Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women's Issues) Share this | Hansard source

The first thing they should be concerned about, Member for Macquarie, is that the Labor Party would have as an education minister the guest speaker at the Marxist centenary conference where she called for an end to capitalism. Remember that one, Jenny? Down with capitalism!

I thank the member for Macquarie for his question and I acknowledge his deep commitment to raising standards in education across the country. The Howard government is committed to ensuring that we have high standards in education across the country. We want to see greater national consistency across the country and we want to ensure that state education authorities are held accountable for what is taught in schools so that parents can have the confidence that their children are getting the fundamentals and that the education authorities are getting the fundamentals right.

I am sorry to say that they do have reason to be concerned about falling literacy and numeracy standards. Parents have a right to be concerned when universities in this country are reporting that they are having to divert resources to remedial maths and English classes for tertiary students. Parents have a right to be concerned when international benchmarking says that 30 per cent of 15-year-olds in Australia do not have an acceptable level of literacy. We have a right to be concerned when international benchmarking tells us that 12 per cent of 15-year-old students do not have fundamental mathematical literacy. These are the sorts of issues that parents are raising with us. I thank the member for his question, because we want to ensure that there is greater accountability for taxpayers, particularly parents.

Parents are sick of the fads and experiments that are going on under state education authorities. I give the example of the disastrous OBE implementation in Western Australia. In Tasmania they have now trashed the Essential Learnings program. In Queensland over the weekend they announced a review of the senior syllabus. We want to see greater national consistency, and that is what we are working towards. There are eight separate curriculums in this country. There are nine separate year 12 certificates. There are five different eligible school starting ages. I will tell you who is being disadvantaged by this. The 80,000 or 90,000 students who move interstate every year are being disadvantaged by the lack of consistency in our education systems. So the Australian government is happy to have a significant debate on education to ensure that we can get states to commit to higher standards for all students in Australia.

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