Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Can I thank my friend the member for Deakin for this question. As a former schoolteacher, he understands better than most of us the power of education to change lives.

At the election, we promised to cut student debt by 20 per cent. The Australian people voted for it, we've passed legislation now to make it happen, and the tax office is working on this right now. In a few weeks time, this will all begin. Phones will start beeping; you'll get a text message or an email telling you that your student debt has been cut by 20 per cent. Millions of Australians will get this message, and all of that beeping and dinging of phones will be the sound of $16 billion coming off the shoulders of young Australians. Millions of Aussies will save thousands of dollars—on average, about $5½ thousand, changing lives.

The member for Deakin asked me about this, but he also asked me what else we're doing to build a better and fairer education system. This year, we signed agreements with every state and territory to fix the funding of our public schools, to put them on a path to full and fair funding—something that no government has ever done. It is the biggest new investment in public schools by an Australian government ever. And it's not a blank cheque; it's tied to real reforms, practical reforms that we know work—things like explicit teaching, as well as phonics checks and numeracy checks when kids are little, in year 1, to identify the children who are behind and need more help; and small-group tutoring or catch-up tutoring to help the same children to catch up.

Two weeks ago, we took the next step. Two weeks ago, education ministers met and agreed to bring forward work on the national curriculum, starting with the first three years of maths. If you get maths, it helps to set you up for success. It's critical for work and for life, and it's really important to get the basics at school, early. If you don't get the basics right in the first few years of school, you can't build on it. Learning maths is cumulative. You learn it step by step, and that's why we have to get the first three years right. A number of principals and teachers have told us that they think the current maths curriculum here is too complex, and others have told us that teachers need more support to implement it, with clearer advice about what to teach in what order. That is why we'll start here. It's the first part of the curriculum that we're going to work on, but it won't be the last.

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