Mr SAWFORD (12:16 PM) —Unanimity on a House of Representatives standing committee with potentially emotive inquiries like this one is not easy to achieve. However, this particular committee report, Boys: getting it right, did achieve unanimity in all the recommendations. That is some achievement. This is not to say that there was not vigorous debate and strong exchanges of view. I am sure the chair will agree on that. But we did achieve it and we got there. I think Alan Cadman made this morning a very relevant point: it was a better report for that process of vigorous debate.

I have already spoken in the House on the tabling of the report and I do really appreciate the opportunity to speak in a more informal way on aspects of the report that possibly may be overlooked but that I think are important parts to be acknowledged. When the submissions were first received and the first public hearings were under way, the committee could have taken partisan views on some of the loopy left and the very reactionary right views put forward and on the conspiracy theories on both sides. But to the credit of everyone on that committee—all 21 members—it did not occur and the committee members did retain their objectivity.

That objectivity was tested again and again, particularly by the majority of academics, practically all state education departments—public or private—Australian Education Union spokespersons and some spokespersons of professional associations, whose responses were generally of denial, distancing and distraction to the questions of committee members that there could even be a problem with the education of boys.

It was therefore refreshing and instructive that at the very first meeting of the committee the Commonwealth department of education put the inquiry into a context with factual information. They suggested in no uncertain terms that differential attainment levels across the curriculum between girls and boys was indeed occurring. It was also instructive to hear the views of experts and academics: people like Dr Ken Rowe of ACER; Dr Catherine Rowe, a Melbourne paediatrician; Professor Faith Trent; research fellow Malcolm Slade from Flinders University; Richard Fletcher; Richard Brown and so on. They expressed serious concerns, and they have been doing so for a long time, about the direction education was taking in this country in dealing with boys' needs. However, no-one ought to be surprised that some of the most powerful evidence came from principals, teachers and the students themselves. One could not help but be impressed by the professionalism of so many Australian school principals and their teachers.

Let us give two contrasting but nevertheless similar examples of the outstanding professionalism of Australian teachers. Roseville Public School is located in a very affluent area of Sydney. The principal and the deputy principal have an objective, no-nonsense approach to education, regardless of politically sensitive rhetoric or propaganda. They recognised they had a problem with increasing differential attainment levels between boys and girls and that they were not acceptable. They went to the parent body with a plan: relieve the deputy principal of classroom duties to structure and monitor the school curriculum, particularly in literacy and numeracy; and employ a literacy and numeracy coordinator to assist the students most in need. They costed it; it came to 100,000 bucks. The parents took up the challenge. They raised the money. Fathers, many of them executives with flexible work schedules, became involved in the school day. In less than four years, the differential in attainment levels between boys and girls was reduced from over 20 per cent to around one per cent. That is as it should be, because boys and girls have intrinsically similar intellectual capabilities.

Were the gains made by the girls compromised? Of course not. Both girls and boys had higher attainment levels. It took four years. There were clear aims, a structured, balanced curriculum and explicit, active teaching. There was no magic recipe but plenty of commonsense and hard work. That is what they did. What they did not do tells a story, too. They rejected the propaganda; they rejected the rhetoric; they followed their professional instincts to deal with a very real problem they identified, and they were not prepared to deny it. However, that success costs money.

Eagleby State School in Queensland is located in a low income, low employment area. Fortunately for the students and parents of that school, they had a principal appointed who was also not prepared to accept low attainment levels for boys or girls, and that it was a low socioeconomic area was not going to be an excuse. He trained large numbers of parents and then involved them every morning in literacy and numeracy programs—explicit, active and structured. The principal led a remarkable turnaround in the attainment levels. Again it took four years. That is right: it took four years. There is no overnight or fast track to success; it is determination and hard work. It has ever been so.

There are three distinct periods of education in Australian since 1950, and I mentioned this in my previous speech but I want to mention it again. From 1950 to 1970 education in this country decidedly favoured boys. This is when I went to school—and you, too, Kerry. Sid of course is much younger. Higher retention rates, higher attainment levels at year 12, higher university admissions—it was all in favour of boys. But in the next period, 1970 to 1990, it changed around. Here is some data. In 1976 the retention rates for girls and boys in this country were exactly the same. In 1981 in New South Wales the difference in attainment levels between boys and girls at year 12 was less than one percentage point. That is not the case now. I will not go back and repeat all the indicators that people have mentioned in this debate, but we all know that they have gone the other way. If the figures were reversed, would that data be acceptable? Of course not, and nor should it be—and it is not acceptable in the current form.

Some people have tried, unsuccessfully, to paint the report as nothing more than pushing a competition between boys and girls—denial—or as a report that wishes to diminish the gains made by girls. The report does no such thing. There is not even a hint, not even a word of that. In fact, it states quite clearly the opposite. The report encourages all girls and all boys to achieve their potential. That is as it should be. That is in the national interest. The current situation is not.

