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

I thank Senator Bushby for his question, which is a very important issue for the nation but especially for Tasmania in terms of having confidence in the quality of our teachers and confidence in the literacy and numeracy standards that are taught to our children.

The Turnbull government is providing new measures, in cooperation with the states and territories, to give confidence in the capabilities of our teachers in their own literacy and numeracy standards and therefore their capacity to be able to teach and appropriately deliver a good literacy and numeracy education to our children. Our government provided the opportunity, as part of our reforms, for up to 5,000 students to voluntarily sit the new test that we are applying across all initial teacher-training education graduates across nine centres: Perth, Darwin, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra, Ballarat and Albury. This test is an opportunity for students to demonstrate that they are in the top 30 per cent of all Australians for literacy and numeracy standards. Importantly, from next year, it will be a compulsory part of graduation for any student and will therefore be available right around the nation, including, of course, in Tasmania.

What we have seen from these initial results is that some 92 per cent of those involved in teacher training at university passed the literacy component of the test and 90 per cent passed the numeracy component of the test. While these are pleasing pass rates, it demonstrates that our universities have a way to go to ensure that every single graduate completing a teacher training program at university is within that top 30 per cent band for literacy and numeracy. To do so will give us confidence, and, most importantly, will give parents, principals and the community confidence that our teachers are up to standard and can provide the requisite literacy and numeracy skills and training to students to ensure they have the basics for an excellent education into the future.