Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I rise to make a ministerial statement about our achievements in schools and cross-border education.

Introduction

This government has honoured all its education election promises.

The difference between the coalition and Labor is that we are driving long term policies, to improve the quality of our education system, not short term politics to satisfy allied vested interests.

Australian school student performance results as measured by international testing have declined over the last 12 years. While national testing indicates some positive changes, overall student performance in key areas of numeracy and reading have not shown marked improvement.

This cannot be allowed to continue.

Education policy must now be measured not by how much money has been allocated, not by the number of teachers, not by classroom sizes, but whether public funds are being spent on what works to improve student outcomes!

Certainty and stability in school funding

We inherited a school funding mess from Labor with only three states fully signed up—hardly a national system.

We fixed the mess and honoured our election commitment of matching dollar for dollar the previous government's spending over the next four years.

More than that, we reinstated the $1.2 billion cut by the previous government because they felt it reasonable to completely exclude funding to states and territories that had not signed up.

Australia now has a national needs based funding system which includes loadings for disadvantage.

We did what Labor could not achieve by providing certainty and stability to schools.

Students First Initiatives

The Students First framework focuses on four priority areas:

Teacher Quality

Improving teacher quality has been more talked about than acted upon for far too long.

Teacher quality is known to be the greatest in-school contributor to student performance.

We want better teacher standards and training to produce great teachers with practical skills to teach effectively in the classroom.

Hence, I have appointed the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group to provide advice on reforming teacher education.

I expect to receive the final report soon.

To ensure our vision for teacher reform is achieved I appointed the internationally recognised Professor John Hattie as the new chair of the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership.

We have also expanded the Teach for Australia program which fast tracks high-calibre non-teaching graduates into disadvantaged schools.

School autonomy

Giving parents, teachers and principals a greater say in how their schools are run is a key ingredient to improving student performance.

All states and territories are moving in this direction.

To support the states and territories further we have invested $70 million over four years through our Independent Public School initiative.

I am pleased to report that most states and territories have now signed agreements to participate.

We are delivering what we promised.

Promoting parental engagement

Research shows that when parents are engaged in their children's education, their children perform better.

We have committed $1 million per year over four years to the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) to research parental engagement and inform future policy actions. The Independent Public Schools initiative will also promote greater parental involvement in their children's school.

A robust National Curriculum

A robust national curriculum is one of the foundations of a quality education. It must be up to date, relevant, balanced and understandable to all parents. We established, as promised, an independent review. It reported in October and has been widely praised because it focused on getting the national curriculum back to basics—to what really matters.

Implementation will be a priority during 2015 following consultation with state and territory education ministers at our 12 December education ministers' council.

NAPLAN faster turn ar ound

This government supports the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy—NAPLAN—but results have been taking too long to be returned to teachers. We promised to reduce the NAPLAN turnaround time. I am pleased to report that preliminary results are now being provided four weeks earlier. We are delivering.

NAPLAN Online

We are moving to have online delivery for NAPLAN in 2017 for schools that are ready. We have progressed this project from in-principle agreement, to allocating $24.7 million so it can start in less than three years. This is a great step forward. It will allow teachers a faster and better understanding of their students' abilities so as to improve every students' performance. I thank the state and territory education ministers for their cooperation and collaboration in bringing this about.

Australian Education Act 2013

Nothing better contrasts the approach of the coalition to the conduct of the former government than our changes to the Australian Education Act 2013. Labor rushed the passage of the current act, resulting in numerous errors. Our amendments passed the parliament and have not only fixed these but have allowed us to provide an extra $6.8 million for non-government schools that have significant numbers of Indigenous boarding students from remote areas. This fixed an identified funding shortfall which the previous government failed to provide.

But more needs to be done. Following recent consultations there was unanimous agreement from stakeholders that the command-and-control aspects of the act place unnecessary regulatory burdens on all schools. We will address this problem next year when we introduce further amendments to the act.

Flexible Literacy for Remote Primary Schools (Good to Great Schools)

In remote primary schools that have a high proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, NAPLAN results show basic English literacy is not being achieved. Evidence suggests that alphabetic teaching approaches are beneficial for children who are having difficulty learning to read. We appointed Good to Great Schools Australia to introduce alphabetic teaching approaches under our Flexible Literacy in Remote Primary Schools program.

Nearly 40 schools across Western Australia, Queensland and Northern Territory will benefit in 2015. This will help to close the gap between students from remote areas and those based in metropolitan areas.

Disability

The Australian government is committed to assisting students with disability, and this year introduced a loading which provided over $1 billion of Australian government funding. This is more funding for students with disability than ever before. In 2015 this will increase by $100 million.

Mr Champion interjecting—

I thank the member for Wakefield for pointing out the large number of my colleagues who have come in to support this ministerial statement.

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