Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

It is a complex task. He should understand that. Regrettably, the Labor Party can get into large messes much faster than their successors in government can get the nation out of them—massive, massive mismanagement.

The Leader of the Opposition then went on to talk about schools education. I refer the honourable member and all honourable members to the answers I gave earlier this week. But let me just remind the honourable member who asked the question about the critical issue of teacher quality. The problem that we face is that we have been, on any view, spending more on schools but with worse outcomes in terms of student performance, both in absolute terms and relatively to other comparable countries. That is why high-quality teacher education has to be a feature of our school system, just as it is a feature of all of the top-performing education systems around the world. It is a key policy, a key pillar, of our Students First policy.

And that is why, under the leadership of this government, this coalition government, in September all state and territory education ministers agreed to several key elements in our response to this challenge of improving teacher quality: a national literacy and numeracy test for initial teacher education students—absolutely critical—guidelines for the selection of entrants to initial teacher education programs, and a commitment to strengthening the national approach to the accreditation of initial teacher education programs in 2016.

What we are seeking to do is ensure that the quality of the young men and women who are going in to study to be teachers is higher and higher as time goes on, because we know the critical determinant—

Mr Perrett interjecting—

See this speech in context