Yvette Berry brushes off Noel Pearson's call to prioritise explicit instruction in schools

Ms Berry said she was unaware of widely-reported comments made by Indigenous activist and scholar Noel Pearson where he praised the Catholic Education Canberra Goulburn Archdiocese's Catalyst program as the most important development in Australian school education.

Mr Pearson called for explicit, direct instruction to be prioritised in schools and said "lives were lost" when education systems didn't follow evidence-based practices.

However, Ms Berry said teachers should be able to decide for themselves and to use a combination of explicit and inquiry-based models.

"I don't agree that it should be just explicit or just direct instruction and that's not the feedback that I hear from our teaching professionals and school principals on the ground," she said.

"Teachers work with their schools and their students about how they learn and deliver the education in the way that best suits."

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Ms Berry said she was aware of the Catalyst program being implemented in Catholic schools, which has involved extensive professional development for teachers and distribution of common lesson plans for them to follow.

"We have our own systems in the ACT in our public schools about how we deliver numeracy and literacy within our schools," Ms Berry said.

"Rather than explicitly directing teachers on how to teach young people, we prefer to work with our teaching professionals on how they can deliver the best education to students in a way that works for them."

Ms Berry said public school teachers had access to an online library of teaching materials that was developed during the pandemic.

"Our teachers work very closely together to support each other to find different ways or methods or styles of delivering they're delivering on the curriculum," she said.

"We also have our affiliated schools program with the University of Canberra, the only kind in the country ... that provides new and beginning teachers the chance to practice their craft within our schools."

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