Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to raise serious concerns about declining standards in Australian schools, which are arguably escalating under the Albanese government. In the May budget papers we learnt that 11 per cent of year 3 students remain in the bottom two bands in NAPLAN for reading, up from 8.6 per cent in 2018. The Australian Education Research Organisation, a very important initiative of the coalition, alarmingly found that 20 per cent of students starting year 7 have the reading ability of a grade 4 student. Review after review tells us that, despite a 60 per cent increase in school funding over two decades, we are seeing school standards slip dramatically.

The coalition understands that the key to improved student outcomes is evidence based teaching and learning, including the adoption of explicit instruction and the teaching of phonics in every Australian classroom. The science tells us this is what works. But the Albanese government is asleep at the wheel when it comes to delivering best-practice teaching methods.

Teachers are also being severely hampered by an overcrowded and ideologically-driven curriculum which does not allow them to adequately focus on the foundations of education—reading, writing and arithmetic. Students in year 12 have lived through the era of inquiry based learning or 'loose learning', as I call it, which has sent our students backwards. We know this does not work. The biggest disadvantage students face is not learning. At schools like John Paul II outside Hobart I've seen how children are thriving, supported by the most incredible program of highly structured, highly accountable, dynamic and engaging explicit instruction in reading and writing. As I say, we need explicit instruction in every classroom across this country.