Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bonner for his question, because I know that he, like most members of this House, believes that promoting science and maths in school should be a national priority, and that is exactly what this government is doing. We are doing it in a number of ways. I will mention three, but there are more than three. We are reforming the national curriculum in order to create more space in the curriculum for in-depth study of science and maths. We are reforming initial teacher education so that there is an emphasis on specialisation around science and maths for primary school teachers. And we are putting the idea of science or maths being a compulsory subject in years 11 and 12 on the agenda for the education ministers' council meeting coming up this Friday. I am looking forward to working with the states and territories to examine how that might be able to be achieved.

We have received very strong support for this measure from the Chief Scientist, Ian Chubb, who has been working with the government over the last 18 months to try to repair the inertia that was the case under the previous government around science and maths. He said in a statement yesterday of the initiative on year 11 and 12 compulsory science or maths:

I support this initiative without reservation.

But let me turn to coding, which the Leader of the Opposition has suddenly discovered an interest in—or programming, as it is also called. The Leader of the Opposition spent most of last week holding door stops where he demanded that coding be included in the national curriculum. In fact—and I hate to break it to him—it is already in the national curriculum. It is called Digital Technologies, Australian Curriculum. I table Digital Technologies from the Australian Curriculum so that the Leader of the Opposition and his staff can examine the facts around coding and programming—

Mr Husic interjecting—

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