Fiona Scott (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I congratulate you on your appointment. My question is to the Minister for Education And Training. Will the minister update the House on the results of the recent round of NAPLAN testing. What action is the government taking to ensure our children receive the education they need for well into the future?

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

I thank the member for Lindsay for her question. I know that she, like all members of this side of the House, is deeply concerned to ensure that quality education leads to good outcomes for Australian students. I can report that in the last week the NAPLAN results for 2015 have been publicly released. They show that year 3 results are improving slightly and that year 9 results are declining slightly, but across the board there is stagnation over the last eight years in terms of the results of our students.

On this side of the House, we do not regard that as good enough. We believe that much needs to be done to improve the outcomes for students, and that is why we have a four pillars policy to change the outcome for Australian students. It consists of reforming the national curriculum from 1 January next year—to declutter the curriculum and to make it more robust and rigorous to extend our students more. This has been agreed to by all the states and territories and the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority.

We are reforming teacher quality in Australia by forcing all institutions across Australia to be reaccredited to train teachers, so that we can put in place the structures necessary to have high-quality teachers being produced by our institutions, which will change the entire system of teaching in Australia. We are introducing more school autonomy. Every state and territory jurisdiction has signed up to the government's independent public school model, at a cost of $70 million, because research shows the more autonomy in a school the better the outcome for students.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Griffith—again!

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

Also, we will very soon be announcing policies around parental engagement, which will fill the fourth of our pillars. On the other hand, the opposition is a policy-free zone on this matter. At their national conference they failed to commit to extra funding to schools from 2018 onwards, unlike this government, which put $1.2 billion back into school education that Labor had ripped out—the Leader of the Opposition had ripped out.

Opposition members interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Griffith!

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

Unlike the Labor Party, we got all the states and territories to agree to the national school funding model so that we deliver a national school funding model that goes up every year—eight per cent, eight per cent, six per cent and four per cent over the next four years. Labor has failed to commit to school funding increases into the future. As well as that, they are a policy-free zone on the other things that matter: teacher quality; school autonomy; parental engagement and the curriculum. They are a policy-free zone, whereas this side of the House is engaging the whole of the sector in reforms that will address all aspects of bringing better outcomes for students, certainly including funding, but, more importantly, addressing the core issues in school education.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.