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

I thank my friend, the ridiculously talented member for Reid. I told the House a couple of weeks ago that the number of kids finishing high school is going back up, and that's good news because for the last decade it's been going down—from about 85 per cent to 79 per cent—and now that's turning around. It's not the only example of where things are turning around; school attendance is another example. Since 2014, the number of kids turning up to school has been going down every year—year after year after year—and now that's going back up as well.

It's the same story with the number of people starting a degree at university to become a schoolteacher. Over the last decade the number of people signing up to become schoolteachers has plummeted, and that's now turning around as well. Over the course of the last three years, that's jumped by 20 per cent, and numbers this year indicate it's jumped by about another 6.3 per cent. None of this happens by accident; it happens because of the action that this government is taking and because of the action that state and territory governments are taking.

We've got some more good news, this time on the reading of our littlest Australians. I've told MPs before that the reading wars are over. We know what works. It's phonics that works, and the results that we got out of New South Wales last week are proof of that. For the last few years, they've been teaching kids to read with phonics, and they've been doing something called a phonics check. Three years ago, one in two children in New South Wales, according to the phonics check, were on track with their reading. By last year, that had jumped to two-thirds. It had jumped from one in two to two-thirds in three years. At Five Dock Public School, in the member for Reid's electorate, it's even more incredible. Three years ago, it was one in two—50 per cent of kids were on track with their reading. Last year it was 90 per cent. That's about the most incredible news that I have heard in my time as education minister. The impact of that is potentially massive. If you get the basics right when you're little, then you can build on it. And we need to build on that too.

That's why this year, for the first time ever, every state and every territory will roll out the phonics check in year 1. We're going to do the same thing with maths; this year, most states will roll out or pilot a maths check, a numeracy check, as well. This is all part of the agreements we signed with every state and territory a year ago this week to fix the funding of our public schools—the biggest investment ever in our public schools by an Australian government. It's not a blank cheque; it's tied to important reforms just like this. (Time expired)

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