Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Canberra for her first question and commend her on her first speech in the parliament, where she described education as the great transformer. Indeed, it is the conviction of this government that education has the power to shape people’s lives for the better. We are committed to making sure that every school in Australia is a great school and that every child in Australia gets a great education. That means that information about school performance and the factors that affect school results should be available to the public. That is a key part of our plan to make sure that education is delivered to all Australians.

Those listening will know of the MySchool website, which has transformed community understanding about school performance and continues to stimulate educational debate. It is a website that has had over 3.6 million visits since it first went up. Last Friday I met with my ministerial colleagues on the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs and the council reaffirmed its support for enhancing the data available on MySchool from December of this year. Importantly, the enhanced MySchool website will present financial data for both government and non-government schools. This particular initiative cannot be underestimated. This will be the first time in our country’s history that the distribution of resources at the school level will be readily available and transparent to the community. We are committed to ensuring that this financial data is presented in a way that allows fair comparisons between the financial positions of schools. That information will allow parents to understand how well their local schools are funded and, importantly, where those funds are coming from.

Financial transparency is important, perhaps not to the coalition given that in the last election they pledged to actually reduce the amount of funding—a cut of nearly $3.2 billion in support for education. In our first four years after coming to power we have spent some $60 billion on education—almost double what the coalition spent in its last four years. Importantly, the enhanced MySchool website is a part of this government’s commitment to providing transparency for parents, for teachers and for others in the community so that they have the information they need to have a greater involvement in their schools. We are giving principals more autonomy, greater independence in how their schools are managed and greater accountability for finances and for education results. This is a genuine education revolution aimed at making sure every Australian child gets the best education that they can and that every Australian school is a great school.

See this speech in context