Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

The government had a chance yesterday, when the minister turned up to the Press Club. Did we find a concrete policy proposal? Did we find a fully costed Commonwealth commitment to invest in education? No, we found three wafted-out thought bubbles. And one of those thought bubbles was that we should invest principals with more capacity to determine the staff in schools. I just said to myself, ‘I wonder where I have seen that before?’ On 13 November 2003, the minister’s predecessor said:

... principals need more autonomy for the planning and administration of their schools ... Critically important is control over staffing.

There is only one problem: what happened over the three years? There was a massive decline in maths and science teachers and students.

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