Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

The government is committed to delivering education services that provide opportunities for all Australians, no matter their background or where they live, maximising opportunity and prosperity through national leadership on education and training, through national policy and programs that create and strengthen access to quality early childhood education and child care, preschool education, schooling, higher education, research and international education.

We are, as a government, delivering more affordable child care, with out-of-pocket costs down 8.9 per cent since our childcare package began. We are investing in the early years by funding preschool to support 15 hours per week in the year before school. We are improving school student outcomes by providing record and guaranteed needs based school funding, an extra $37.7 billion—an increase, on average, of 62 per cent per student—and securing the agreement of every state and territory to our plan to lift student results. We are supporting students with a disability through record and growing funding. This includes a contribution to help schools meet the cost of educational adjustments provided to students with a disability for their learning needs. From 2018 to 2029, the government will invest an estimated $28.8 billion for the students with a disability loading. On average, funding for students with a disability will grow by 5.1 per cent each year over this period.

We are making a record investment in higher education—more than $17 billion each year—with a renewed focus on regional Australia. We are creating more than 80,000 new apprenticeships and investing more than $3 billion in annual funding for vocational education.

The major elements of the government's childcare reform commenced on 2 July 2018 with the new childcare subsidy, which is providing an estimated $8.3 billion in 2019-20 and an estimated $35.7 billion over four years from 2019-20 to support approximately one million families to balance their work, training and caring responsibilities. Our childcare reforms have made child care more affordable, with nearly one million families reaping the benefits. We abolished the annual subsidy cap for more than 80 per cent of families, allowing them to work as many days as they choose without losing their childcare subsidy when they hit the cap. If a parent can work and wants to work, we want to make it easier for them to access child care.

We are continuing to support state and territory governments to provide children with universal access to 15 hours of preschool a week for children in the year before school, with a further $453.1 million to extend the national partnership on universal access to early childhood education until the end of 2020, including undertaking the national early childhood education and care collection. This will benefit approximately 350,000 children and builds on the previous decision to provide Commonwealth support for preschool until the end of 2019.

A further $1.4 million over two years, from 2019-20, will be invested to fund work by The Smith Family to work with state and territory governments and disadvantaged communities to develop strategies to further improve preschool participation.

The Quality Schools package will see a total of $310.3 billion provided to all schools—an extra $14.9 billion from 2017 to 2029. The Quality Schools reforms provide consistent, transparent and needs based school funding arrangements with a focus on targeting supporting education where it is needed most, through reforms that help ensure schools funding is invested in programs that have the biggest impact on improving educational outcomes for students.

Additional priorities to support quality schooling in 2019-20 include $30.2 million for the Local Schools Community Fund to assist students through the provision of equipment, upgrades or programs at the local school level, and a further $15 million over three years, from 2019-20, for Teach for Australia to train high-achieving teachers who will become high-quality school leaders in rural, remote or disadvantaged schools. I will continue as the process takes place.

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