KEEFE: But then why   but why as a government and a Minister are you not going to call out the teaching profession, and more broadly the unions, and say, "Hey guys, not good enough".

CLARE: I disagree fundamentally with what the union is arguing, but I back our teachers every single day, because they do such an important job. Many teachers out there, if you ask them, will back these reforms. They grab me every single day and say, "Keep going mate".

CULLEN: It's tough, I know, it's tough for teachers.

O'KEEFE: [Indistinct] though don't they?

CULLEN: Thank you, you two, always interesting. Jason, Chris, thanks so much, boys