Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The 2018 PISA data released yesterday revealed that Australian students have recorded the worst results in reading, maths and science since international testing began. Our students are now around a year behind in these basic subjects. This is a wake-up call to this Liberal government, which walked away from Labor's Gonski reforms, cutting billions from public schools and junking improvements to early literacy programs, to keep high-performing teachers in the classroom and to make sure we educate and train great teachers. If we want to find true justice in our society and if we want to break the cycle of disadvantage that plagues too many communities then we must make sure our public school system, which teaches two-thirds of all students, including the most disadvantaged, is properly funded and attracts and supports the best and brightest into teaching and support roles. The public schools and the teachers in my electorate of Dunkley do amazing work, sometimes with some of the most disadvantaged children in the area, but they don't have enough funding and they don't have enough support. Australian public school students do not deserve to have their futures undermined and to leave school one to three years behind students from higher performing countries around the world, because of this government's failure to properly step up, fund our public schools and support our hardworking teachers and students. It's time to do something. It's time to do it now.

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