Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker—I am glad you recognised me! I thank the member for Wakefield for bringing this motion to the House. I gladly support his motion. At the same time, I congratulate the member for Wright for his elevation to the Speaker's panel: it is good to see you in the chair. I acknowledge the other members who have supported this motion, the member for Moreton and, in particular, the member for Wakefield—who are both very vocal members of the chamber! They are from the class of '07 as well, so it is great to see three members from the class of '07 supporting this motion.

I would like to start by talking about a very important and special group in my electorate. It is the Dyslexia-SPELD Foundation of Western Australia situated in South Perth, which is in the heart of my electorate of Swan. This group has provided vital support to children and adults with learning disabilities in Western Australia for more than 40 years. This group is extremely committed to improving the level of support provided to children and adults with learning disabilities, as well as to educating the community about learning disabilities and, in particular, dyslexia.

This motion today acknowledges the important role of Dyslexia Empowerment Week and the role that organisations like the foundation in my electorate play in our community. It also acknowledges the many monuments around Australia which were lit up in red on 15 October as a pre-launch for Dyslexia Empowerment Week. The week aims to raise awareness of this very important developmental learning disability. Dyslexia affects four out of five students who have a developmental learning disability, and it primarily affects their skills in accurate and fluent word reading and spelling. As part of this week, I am supporting the red letter campaign and have asked schoolchildren in Swan to write a red letter about how dyslexia impacts them or their friends or family members, and what they think we as a government can do to help.

The Australian government places our priority on education and on providing equal educational opportunities to all Australian students. This includes students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia. The government is committed to ensuring that all our teachers, who work tirelessly, have the skills and tools, including an understanding of dyslexia, to best help our students. I recognise the member for Cunningham, who is an ex-teacher, and the contribution she made to this particular discussion. The government has funded a new Australian Federation of SPELD Associations resource titled Understanding Learning Difficulties: A practical guide so that it can be made freely available online to all teachers across the country. This guide was designed by experts to provide teachers with a greater awareness and understanding of the significant impact that learning disabilities such as dyslexia can have on students. It provides advice on a wide range of strategies for use in the classroom, to more effectively support and meet the needs of students with learning difficulties. Most importantly, it is easily accessible through the educational authorities' professional development portals. It is also available for purchase from the Dyslexia-SPELD Foundation of Western Australia in South Perth.

This government is committed to continuing to improve support for students with disability and learning difficulties like dyslexia. There are an extensive range of government initiatives and activities that support students with disability and learning difficulties. For example, the Disability Standards for Education 2005 were put in place to ensure that students with disability could access education on the same basis as other students. The standards explain the obligations of the education providers towards students with a disability. The government has funded the development of an exemplars of practice resource, with individual case studies based on the experiences of students, educators and parents. These provide examples of how students with disability have been supported to achieve positive outcomes, helping to demonstrate how the standards can be put into practice in a range of education settings. Another example is the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability. This is a joint initiative of all Australian governments and all state and territory government and non-government education authorities. National data is collected annually to identify the number of school students with disability and the level of reasonable education adjustment provided for them. This will help ensure we have the data available so that we can best help students with learning disabilities. As such, this government has delivered on its commitment to provide funding, informed by the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability from 2016.

In the 2016-17 budget, the government announced additional funding of $118.2 million in 2016-17 for schools to support students with a disability. This funding is on top of the increases in funding that the government is providing to all sectors across all states and territories through the existing loading. More than $5 billion has been notionally attributed to the loading for students with disability from 2014 to 2017, including over $1.3 billion in 2016 and almost $1.5 billion in 2017.

Again I commend the member for Wakefield for bringing this motion to the House and again I congratulate the local group in my electorate, Dyslexia-SPELD Foundation of WA, which is situated in South Perth and which is doing such a great job.

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