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

The Turnbull government has committed to and accepted the priority recommendations of the review, particularly the review's findings that we must deliver on foundation skills in the early years of education—the basics of literacy and numeracy—and ensure that they are established in Australian schoolchildren, ideally, by age 8. We've equally committed to and accepted the recommendation that there ought to be a better and more consistent assessment process and tool linked to providing specific guidance and advice to help teachers better target their teaching and better track the progress of students, ensuring that parents, as well as schools, have regular, clear, consistent and updated advice on how their students are learning and how that benchmarks against expected outcomes for those students.

But there ought to be better incentives to keep highly-skilled, accomplished and lead teachers in our classrooms and in the profession, mentoring others. Ultimately, we ought to seek to extend the skills of every student to their maximum capability so that not only do we have fewer underachievers but we have more overachievers achieving even higher— (Time expired)