Acting Minister for Education Stuart Robert (Image: AAP/Lukas Coch)

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.”