Colleen Harkin Discussing IPA National Curriculum Research On Credlin Sky News Australia – 14 April 2025

In this interview, Colleen Harkin appeared on Credlin – Sky News Australia to discuss the IPA’s research into the National Curriculum.

All media appearances posted onto the IPA website are directly related to the promotion and dissemination of IPA research.

Below is a transcript of the interview.

Peta Credlin:

But first, I want to get you to understand just how bloated and confusing the Australian school curriculum is. Now, have a look at this. This is a copy of just the maths curriculum. Those four volumes, they’re not even volumes, it’s just they couldn’t be put into one binder, that’s the maths curriculum. Year seven to year 10, 3,500 pages there; a bloated ideology. Instruction that just confuses teachers and students, absolutely.

This is what’s known as … it’s impacted heavily by what’s known as the cross-curriculum priorities. Now, that means there’s about 2,500 suggestions in those papers about how to incorporate a whole lot of stuff into lesson content; not what you should be teaching kids about maths, but in the maths content, what you also need to teach them about Indigenous history and culture, for example. And this is not just in maths, this in biology, history, woodwork, if you can believe it. Any subject in high school has to have woven into it environmental and Indigenous perspectives.

Now, this comes from the Rudd-Gillard era, but have a look at our competitor, Singapore. That little document, I’ll put the picture up again, that little document on the other side, that’s Singapore’s maths curriculum. Now, they are a world-leading nation, and it’s 80 pages long, and it’s all the basics. Someone who’s dug right into this detail, director of the school’s programme at the Institute of Public Affairs, Colleen Harkin; I saw a fantastic presentation by you in Adelaide recently with the IPA. And I was gobsmacked to see the physical reality of what we’re trying to teach and not teaching very well our kids, and what Singapore is doing. I didn’t think it was that bad.

Colleen Harkin:

No, it’s terrible, Peta I just want to correct you. It is foundation to year 10. It does not include year 11 and 12, but it is the primary sector as well.

Peta Credlin:

So primary school as well?

Colleen Harkin:

Foundation to year 10.

Peta Credlin:

Thank you.

Colleen Harkin:

But it’s an astounding document. It is so unwieldy and bloated with activist ideology. And I know you can’t compare directly with other countries, because Singapore has some differences to ours. But when you know that they are first on the OECD PISA results and we are languishing and our results have been going backwards year-on-year for 20 years, you have to look at it and say, “We are clearly doing something very wrong.”

Peta Credlin:

And you know there’s a whole industry to hide this from parents, because when you went looking to have a look at this document, you can’t even get it as a document can you?

Colleen Harkin:

No, you can’t. So that image that you just showed a moment ago, that is not available as a document. We’d spent days upon days having to download each of the sections. There are elaborations, there are content descriptors. There are all these things that you have to bury into. That image is what it would be if it was a book. We actually asked ACARA for a copy of it and they said, “It’s not available. Why would you want that?”

And that’s sort of part of the scenario about it, it is very opaque. The ideology that’s embedded into it is shoehorned into every subject, every year level, every opportunity. And in maths in particular, it even says things like teaching children to count through Aboriginal dance. The pollution of subject integrity is quite astounding. Parents would be quite shocked. And then it’s no surprise where results are going backwards. We’ve got a third of all of our students and not meeting minimum benchmarks, minimum.

Peta Credlin:

And we’re talking about a volume set like that for every single subject?

Colleen Harkin:

That is what’s called one learning area. And there are eight learning areas in the curriculum. And some of those learning areas have multiple subjects underneath them. So geography, business, history, they all come under one learning area. And if it was downloaded … I don’t know, the curriculum could be, I don’t know, 100,000 pages, who knows? Because there are so many that live under … Maths is the only one that has a learning area and a subject as one. Every other learning area has multiple subjects that sit underneath it.

Peta Credlin:

And when you’re forced by these Rudd era, Gillard era rules to apply Aboriginal culture and learning and environmental practises, let’s say to maths, what is a teacher meant to do with that rule?

Colleen Harkin:

Well, it’s an impossible task. Who can use a document like that? It means that the red tape that is involved in their job is extraordinary, because Singapore is a good example of if you understand maths, you understand, by the end of a certain grade, children will be able to do multiplication to three digits. And if you don’t understand what that means, you shouldn’t be a maths teacher. And so the Australian curriculum says, “Well, you have to go off and understand something about,” and I’m not making this up, “things like how Aboriginals used ovens to do things.” That somehow is shoehorned into mathematics. So you have to go off and do a whole separate task to try and merge those two principles together. And it is littered throughout them, sustainability and Aboriginal Torres Strait Islanders, everywhere.

Peta Credlin:

Those sorts of principles, even if we agree with them, which I don’t, they’d find their way into a social sciences curricula or history, perhaps. They wouldn’t be in maths.

Colleen Harkin:

Correct.

Peta Credlin:

They wouldn’t be in biology. They wouldn’t be in chemistry.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, correct. And they don’t belong there. Sustainability and our history and culture doesn’t belong in maths.

Peta Credlin:

Just quickly, why are we not having this whole debate then in the middle of an election campaign?

Colleen Harkin:

Oh, we definitely should be. I mean, the coalition is saying back to basics, education not ideology, which is fantastic. But I’d like to see it given a lot more oxygen, because our education system is in dire need for somebody to actually stand up and address it and champion the cause for our kids going future.

Peta Credlin:

Well done to you.

Colleen Harkin:

Thank you.

Peta Credlin:

That’s fantastic work. All right. That’s why I needed to show you this in the middle of the campaign, make sure you understand before you vote.

This transcript of Colleen Harkin talking on Credlin – Sky News Australia from 14 April 2025