Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Ryan for her question. Unfortunately, I can confirm to her that literacy and numeracy results have gone backwards in recent years both relatively and, most shockingly of all in real terms, in comparison to our competitor nations around the world. Whether it is the program for international student assessment, trends in international maths and science study, progress in international reading literacy, and of course the Labor Party's favourite report, the Gonski report, all of these studies show that our literacy and numeracy outcomes for students have declined in recent years. It is a very serious problem for the economy, for productivity, but more importantly it is a personal tragedy for those students, those children, emerging from schools who do not have literacy and numeracy skills as a result of our education system. We are letting them down.

Many in the Labor Party refuse to remove the log in their own eye with respect to this matter. Instead, they lecture parents that the current methods of teaching are efficacious and do not need to be changed. They are of course in fear of the Teachers Federation, which wants to continue to pretend that the outcomes are good in Australia and that nothing needs to change. Successive Labor ministers for education, including the Leader of the Opposition, who was a Minister for Education, sat on their hands for fear of taking on the Teachers Federation.

Mr Champion interjecting—

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