Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to the member for Deakin. I know he has a deep interest in education. I welcome the fact that the Leader of the Opposition asked a question on education today, because it means that during the life of this parliament we have now seen one question on education from the shadow minister for education and one question from the Leader of the Opposition. I think that tells everyone everything they need to know about the level of interest of the Liberal Party in education. They do not care; they never did.

In office, they never acted on the question of teacher quality. We know from the research around the world that nothing matters more to the ability of a student to learn in a classroom than the quality of the teacher standing in front of them. We are determined to enter a new national partnership with our state and territory colleagues and with the Catholic and independent school systems to improve teacher quality around this nation.

When we are improving teacher quality around this nation we will draw on the best learning across the world. In particular, we are drawing on approaches from the United Kingdom and the United States, through the Teach First and Teach for America programs, which have brought some of the best and brightest graduates in those countries into teaching. Whilst we have some great teachers in this country, I do not think any Australian today could say as a standard that the best and brightest graduates in our universities today aspire to go teaching. In part I suspect that is because for more than the last decade the Howard government talked teaching down.

We want to make sure that the best teachers are recognised and rewarded. We want to make sure that the best teachers stay at the front of Australian classrooms, that their accomplishments are recognized and that they know they are valued by the Australian community.

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