Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Johnston for particularly focusing in on teaching quality. The OECD Director for Education and Skills said in February this year, 'The highest performing education systems tend to systematically prioritise the quality of teachers over the size of classes.' Indeed, our government has made sure that teacher quality has been at the forefront of our reforms. That is why we established the TEMAG review of initial teacher education programs, which reported in February, and have accepted all but one of its 38 recommendations. This has ensured that we have gained agreement from the states and territories for new guidelines for the selection of entrants to teacher training programs, the adoption of new literacy and numeracy tests, as a means of demonstrating that teacher graduates are in the top 30 per cent of the population for personal literacy and numeracy, and are supporting an accelerated timetable to bring all initial teacher education programs under the new national standards and procedures, ensuring that parents can have confidence that in the future the quality of teachers will match the investment by governments.