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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 10 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3724 ..

MR PRATT (continuing):

My concern, as shadow education minister, is that the ACT education department is perhaps giving undue prominence to Martin and the gender equity task force on the matter of boys' education. I would seek to encourage the government to take closer note of a number of excellent studies into education which have identified strong trend patterns of falling boys' performance and increasing disengagement by some boys, especially in the later primary and junior high school years. These reports also highlight their concerns about the dearth of male teachers.

Let me quote from some of these. Ian Lillico has travelled nationally and internationally in pursuit of this very important issue. Ian Lillico, who is a headmaster of a school in Western Australia and who has travelled to the US, the UK and Canada, has found that, in the western Anglo-Saxon world, the same trends appear. Right across all of these nations there is a growing gap. Also reflected is a parallel pattern of a decline in the number of male teachers.

Let me look at one of these areas. Lillico quotes Steve Biddulph, who did the reports Raising boys, Manhood, and The secret of happy children. Lillico states:

Steve Biddulph ... believes that boys learn teachers and not subjects. Girls are able to connect directly with subjects-

because they are tidier-

but a boy can only connect with a subject via the teacher. This is indeed a simplistic statement but on talking with boys throughout Australia and New Zealand and overseas, their parents and others-

Lillico says he firmly believes-

it is true for the vast majority of boys, particularly from ages 11 to 16. This has major ramifications for schools and our system, but it reinforces that the teacher is paramount to successful learning for students, particularly boys.

The background to this phenomenon is based on the need for boys in their puberty years to believe that a teacher cares for them as a person, before they will allow them to impart knowledge or skills to them.

Then he and Biddulph go on to talk about a number of other issues:

This has always been the case ...

That has always been the case for boys. He goes on to say:

... The same applies even more directly to discipline.

I am going to talk about the cane now, but I do not want anybody to get too excited about this. I am not proposing use of the cane, and neither is Lillico. Nevertheless, in talking about discipline and the cane, he goes on to make the following comments:

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