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

I am sorry to inform the member for Hasluck that, despite increasing spending on school education in the last 10 years in this country by 40 per cent, our results in numeracy have declined in both relative and absolute terms. But the good news is that this government has a plan to fix it, unlike the opposition. Through our Students First policy initiatives we are going to declutter the national curriculum to give teachers more time to teach maths. We are going to reform teacher training in order to have more of an emphasis on mathematics and only graduate specialists in maths, science and languages in primary school teachers. We are going to increase school autonomy to give principals the opportunity to get the teachers they need rather than the teachers they are sent.

The Leader of the Opposition, on the other hand, wants to revive a policy to give HECS discounts for students doing maths and science at universities—exactly the same—

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