The Acting Education Minister has defended his comments that blamed “dud teachers” for a decline in academic results.

Stuart Robert yesterday said the bottom 10 per cent of “teachers ragging the chain” are protected from being fired in the government system.

He denied the comments were a “fair crack” at state school teachers.

“It’s a matter of looking at the results across our schools in the last 20 years,” he told Neil Breen.

“The indisputable fact is we’ve been slipping on international benchmarks substantially and that decline continues.

“At some point, we have to look and make some hard decisions about it.”

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