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

I thank the member for Lyons for his question. I know he is passionately interested in education. The government continues to deliver its education revolution. Already we have delivered investment in trade training centres—$90 million of a $2.5 billion program. This is a program that has already benefited 96 schools who are putting together 34 projects. We are delivering our digital education revolution—a $1.2 billion plan to bring fibre to schools and to bring computers to school children, a plan that is on track to deliver as promised and which has already delivered $116 million to 896 secondary schools around the country, enough funding for more than 116,000 computers. The government is delivering on early childhood education and care. We have delivered an increase in the childcare tax rebate so it now meets 50 per cent of out-of-pocket costs. This payment is not income tested and is now paid quarterly. We are delivering on universal preschool and investing in the early years of children’s lives because we know that is where we can make the most difference for outcomes later in life. We have invested in our universities, with half a billion dollars already delivered to help them rebuild their campus infrastructure. We have created new places for nurses and early childhood educators. We are commencing the phasing out of full-fee-paying undergraduate places for Australian students. We believe and will ensure that access to university for Australian students is about merit and not capacity to pay because that is the Australian way. We are delivering 700,000 new training places over the next five years. We have been delivering these new training places, our productivity places, all this year. This program has been so popular it has been oversubscribed. And our economic security statement added in 57,000 new places to assist as we meet the economic challenges this nation now confronts. All of these policies are being delivered and next Saturday, by working cooperatively with states and territories, we look forward to delivering an historic deal in the form of a new national education agreement and partnership in the areas of teacher quality, better assistance for disadvantaged schools and literacy and numeracy.

It is very fitting that, as we move towards this historic new agreement, this week Australia hosts a visit from the chancellor of New York’s education department, Joel Klein. I met with him this morning, and I had the opportunity to meet with him in New York. We spoke together today at a forum entitled ‘Leading transformational change in schools’. I am pleased to confirm that, as part of the new COAG arrangements, the Rudd government stands ready with half a billion dollars of new investment in teacher quality because we know, and worldwide research is telling us, that there is nothing more important to a child’s outcomes at school than the quality of the teacher standing in the classroom. We are investing in teacher quality.

We are also delivering a new era of transparency to Australian schools. We particularly want parents and community members to be able to compare schools with similar student populations—students who have similar challenges when it comes to learning. When we do that comparison and we see different results for similar student populations then we will know that one of three things needs to be addressed: teacher quality, school leadership or a difference in resources. By doing these comparisons, we will be able to analyse the factors that adults should fix to assist those children.

One thing that stands in the way of delivering this new era of transparency—and obviously transparency is very controversial; I understand that people have strong views—is the attitude of the Liberal Party to the Schools Assistance Bill, which is making its way through the parliament. This bill is about imposing the same transparency requirements on non-government schools that we will impose on government schools through the National Education Agreement—that is, the same transparency about results and the same transparency about resources. But the Liberal Party, rather than addressing educational disadvantage of schoolchildren and actually using the powerful tool of transparency to help us address that disadvantage, is playing the old politics of the public-private divide. We are moving beyond the public-private divide to lifting quality in every school. Transparency right across the board, including resources, is part of that. I would call on the Liberal Party, after its 12 years of neglect and failure, to get out of the way as we lead transformational change in Australian education for Australian students.

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