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

It is interesting that interjections are coming from the Liberal Party, which at one point used to proudly say that it believed in transparency. Clearly, now it believes that secrecy should be associated with education. But we will not allow critics of transparency to obscure the purposes of our reforms. Only by understanding the total amount of funds at the disposal of individual schools is it possible to understand the relationship between resourcing and educational outcomes.

The opposition have claimed in this debate that the income of a school is irrelevant to understanding its performance. I find this claim nonsensical. If we are to identify accurately where the greatest educational need across the Australian community is located and encourage excellence in every school, we need a basis for fair, consistent and accurate analysis of how different schools are doing.

This bill includes performance reporting at individual school level. The government has repeatedly stated that such reporting will not take the form of simplistic league tables. Instead, any public reporting would show how schools are doing compared to other like schools that share the same student characteristics. States and school systems are currently working with the Australian government to examine which forms of data are relevant to understanding the performance of schools, given their overall circumstances and the students that they serve. A particular emphasis on Indigenous students will feature in performance data to guide improvements in closing the educational gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children.

Implementation of greater transparency will be supported by the recent agreement by the Council of Australian Governments to the establishment of a new national education authority, the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority. That will bring together for the first time the functions of curriculum, assessment and reporting at the national level. The new national curriculum will provide a clear and explicit agreement on the curriculum essentials that all young Australians should have access to, regardless of their socioeconomic background or the location of their school.

In this bill, the government is not requiring detailed adherence to a rigid, line-by-line program of curriculum study. Instead, it is making clear that the national curriculum, once agreed and completed, will be compulsory. Consideration will be given to whether some existing curricula meet the requirements laid down by the new curriculum framework. What is not open for negotiation is the idea that a world-class curriculum will be an optional extra for schools that are receiving significant public funds.

The national curriculum will not be a straightjacket for schools. It will provide for flexibility and scope to allow schools and teachers to implement its content and achievement standards in appropriate ways at the local and school level. It should not interfere with the ability of independent schools to continue to offer local curriculum arrangements within the requirements of the curriculum essentials of the national curriculum.

A further erroneous claim in relation to the bill has been made. That claim is that it enables the minister to in some way capriciously withhold money from a school that has an unqualified audit report. I indicate for the benefit of the House—

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