Interview - Weekend Sunrise

MONIQUE WRIGHT: For more we're joined now by Jason Clare, Minister for Education, coming to us live from Canberra. Jason, good to see you, thanks for being with us. JASON CLARE, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: Good to see you too, Mon.

Can we just be clear from the outset, this $10 million which you announced back in October last year, is it five million for the ad and five million for the website; is that it? Yep, that's right. So five for the ad and five for the website that's got all the resources there for parents and for students and eventually for teachers as well.

Yep. That's not up for teachers yet. When you try and get into it, it says that that will be available later in the year.

Let's try and get to the crux of how we stop bullying. We don't need to be reminded about how bad it is. Anyone that's been on the receiving end, any family knows that.

Tracey Tully, who's a former principal, we have her on this show regularly, she said to spend the money on a website and an ad will have minimal impact on behaviour change. The figure needed, she puts it more like $50 million with 48 of it, she says, should be spent on training, so direct intervention in schools. She's got a point, doesn't she?

Well, I always take feedback from teachers, that's my job, students should as well. I'd say this is just the start. It is an important part of tackling bullying.

I think every mum and dad out there worries about this, and it's different to what it was like when we were kids, as you said in your intro, it doesn't just happen at school, it can happen on the Internet, it can follow you all the way home. And kids have told us, in the work that we've done to develop the ad, that it can be anyone, it's not the child that you normally expect, and parents have told us, you know, we've spoken to P&Cs, we've spoken to Matt and Kelly O'Brien, whose daughter Charlotte took her life only almost two years ago, but they want resources, they want some information to help them to talk to their own children to be able to spot it when a child might be being bullied at school and not talking to their mum and dad about it.

So all of it's important. What's also important is that we give more resources and help to our teachers, and we're also putting in place reforms so that if bullying does happen at school that the school takes action within the first 48 hours of it happening. Yeah.

And look, that will be welcomed, and I know that that has been welcomed by Charlotte's family, and desperate families out there. But that doesn't mean that that response is effective, it just means that it starts the process. Isn't the root of the problem training, direct intervention, and so that teachers and educators actually can get some specialist back‑up here?

Yeah. Well, you know, what the evidence shows is the earlier you act, the earlier you nip it in the bud, the earlier you can stop it. One of the things that Charlotte said in her farewell message to her mum and dad was that she hoped that more children wouldn't be bystanders, but they would be upstanders.

I had my little boy, Jack, nine‑year‑old Jack, come home to me the other day and ask me, "Do you know what an upstander is, dad?" That told me that something's happening in our schools. It's about providing teachers resources, parents with information, but also our children in our schools and elsewhere about the importance of their role in not standing by and letting bullying happen, but to be upstanders as well, the sort of people that Charlotte asked for and hoped for.

Absolutely. And that's what we hope for, but to expect that to come from a website and an ad is a bit much, isn't it? I'm not saying that that a website or an ad ‑ So what else can we do?

Okay, so then, what sort of other money and resources are you going to give and arm the schools in particular, will we see more school psychologists, for example? Yeah, that's a big part of it, absolutely. The funding that we're providing in fixing the funding of our public schools, which is about an extra $20 billion over the next 10 years, helps to fund everything from improving literacy and numeracy in our schools to improving wellbeing, and that can involve investment in psychologists and other mental health support in our schools.

Okay. Great. So how much for school psychologists, because a lot of, particularly, state schools are just crying out that school psychologists and counsellors are totally overwhelmed?

Yeah. It will be up to each individual state about how they allocate that money, but you're talking about millions and millions of dollars. Okay.

What about beyond that in terms of arming the teachers? I know there will be a website. So are we expecting teachers, once this is up and running for teachers, to then find the time to go and wade through these PDFs?

No, no, it's something they can go to if they want to, but really this has got to be organised at a school system level and at an individual school level. Oh, so it's up to the school? A lot of schools are doing this already.

That two day rule that we talked about last year is now rolling out across a lot of schools. It will be mandatory in all schools, whether they're public or private, from the start of next year, and it's the school systems that are going to help to roll this out and roll out the training to support teachers as well. Okay.

How much time, do you know, is allocated when teachers are being educated to get their degrees, how much time is allocated to teaching them about bullying? Not enough. Not enough.

One of the things that Education Ministers have said when we looked at the ad and when we met with Matt and Kelly O'Brien, is we need to make this part of the university degree. We've made some changes to the degree already, but I think there's a very good argument that we need to build this into the university degree in a bigger way. Can you understand that a lot of parents that might be looking at this feel as if it's a bit of a rub to spend five million bucks on an ad and $5 million on a website?

Well, I think most mums and dads with kids at school, whether they're, you know, little ones at primary school, or whether they're at high school, worry about this, and a lot of parents are ‑ ‑ screaming out for ‑ Yeah, well, I do. We are screaming out. I've got six kids, you know, that space across primary and high school.

And I know with having had kids that have been bullied, because just about every family has ‑ ‑ that to expect us to wade through a website, just more is needed. And it's not just ‑ The skills need to be there at school so that the school ‑ ‑ help us to know how to deal with it. Yeah, and Mon, this is not everything.

As I said, this is just the start, it's one part of how we tackle, you know, this horrible, horrible problem, and for parents it's not just the risk that your child might be bullied, it's the risk that you get a message on School Bytes that says that your child might have done something wrong at school, and then you think, "What do I need to do?" "How do I talk to my child?" So there's information there for both.

I don't underestimate how big a problem this is or how hard it is to fix. I've got an option, I can stand by and do nothing, or I can try and take whatever steps I possibly can to help our kids, to help parents and to help our teachers. Yep.

I totally get that you have got the will and you're wanting to do something about this. When you say that there's more coming, this is just the start, that's terrific, it will be welcomed, but when's the rest of it going to come? I mean our principal, our former principal, Tracey Tully, she's scored this as a C minus.

Is it fair? Yeah. Well, as I said, I always take constructive feedback from teachers.

I think this is a big deal because bullying is a big deal. This is about helping our parents, it's about helping our teachers and it's ultimately about helping to keep our kids safe. Yep, all right.

Jason Clare, we always appreciate your time. Thank you. No worries, thanks Mon.