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

This is despite the fact that over the period of the previous Labor government they spent almost $20 billion in new spending on things like school halls and laptops and computers. Building the Education Revolution cost the taxpayer almost $20 billion. In real terms they increased education spending by 10 per cent, and in that period they were entirely responsible for a drop in the education outcomes of our Australian students. The Leader of the Opposition was out there today blaming the Howard government. Not only is the Leader of the Opposition a government change denier; he is now a Gillard government denier. Apparently it never happened. They are like the Rip Van Winkle years—the last six years never occurred. There was no Rudd government, there was no Gillard government. There is no way that the opposition can get away from the fact that from 2006 to 2013 they were in power. These PISA results were taken entirely when they were in power. It had nothing to do with the Howard government.

The Leader of the Opposition tried to blame the SES funding model. The SES funding model, which Labor say they hate, delivered 10 per cent more spending to schools in real terms in that period and results declined. Why did they decline? It was because of Labor's complete failure to recognise that money is not everything in education. It is about teacher quality, it is about a robust curriculum, it is about parental engagement, it is about principal autonomy and it is about discipline. Labor always completely misses the point on education. They think if you throw more money at a problem it will be solved. The PISA results today indicate that that is completely false—you can spend more and more money, which they insist on doing, but unless you get teacher quality right you will not bring about better outcomes. PISA also found that in Australia it was teacher quality that was the No. 1 determinant of student outcomes. It said that it did not matter what school you went to; it mattered which teacher your class was allocated.

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