{"id":897946,"date":"2026-09-19T16:54:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T16:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/897946\/"},"modified":"2026-09-19T16:54:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T16:54:19","slug":"national-pride-and-western-values-the-focus-of-coalition-education-plan-that-would-reduce-first-nations-content-australian-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/897946\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2019National pride\u2019 and \u2018Western values\u2019 the focus of Coalition education plan that would reduce First Nations content | Australian politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Content on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and culture, Australia\u2019s engagement with Asia, and sustainability would be cut from the Australian curriculum under a Coalition<\/a> plan to teach students about \u201cnational pride\u201d and \u201cWestern values\u201d.<\/p>\n

The shadow education minister, Julian Leeser, revealed during a speech delivered to an education conference on Saturday in Sydney that the Coalition would remove the three cross-curriculum priorities.<\/p>\n

According to the Australian curriculum, the priorities \u2013 which are not separate subjects \u2013 allow students to engage with and better understand their world by providing opportunities to enrich the content of other subjects like English, history and science.<\/p>\n

But Leeser claimed these priorities \u201calmost by definition [mean] they\u2019re not being taught by people with subject matter expertise\u201d and did both the topics and teachers a disservice.<\/p>\n

He said they should instead be delivered as discrete, planned topics within history, geography or science classes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re teaching a maths or science or history class, I\u2019d like you not to have to worry about incorporating those additional bits,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As part of the Coalition\u2019s curriculum reform proposal, Leeser also said students should be taught and exposed to the \u201cfoundations of Western culture\u201d including democracy, the rule of law and \u201ca fair go\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI want Australian students to learn more about all three strands of our history: our Indigenous heritage, our British foundation and our multicultural character,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet every school have a flag and let every student take pride in it, its history and the values for which it stands.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn teaching our children about national pride, there is much to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, One Nation\u2019s current education platform states \u201cthere should be no room for Western, white, gender, guilt shaming in any classroom\u201d.<\/p>\n

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As the Coalition attempts to win back voters from One Nation, their policy commits to streamlining pathways to make it easier for mid-career Australians to pivot to teaching, addressing student behaviour, reducing screen time and AI use, and lifting educational outcomes for boys.<\/p>\n

The 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment results, released earlier this month<\/a>, found Australia had dropped to its worst ever results for maths and reading, and that classroom disruption remained among the worst in the world.<\/p>\n

Leeser floated the idea of helping veterans become teachers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I think about the need for better classroom behaviour and more discipline in our classrooms, about the need for more support for Australian values, it seems to make sense,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He claimed Labor was \u201conly for public schools, but we are for all schools\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to stop class war politics and recognise that school funding is about funding for students, wherever they learn,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s time to restore excellence to Australian schools.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Content on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and culture, Australia\u2019s engagement with Asia, and sustainability would be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":897947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-897946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=897946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/897947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=897946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=897946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=897946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}