Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I rise to make a ministerial statement about our achievements in schools and cross-border education.

Introduction

This government has honoured all its education election promises.

The difference between the coalition and Labor is that we are driving long term policies, to improve the quality of our education system, not short term politics to satisfy allied vested interests.

Australian school student performance results as measured by international testing have declined over the last 12 years. While national testing indicates some positive changes, overall student performance in key areas of numeracy and reading have not shown marked improvement.

This cannot be allowed to continue.

Education policy must now be measured not by how much money has been allocated, not by the number of teachers, not by classroom sizes, but whether public funds are being spent on what works to improve student outcomes!

Certainty and stability in school funding

We inherited a school funding mess from Labor with only three states fully signed up—hardly a national system.

We fixed the mess and honoured our election commitment of matching dollar for dollar the previous government's spending over the next four years.

More than that, we reinstated the $1.2 billion cut by the previous government because they felt it reasonable to completely exclude funding to states and territories that had not signed up.

Australia now has a national needs based funding system which includes loadings for disadvantage.

We did what Labor could not achieve by providing certainty and stability to schools.

Students First Initiatives

The Students First framework focuses on four priority areas:

Teacher Quality

Improving teacher quality has been more talked about than acted upon for far too long.

Teacher quality is known to be the greatest in-school contributor to student performance.

We want better teacher standards and training to produce great teachers with practical skills to teach effectively in the classroom.

Hence, I have appointed the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group to provide advice on reforming teacher education.

I expect to receive the final report soon.

To ensure our vision for teacher reform is achieved I appointed the internationally recognised Professor John Hattie as the new chair of the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership.

We have also expanded the Teach for Australia program which fast tracks high-calibre non-teaching graduates into disadvantaged schools.

School autonomy

Giving parents, teachers and principals a greater say in how their schools are run is a key ingredient to improving student performance.

All states and territories are moving in this direction.

To support the states and territories further we have invested $70 million over four years through our Independent Public School initiative.

I am pleased to report that most states and territories have now signed agreements to participate.

We are delivering what we promised.

Promoting parental engagement

Research shows that when parents are engaged in their children's education, their children perform better.

We have committed $1 million per year over four years to the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) to research parental engagement and inform future policy actions. The Independent Public Schools initiative will also promote greater parental involvement in their children's school.

A robust National Curriculum

A robust national curriculum is one of the foundations of a quality education. It must be up to date, relevant, balanced and understandable to all parents. We established, as promised, an independent review. It reported in October and has been widely praised because it focused on getting the national curriculum back to basics—to what really matters.

Implementation will be a priority during 2015 following consultation with state and territory education ministers at our 12 December education ministers' council.

NAPLAN faster turn ar ound

This government supports the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy—NAPLAN—but results have been taking too long to be returned to teachers. We promised to reduce the NAPLAN turnaround time. I am pleased to report that preliminary results are now being provided four weeks earlier. We are delivering.

NAPLAN Online

We are moving to have online delivery for NAPLAN in 2017 for schools that are ready. We have progressed this project from in-principle agreement, to allocating $24.7 million so it can start in less than three years. This is a great step forward. It will allow teachers a faster and better understanding of their students' abilities so as to improve every students' performance. I thank the state and territory education ministers for their cooperation and collaboration in bringing this about.

Australian Education Act 2013

Nothing better contrasts the approach of the coalition to the conduct of the former government than our changes to the Australian Education Act 2013. Labor rushed the passage of the current act, resulting in numerous errors. Our amendments passed the parliament and have not only fixed these but have allowed us to provide an extra $6.8 million for non-government schools that have significant numbers of Indigenous boarding students from remote areas. This fixed an identified funding shortfall which the previous government failed to provide.

But more needs to be done. Following recent consultations there was unanimous agreement from stakeholders that the command-and-control aspects of the act place unnecessary regulatory burdens on all schools. We will address this problem next year when we introduce further amendments to the act.

