Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

There are two figures that give a big story that you would not believe if you were listening to the other side of politics. The amount of federal funding going to education in 2013—we all remember the year 2013; it was the year we took over government—was $13 billion a year. In 2013, it was $13 billion. We are currently spending $16 billion a year on education, and we are projected to be spending $20 billion a year by 2020. They are the facts. We will be going from $13 billion a year in 2013 to $20 billion a year by 2020. These are real increases in spending. You can take out inflation; you can take out all sorts of things. This is record spending by the federal government in education.

There were lots of good things in the Gonski report, and the needs based funding model is what we have moved to. Where there is more need for funding and education—for the areas, the regions and the schools that need more funding because of special needs or the demographics of that population—that is happening. The needs based formula is what we are following. We also need to go broader than this. Money is important, and we are increasing funding, but there is more to it than spending money. The Labor Party's solution is to just spend more money because that is the solution they have for everything. This is an important subject. For many years—this has not been happening just since 2013; this has been happening over a longer period—we have been slipping down on most measurements, the measurements you would like to get, in our education system. This is something that we certainly need to look at. This is of concern to everyone. In fact, given that we are spending more money than we ever have, it shows that money alone is certainly not going to solve this. We are looking at evidence based reforms. In just about any area of our economy or our community, evidence based studies are providing some great insights into how we can get better bang for our buck.

The minister previously mentioned some of these. Our goals in the reform and in the study that we have done are to boost literacy, numeracy and STEM performance. We are going to improve the quality of teaching and school leadership. We are going to prepare our students for a globalised world, focus on what matters most in those who need it and increase public accountability through improved transparency. The education system has to transform, not just on money; it has to transform what it does.

We all remember what it was like when we are at school. I know I am probably older than you, Deputy Speaker Coulton. It was all content based. It was all memory. It was all: 'Read this and regurgitate this in an exam.' We know now is that knowledge itself is one thing, but it is problem-solving skills and a lot of other things that we need to teach our students. I was a schoolteacher for about five or six years, 10 or 15 years ago. I think the education system has made inroads since then, but it needs to make many more. I found there was far too much focus on what they taught. There was far too much focus on the content of what is taught in the classroom and not enough on how children learn. We all know there are different styles of learning, whether it be visual, whether it be auditory or whether it be kinaesthetic. The system was not catering for that. There was too much focus, both within teacher training and everything else, on the content. We have to move on from that.

We have also done some great infrastructure spending in education. In my electorate alone, we have spent nearly $6 million building five trade training centres. At Alstonville High School, there is a new agriculture trade training centre. I was out there the other day. I was envious of their cattle yards. You would have probably liked some of the equipment they had there as well, Deputy Speaker Coulton. Evans River is getting a new food tech trade training centre. Acmena is getting a new hospitality trade training centre. South Grafton High School is getting a new industrial tech trade training school. These are trade training centres funded by this government. There is also Trinity Catholic College. Not only are we providing record spending in our schools; we are delivering in lots of other areas as well.

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