Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Canning for his question about independent public schools. I can tell him that Mr Finlay, the principal of the Ocean Road Primary School, is right. He is correct. Independent public schools are transformational schools in Western Australia. They are making an enormous difference to student outcomes, to the communities in which they are being developed, and the Western Australian government should be congratulated for the excellent work they are doing in creating transformational, independent public schools.

Mr Finlay is not alone; he is in very good company, when it comes to support for more school autonomy. The OECD, in their PISA report, said: 'PISA show a clear relationship between learning outcomes and the relative autonomy of schools.' The UK schools white paper, in 2010, said: 'Across the world, the case for the benefit for school autonomy has been established and beyond doubt,' and the report of choice for the opposition, the Gonski report—even in the Gonski report, which the Labor Party likes to quote—says studies have shown that school leaders who are able to make decisions, including decisions about hiring staff and over the school budget, do well in terms of student achievement.

Because of that, we are going to extend independent public schools across Australia, working with the states and territories in cooperation. We are going to put $70 million aside in a fund to encourage more independent public schools, because we think it does have a major transformational effect in student outcomes and in local communities. Many members of the Labor Party have supported this policy over the years. The former Prime Minister Julia Gillard said: 'Today in Western Australia, as a result of our resources and reforms, more than 30 state schools are now called independent public schools'. In fact, the former Prime Minister Mr Rudd said: 'We go to the importance of greater autonomy for school principals so that there is much greater power to hire and fire and to use the resources available to the school with discretion by the principal as they see fit.'

And the shadow Treasurer—who is hanging his head, of course, because he knows what is coming—in his book In Hearts & Minds: A Blueprint for Modern Labor said: 'Western Australia with the support of a federal Labor government has taken more tentative steps towards more independence for public schools.' But his view is not shared by the Leader of the Opposition. Unfortunately, the Leader of the Opposition said: 'Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne want to follow Premier Colin Barnett's lead in Western Australia by privatising our public schools. It is eerily similar to Angelo Gavrielatos, head of the Teachers Federation, who said: 'We are part of a privatisation agenda.' Once more, the Leader of the Opposition is showing he is the cat's paw of the union movement—in this case, the Teachers Federation.

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