Flexible Literacy for Remote Primary Schools (Good to Great Schools)

In remote primary schools that have a high proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, NAPLAN results show basic English literacy is not being achieved. Evidence suggests that alphabetic teaching approaches are beneficial for children who are having difficulty learning to read. We appointed Good to Great Schools Australia to introduce alphabetic teaching approaches under our Flexible Literacy in Remote Primary Schools program.

Nearly 40 schools across Western Australia, Queensland and Northern Territory will benefit in 2015. This will help to close the gap between students from remote areas and those based in metropolitan areas.

Disability

The Australian government is committed to assisting students with disability, and this year introduced a loading which provided over $1 billion of Australian government funding. This is more funding for students with disability than ever before. In 2015 this will increase by $100 million.

Mr Champion interjecting—

I thank the member for Wakefield for pointing out the large number of my colleagues who have come in to support this ministerial statement.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They are flocking like gulls to a chip.

Ms Kate Ellis interjecting—

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You get back to doing your texting on the mobile phone. We know how interested you are in education policy, member for Adelaide!

Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are the texter. I cannot compete with you when it comes to texting.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are probably playing games on your phone, are you? I like to work on my phone.

We continue to work with state and territory governments to further refine the funding loading for students with disability to better reflect their needs.

STEM

The government is restoring a focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics—STEM—subjects in schools, so essential to ensuring a competitive and innovative economy. Consequently, we have allocated:

Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear! Hear!

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I continue:

Following the decision of the previous government to provide no ongoing funding for school chaplains, I am pleased to report all state and territory governments have now agreed to implement the government's new chaplaincy program. Funding is available for the 2015 school year and applications are currently being handled by the states and territories.

Cross-border education

In the time remaining, I would like to update the House on recent developments in international education and how the government is developing a two-way street in this important area. International education is part of our plan to build a more diverse, world-class economy—a five-pillar economy—to unleash Australia's real economic potential. By developing a world-class, five-pillar economy we will deliver more jobs.

International education is Australia's largest services export. Under Labor the value of this industry plummeted. Recent figures released by the Department of Education suggest that, under the coalition, international education has grown by over a billion dollars in just one year. This is vital income for the Australian economy.

But international education is about much more than economic prosperity for the nation. Relationships developed through international education underpin our engagement with the rest of the world. They are the foundation for future research collaboration. They assist to maintain trade, investment and goodwill. They make our innovative achievements and scholarly assets more visible to the world. They keep us competitive and ensure Australia does not get left behind.

This government is working hard to:

The New Colombo Plan offers Australian undergraduates prestigious scholarships and grants for study and internships/mentorships in the Indo-Pacific region. More than 3,100 students will benefit through the 2015 round.

Endeavour s cholarships

We will support 682 Endeavour scholarship recipients to undertake researcher mobility, because international collaboration is well known to lead to more innovation than single-country research. I have also established a number of new education agreements with counties in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

China and Laos visit

I recently visited China and Laos to participate in education meetings under the auspices of the East Asia Summit. Education ministers committed to the development of a post-2015 plan of action.

While in Beijing, I met with my Chinese counterpart, Minister for Education, Mr Yuan Guiren, to discuss the Australia-China education and research relationship and the importance of two-way student mobility through our New Colombo Plan.

Indonesia MOU and Centre

During the East Asia Summit I renewed Australia's agreement in education and training with the Republic of Indonesia.

This reaffirms the importance Australia places on the education relationship with Indonesia.

It sets a strong foundation for continued engagement over the next five years by growing people-to-people links through greater two-way student and academic mobility.

The government is also supporting the Australia-Indonesia Centre, announced by the Prime Minister last year.

This centre aims to strengthen business, cultural, educational, research and community links and build mutual understanding.

Monash University leads the centre, in partnership with other universities and CSIRO. I met with the new Vice-Chancellor of Monash University, Margaret Gardner, only yesterday evening to talk about not only the centre but her support for our education reforms.

At the East Asia summit of education ministers, I also had the opportunity to sit down and talk to my counterparts from South Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Singapore and Loas.

Australia-UK Education Dialogue

Earlier in the year I also visited the then Minister of State for Universities and Science, the Right Honourable David Willetts in the UK.

