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

I thank the member for Eden-Monaro for his contribution. I might start with his last question first, if he does not mind. Yes, we did inherit a very poor legacy from the previous government around the outcomes for students at school level then going on to have difficulty in vocational education and training—a very difficult legacy. In fact, the OECD PISA study released last year in December showed again that Australia has fallen not just in relative terms against the other nations in the OECD in literacy and numeracy but in real terms. This is a very fundamental problem. I do not blame any particular state Labor or Liberal government for that. This has been a decline over 10 years, but it happened at the same time as a massive increase in spending. There was a 42 per cent increase in spending in schools over 10 years; over the same 10 years, there was a significant decline in the outcomes for our students.

When we came to power, having seen that legacy, we set about doing a few very important things. We decided to focus on the things that really mattered—not just more money in schools, which Labor is obsessed with, but the fundamental root problems in schools in the outcomes for students. We identified those as being, firstly, an improvement in teacher quality. The OECD said that, in eight out of 10 reasons why a student does well or badly in Australia, the classroom to which they were allocated had the biggest impact. One out of 10 reasons was low SES and one out of 10 reasons was every other factor. So we wanted to address teacher quality, and what we can do at the federal level, of course, is address the training of teachers in universities. That is why we have established the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group, to advise me about how to improve teacher training at university and do an international benchmarking study.

Ms MacTiernan interjecting—

We have seen the evidence that shows that, with independent public schooling, more autonomy at the local level has a real impact on the expectations of students about what they might go on to do. I have seen the member for Perth support many of the government's measures around direct instruction or around independent public schools and I am sure she would want to support that, but, rather than be distracted, we have put $70 million aside to expand independent public schooling in Australia. I must say, we are close to securing all jurisdictions being able to take part in that particular program, because we want more autonomy at the local level.

We identified, as you did in your address, that the curriculum is an issue in schools. Rather than accept mediocrity or failure, we decided that we would have a deep look at the national curriculum by appointing two very eminent people to conduct a study of the curriculum and its robustness. We wanted to determine whether it is useful for students and whether it produces the kinds of outcomes that employers need in gaining skills and knowledge, because being at school is not just about gaining skills; it is about gaining both skills and knowledge.

And we want to improve the parental engagement in students' education. In Western Australia we have found that the more autonomy there is in a public school, the more engaged parents are with their children's education. Therefore, the Independent Public Schools Initiative really dovetails into our initiatives around parental engagement. The budget has $1 million a year for ARACY, to assist us with good research and good methods to achieve better outcomes for students.

The member for Eden-Monaro also asked about the misconception that we have cut funding for schools. We have massively increased funding for schools—an 8.7 per cent increase this financial year; 8.9 per cent the following year, 8.9 per cent the following, and 6.6 per cent in 2017-18. We have increased funding. This stands in stark contrast to Labor in the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook, which cut $1.2 billion from schools, which would have left Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory short—Queensland by $794 million, WA by $120 million, and the Northern Territory by $272 million. We have put that back into the system. In the member's state of New South Wales, spending will increase by 6.7 per cent, 7.8 per cent, 9.4 per cent and 5.7 per cent over the next four years. So New South Wales will be another big winner from the government deliberately living within our means, but being fiscally wise and full of rectitude.

See this speech in context