Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women's Issues) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Cook for his question and I particularly thank him for organising a meeting with school principals from schools in his electorate last year so that we could talk about issues of concern to them. Teachers are a precious national resource. After parents, teachers are the single most important determinants in a child’s educational outcomes. That is why we must focus on quality teaching.

For schools to be able to provide quality education, principals must have greater autonomy. Principals must have greater management control over staffing and over budgets. Principals in our schools must have the power to hire and fire staff according to performance, like any other head of an organisation or enterprise has. How else can a school principal guarantee a quality education, if they have no control over the quality of the staff?

What we must do in order to attract and retain the very best, high-quality teachers is to provide more flexible and more attractive workplace conditions, and that includes offering rewards and incentives based on performance. Today I announced that I will be taking to the next state education ministers’ meeting a number of proposals relating to greater principal autonomy and ensuring that we have an element of performance based pay for teachers. We must attract, retain and reward the very best teachers. They are professionals. Let us treat them as professionals.

I note that the new Labor education spokesman, early on, ventured into this issue of teacher performance. He made a few noises about teacher performance. But, immediately, he was hauled back into line by the Australian Education Union, who even threatened to withhold campaign funding from the Labor Party unless they toed the line. Federally, Labor will never be able to deliver on education reforms because they are captives of the all-powerful teachers’ unions.

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