Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Vocational Education and Skills) Share this | Hansard source

I maintain that we are the government of quality education and we are going to proceed down that path. We have a plan, which we have already started implementing, to make sure that we regain the rightful position that we should have in international education standards and that we provide the students of Australia with the quality education that they so desperately need but was unable to be delivered under the previous government. We have released the Quality schools, quality outcomes paper, which has five key areas that we are focused on into the future. The first one is boosting literacy, numeracy and STEM performance. We are not just talking about it; we are actually out there doing it because we recognise that we have a lot of work to do to make sure that we are graduating students with high-level STEM skills. At the moment, unfortunately, that is not happening, but, when we released the National Innovation and Science Agenda last year, we made a $64 million contribution to initiatives that will improve the teaching and learning of STEM in the early learning and schools programs. That is going to be of enormous benefit because we know that, whilst we cannot actually define what the jobs of the future will be, 75 per cent of those jobs will require skills in mathematics, engineering, technology and science, and we need to make sure that we are equipping our kids for those jobs of the future.

The second pillar of the Quality schools, quality outcomes paper is improving the quality of teaching and school leadership—doing the things that make a difference. The third one is preparing our students for a globalised world, where they can get a job and compete with other students who are at this stage ahead of them globally. The fourth one is focusing on what matters most and those who need it the most. This means genuine attention to needs. The fifth one is increasing public accountability through improved transparency. So we have a plan, we are well on the way to implementing that plan and it is focused on quality. But we on this side of the House have a holistic approach to education. We do not necessarily compartmentalise education. We look at education as a highway which starts with early childhood education and goes through school, vocational education and higher education.

Let me tell you, if we want to talk about cuts, the biggest cuts that caused the most damage—the ones that brought vocational education to its knees—were those that were made by those on the other side of the House. When Bill Shorten was in the education portfolio, there were nine successive cuts to employer incentives in vocational education of $1.2 billion. Labor has brought vocational education in this country to its knees. What those on the other side did to apprentices we have been unable to recover. I understand that you had the great initiative of holding a summit, and that was going to resolve all of the issues. Well, you are too late, Ethel, because we have already been out there consulting.

We have spent months out there, on the ground, talking to the people that understand and know about vocational education, so that we are informed about the policies of the future that are going to go a long way to fix the problems that Labor created in vocational education when they ripped $1.2 billion out of vocational education and brought it to its knees.

We have been undertaking a program of talking to school students, students who are looking to move into vocational education and mature-age workers. We have been talking to businesses. We have been talking to training providers. We have been talking to the private providers. We have been talking to the TAFE colleges. We have been making sure that we are fully informed about what the issues are in vocational education, because it is important that we understand that vocational education is very much based on the successes the students have as they go through school and go into vocational education—which is, in fact, a destination on its own but is a pathway into higher education. We know that we need to improve and increase the number of commencements in apprenticeships, and we know we need to improve the completion.

See this speech in context