Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth. Will the minister update the House on the government's plan to make every school a great school and to give every student in every school access to a great education? And is the minister aware of the impact of not acting to reform school funding?

Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Parramatta. In her electorate over $100 million has seen improvements or upgrading of 32 classrooms, 16 libraries, 17 multipurpose halls and so it goes from the investment that this Labor government makes in education, because we know that it is the single most important investment we can make in the nation's future. And we know that by properly investing in education we enable children to reach their full potential, get highly paid jobs in the future and of course contribute to productivity. That is why, after inheriting a system that had suffered from a decade of neglect by the coalition when in government, we worked with states and territories to provide more information to parents through the MySchool website to lift the quality of teaching, to improve literacy and numeracy results through national partnerships and smarter schools, to improve facilities in schools right across the nation and to bring a national curriculum in, set at the very highest levels, to give our kids the best chance that we can.

Every time I visit a school I see this proud investment in place. But the fact is, there is more to do. The Gonski review found that the model for funding our schools was broken, and it found that too many Australian kids are getting left behind. That is why we have developed a national plan for school improvement to deliver extra funding for schools that need it, based on the needs of every student in every single school, delivering the reforms that we know will lift results: improved teacher training, better teaching, more local decision making, more teachers aid, special equipment—those things that are needed now in the classroom to make a difference to the kids' education for the future. We will pay our fair share, and we expect the states to do likewise. We have a plan to put Australia in the top five nations in the world by 2025, and that means Australian parents can be confident that their kids can get those highly paid, high-performing jobs of the future.

I am asked by the member about the impact of doing nothing on school funding. The fact is that if we do not act on school funding—and certainly that is the position that the opposition has taken—then not only will education performance around Australia continue to struggle but Australian students will get fewer resources for their education in the future. To be clear: if we stick to the broken funding model that we now have, then Australian schools are likely to be worse off to the tune of around $5 billion. So it is very disappointing for Australian parents to see the Leader of the Opposition cutting the schoolkids bonus and even more disappointing to see the shadow minister declare that a plan to make Australia a stronger, smarter and much more intelligent country is mad. We will deliver a national plan— (Time expired)