The committee also went to New Zealand and talked to politicians, education bureaucrats, union and school representatives on the matter of boys' education. None of the committee members was surprised at what was said on the record: comments were remarkably similar to those made by their counterparts in Australia. It is a little different in New Zealand—we had drinks and nibbles afterwards, you see, and it was a little bit informal, whereas here in Australia they came in, they spoke and they left. Here are some quotes I took down, and Alan Cadman will remember these because I made sure when the person spoke to me that he came over as a witness. Here is one from a senior bureaucrat: `If I said what I believe, that would be the end of my career.' Another person said, `Political correctness has confused the whole education debate, and not just the boys.' `Thank goodness there are still some principals and teachers who follow their instincts as to what works or does not work,' said someone else. `I am afraid intimidation of contrary views is par for the course these days. Conformity is the name of the game.'

Teacher training has also lost its way in this country. Boys and girls do learn differently—it has always been the case. Go back to the Greek philosophers. It is not as if this is a new thing, for goodness sake—it is a basic fact—yet it is being ignored in our teacher training institutions. Boys are disadvantaged—not all boys but most boys—and some girls are also disadvantaged. For too many prospective teachers the profession is undervalued, and it is relegated to a second income status. The principal of Scotch College in Melbourne reported to the committee that not one boy in his school, which has an enrolment of over 3,000, wanted to be a teacher—not one. Males in the primary intake in New South Wales, as reported by the chair, are less than 20 per cent.

The committee has recommended HECS-free scholarships on an equivalent basis for male and female trainee teachers to redress the current imbalance. I hope the government takes that up. We have also recommended higher remuneration for schoolteachers. You cannot have a profession as important as teaching continue to be disregarded in the community. The kids know this and will tell you, `It is too hard for too little money.'

Current policies affecting the direction of education need to be appropriate for all boys and girls. The gender equity framework which has been spoken about today was agreed to in 1997 as a national policy. It is a totally inappropriate policy. The genesis was the report entitled Girls, school and society. There is nothing wrong with that, but it was just slopped together and adopted as a national policy for girls and boys without any identification or research into the needs of boys. The unanimous view of the committee is that the policy needs to be recast. In fact, while I was deputy chair of the committee, I deliberately asked numerous witnesses if they could provide any quantitative evidence to support the gender equity framework. We will all remember the silence of that response.

The response to the tabling of the report has been overwhelmingly positive. Certainly, the response from education departments has been non-existent. But their silence is welcome. The member for Hasluck reported on the initiatives of the Western Australian government, which has done what we told it to do. The education departments got it wrong. Hopefully, they will take the lead from their successful school principals and teachers and rewrite the policies for everybody—boys and girls.

Denis Fitzgerald, the Federal President of the Australian Education Union, gave a negative response through the letters to the editor section of the Sydney Morning Herald—as well as the Australian, as reported by the chair. Surprisingly, in the Sydney Morning Herald it was not a response to the report; it was an attack upon me for having the temerity to suggest that the Australian Education Union was in denial about boys' education. You did not have to go too far in its submission to find the denial. Its recommendation No. 2 was just rhetoric. Let me read it to you:

So, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, it wants the status quo: `she's right mate; she's okay'. The key words in the recommendation were `already' and `appropriate'. They can mean nothing else. If that is not denial, I do not know what is.

In his letter Mr Fitzgerald could have had a go at us and commented on the gender equity framework and how it was developed; he could have argued its exposition and argued its rightness or wrongness. But he did not do that because he could not. He could have commented on the disparity of all of the indicators currently going on; he did not do that either. He could have actually provided a critical and constructive response; he did not. His response was personal, uninformed and unworthy of the important position he holds. He ought to spend a little more time in getting remuneration and conditions for teachers right and a little bit less time on the propaganda.

The only other response that could be construed as negative came from Christopher Bantick in the Mercury. I will not go through what the member for Braddon said about him. But Mr Bantick summed up his piece with the remarkable phrase—I do not know what he was on when he wrote that story—`Boys hold the key to their own learning.' The profundity of that! Doesn't it just sort of come in and whack you right around the ears: `Boys hold the key to their own learning.' I hope he is not teaching now! There was no reference at all in the whole story to policy, pedagogy, procedures nor programs.

I trust the government will respond positively to this report; it deserves no less. However, as far as I was concerned, the most remarkable finding of the report was the failure of so many to recognise that boys and girls learn in different ways, and that a good education balances the difference in opportunities that boys and girls can have in education. Everyone has said here today that girls generally—not always—have superior verbal, linguistic and processing skills to boys. In a joke we say, `They can talk under wet cement.' Boys generally have superior visual, spatial and problem-solving skills to girls. Often, if you give a problem in a verbal way to a girl, she will process it much quicker than a boy; but, if it a visual problem, it might be around the other way.

Education is not a matter of verbal or visual—good education has both. It is not good enough that boys cannot express themselves and it is not good enough that girls of talent in this country are being discouraged to participate in higher levels of mathematics and science. The way we are going we will not have any engineers, architects, mathematicians or scientists in 25 years. We know that girls like self-directed and passive learning, essay type responses and continuous assessment. That is a good thing. And we know that boys like the directed, active and explicit teaching, examinations and tests, concise type responses and multiple-choice answers. But that is a good thing too.

Girls like collaborative activities. Boys like the challenge of competition. In many schools, collaboration is in and competition is out, but they both have positive and negative aspects. Collaboration can reduce everything to the lowest common denominator. Competition can be negative but it can raise people to the very highest level. In education one size does not fit all. It never did and never will. This report, if nothing else, makes exactly that point. I commend it to our colleagues on both sides of the chamber.