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

$125,000 for Glenview State School, $200,000 for Golden Beach State School, $200,000 for Kawana Waters State College, $125,000 for Kilcoy State High School and $150,000 for Landsborough State School—claimed by the member as his own work: an endorsement of Building the Education Revolution.

But can I say to the member for Fisher that he is not alone in being someone who endorses Building the Education Revolution. Let us go to the education representatives in this country—the people who have made their life’s work advocating for schools. What do they say about Building the Education Revolution? Therese Temby, Chair of the National Catholic Education Commission, says:

The BER funding allocated by the government is being well spent. Projects are proceeding according to budget and on time, with maximum use of local project management and local building contractors—

Those are the words of the person who speaks on behalf of Catholic schools. Then Bill Daniels says:

I can assure you that those associated with 110,000 independent school communities throughout Australia welcome this additional support and are determined to use the funds efficiently and effectively.

That is the man who speaks on behalf of independent schools. Then Leonie Trimper, the person who speaks on behalf of primary principals, says:

The Australian Primary Principals Association today reiterated its strong support for the Federal Government’s $14.7 billion investment for Australia’s 9200 schools. The magnitude and scope of the Federal Government’s capital investment is unprecedented.

So those who have dedicated their lives to improving the quality of Australia’s education system endorse Building the Education Revolution.

The shadow minister comes into this parliament very frequently long on rhetoric, short on proof, making unsubstantiated allegations about Building the Education Revolution which he has mainly lifted from the pages of newspapers, not having done any original research. He should speak to the people who speak on behalf of schools. If he does he will find the attitudes expressed by the people I have just quoted.

More broadly on the education revolution, of which Building the Education Revolution is just one part, today the education revolution has drawn some unlikely support. Given that from time to time I have been known in this parliament to quote the words of the Australian newspaper not necessarily approvingly, I would today draw the House’s attention to the editorial of the Australian newspaper, which talks about it being crunch time in schools, talks about the Rudd Labor government’s determination on transparency and says:

Ms Gillard has been solid in her determination to lift standards, already doing more in less than two years than the Coalition did in 11 years.

That is the editorial of the Australian newspaper today. A dodgy throat is not helping me today, Madam Deputy Speaker. I apologise for that.

What we did when we came to government is say to ourselves, ‘Should we try and make sure that every Australian child gets the best possible start in life and a high-quality education?’ We answered that question yes—yes as a matter of equity and yes as a matter of future economic development for this nation. Then we asked ourselves the question, ‘Can we?’ We answered that question yes. If you are prepared to invest in the education of the most disadvantaged child in this country, you can make sure that child gets a great education and succeeds at school. Then we said to ourselves, ‘How can we make that difference?’ The first thing we realised is that, after more than a decade of neglect and rhetoric by the former government, you could not even sit here as a federal government and say, ‘Bring me a list of the thousand most disadvantaged schools in this country.’ You could not do that as federal education minister. If you said to the department, ‘Bring me a list of those thousand schools where the kids at them come from low income families, which teach many Indigenous children, which teach many children with disabilities, which teach many children from migrant and refugee backgrounds and which teach kids whose parents themselves did not succeed at school. Could you bring me that list?’, the answer would be no. After more than a decade of talking about school transparency by the Liberal Party, that information does not exist. So piece by piece we set about getting those transparency measures so that not only we, the government, but the community can see where educational attainment is, where disadvantage is, and act to make a difference. That is why our transparency measures are so fundamental to our program. Then those transparency measures will relate to and drive new improvements in educational quality across the board.

What do we know makes a difference to kids’ achievement? It is the quality of teaching. What are we investing in? The quality of teaching. What has this government already achieved? It has achieved, just to start, a system in New South Wales where the best teachers will be paid more money to go to the worst schools, the schools that are doing it the toughest. This is a tremendously profound educational reform delivered by the education revolution. What else have we achieved? We have achieved a new way of getting into teaching as a high-performing graduate, which means as a high-performing graduate you can go and help the most disadvantaged schools by teaching in them. This is, again, a profound reform already in train from this government. And we have created a new partnership, $1.5 billion to bring new resources to the most disadvantaged schools to make a difference for them. In addition to those reforms, we have got new investments in literacy and numeracy to make a difference to those kids who struggle the most with the foundation stones of learning.

This comes on top of the work we are doing on a national curriculum to lift standards around the country. It comes on top of the work we are doing in early childhood education to make sure that kids come to school ready to learn. One thing primary school teachers around the country will tell you is that they can tell the difference in a child who has had a quality preschool program and comes to school ready to learn. And we are going to make a difference post-school by ensuring new investments into VET, which we are already making, and of course new investments into universities. We are funding universities in a way which will create a sustainable and long-lasting partnership between universities and disadvantaged schools. For too long our universities have said, ‘We don’t educate enough students from low socioeconomic status families because they fail out of the school system, and we can’t fix that.’ We have said to universities, ‘You are amongst the brightest people in the nation. Why don’t we create an incentive for you to work with the most disadvantaged schools and actually make a difference to them?’, and we have done that.

This is a profound set of reforms right across the educational spectrum. The reforms work with our focus on the kinds of new skills and new learning that children will need in this century. That is why we have brought the digital education revolution to secondary schools. There are 78,000 new computers already in schools, and a ratio of one to one for senior secondary students will be achieved in 2011.

But the learning skills of the new century will not just be on computers; they will also be in trades, and many children will choose that pathway. But they are not going to do it in 1950s facilities and that is why we are bringing trades training centres to each secondary school around the country.

Many schools have chosen to cluster and build bigger facilities. This has been misrepresented by the opposition as somehow schools missing out. They have chosen to do that. The entitlement is there for schools to participate in this program over the 10 years of its rollout. It has already made a difference, with the allocations of funds for 432 schools and 138 projects.

This is an integrated set of reforms right across our education system, from the education of our youngest children through to the education of people in universities. It strikes me as amazing that the Liberal Party says it wants to contend to be the government of this country but it basically has nothing to say about this profound reform agenda and certainly has no alternative. The nation deserves better from the Liberal Party than that. (Time expired)

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