Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

And it will be not just valuable but crucial, as my colleague says. In the classrooms I have seen groups of four or five children who were missing out before and who would have drifted through their schooling without ever properly learning to read or write being taken out of class and intensively taught so that they could catch up and go back into the classroom at the same level as their peers and have the confidence of achieving with all of their peers. I can tell you, too, about schools that I have visited where the principal has said to me, 'This extra money has allowed me to help the kids who were not turning up, to go out and make sure that they come to school in the first place, so that they get the birthright of every Australian child, which is a decent education.'

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