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

I thank the member for Deakin for that question. In his electorate he has some 40 schools that have benefited from the investments that this government has made in libraries, multipurpose halls, classrooms and buildings and from the approximately 4,500 computers installed under our plan to make sure that classrooms are well-equipped for the digital age.

It is the case that the government believes that every child should have the opportunity which quality education provides. That is why the Prime Minister announced the National Plan for School Improvement: doing the things that we know make a difference in the classroom and lifting education results for students with the goal of being in the world's top five education systems by 2025. We know what it takes to get there. On teacher quality: we have already secured national standards for teachers and invested half a billion dollars in the teacher quality national partnership, and we want to take that work further with higher entry requirements for teaching and better practical experience prior to graduation. On school improvement: we have given more power to principals and invested in literacy and numeracy resources, and we want to take that further with school improvement plans for every school and clear guidance to principals on how they can lift results as well. On transparency: we established MySchool to provide an accurate picture to parents and communities of their school, and we want to take that work further as well with more information about school achievement on MySchool and clear reporting on how our schools are tracking towards our top-five goal. On funding: our investment in Australian schools in this funding period doubled investment by the Howard government. We have paid particular attention to serving disadvantaged communities, including those with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, and we need to go further now to ensure that every single school is properly funded to develop the potential of every single child.

So that is Labor's plan when it comes to schools. We are working with our state and territory and non-government organisation colleagues and will introduce legislation into the House this year. Without seeing the legislation, the opposition pledged to repeal it—'we will dismantle it', said the member for Sturt—and they have promised not to pursue a national plan for school improvement either. What they have promised to do is leave in place a system that was described by the Gonski review panel as illogical, inconsistent and unconnected to our educational goals. The opposition are ignoring the evidence that Australia has a significant issue on equity with schools, and they are not prepared to do anything about it. In fact, all they have on the slate is $2.8 billion worth of cuts to teacher quality across the education landscape. We stand for supporting schools and the best interests of kids in every school in Australia.

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