We agreed to establish an inaugural Australia-UK Education Dialogue. As my department recently noted in Senate committee hearings, it is the first time an initiative like this has ever been done before.

Next year we will continue our efforts and consult over a draft National Strategy for International Education.

Conclusion

Madam Speaker, this government is improving Australian education as promised.

I move:

That the House take note of the document.

I ask leave of the House to move a motion to enable the member for Adelaide to speak for 13 minutes.

Leave granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent Mr Opposition speaking for a period not exceeding 6½ minutes.

Question agreed to.

Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Doesn't it just demonstrate what an utter farce these government's claims are, to have had a year of achievement, when they try to point to their schools achievement, of all things, to try to prove this. One thing we should at least be grateful of is that there are many within the sector who thought that this minister had forgotten he had responsibility for schools. He has been so side-tracked in his fruitless pursuit to strip our universities of one-fifth of their funding and trying to introduce $100,000 degrees for Australian undergraduate students that he has failed to even remember that he is meant to have responsibilities for schools, and people have been scratching their heads wondering where this minister, missing in action, has been.

We do recognise that the minister has rediverted his attention away from his hapless efforts in higher education to at least talk about schools. Unfortunately, though, it has not been a year of achievement in schools and education by this government. Instead, we are here to lament their year of utter failure in this regard. When it comes to schools policy, it has been a year of broken promises. It has been, sadly, a year of squandered opportunities, a year that has been spent by the minister and by the government on petty politics and destruction and on absolute destruction of the goodwill that had been built up in the sector and in the really significant and important reform and progress that had been made. It is a shameless and a brazen move by the minister to come into the chamber today, on the last day of the sitting year, and try to crow about the government's achievements in these areas. I guess we should not be surprised by shameless and brazen moves by a minister who just tried to criticise me about text messaging in a week when his own text messaging habits have been a subject of national debate.

It has been nothing but another thinly veiled attempt to deny reality and to try to rewrite history. It is a very tired trick in the playbook of what has very quickly become an utterly dysfunctional and chaotic government—a government which has proven themselves capable of three-word slogans but incapable of serious policy and incapable of the serious commitment we need to lift our schools' performance.

In contrast to the glossy statements and the brave act of denial that we have just seen from the minister, I will offer an honest stocktake of the government's achievements when it comes to schools policy and I will make this assessment against the criteria that this government set for themselves by what they told the Australian public before the last election they would do if elected. Before the election, the government promised:

Kevin Rudd and I are on an absolute unity ticket when it comes to school funding.

That is what the now Prime Minister said. We know that the minister said:

You can vote Liberal or Labor and you'll get exactly the same amount of funding for your school.

He went on to say:

We have agreed to the government's school funding model.

He also told the Australian people:

We are committed to the student resource standard, of course we are. We are committed to this new school funding model.

On election day, in South Australia, when voters turned up at their polling booths, we saw the large signs where this government was desperately trying to deceive the Australian people. The last thing people saw before they went in to vote were large signs saying: 'Liberals will match Labor's school funding dollar for dollar.'

Let's look at how the government's year of what they call achievement lines up against the promises that they made to the Australian public. The government has broken every promise. They have cut all additional funding for the fifth and sixth years of the Gonski reforms. They have cut $80 billion from schools and hospitals over the next decade—the biggest ever cut that this country has seen when it comes to schools policies, and they have the gall to come into this House and tried to crow about a year of achievement when it comes to schools. They have cut $100 million a year from the More Support for Students with Disabilities program and failed in their promise for more funding from 2015. They have let the state governments off the hook by promising not to enforce their funding obligations under the Gonski agreements and they have locked school funding to CPI from 2018.

Those opposite try to say that this is not a cut at all, but let us just consider that the current legislation makes it very clear that school funding will be indexed at 4.7 per cent moving forward. This government's budget papers make it very clear that school funding will be indexed at CPI, which is currently 2.5 per cent moving forward. They can try to say that black is white all that they like, but we and the Australian public know that that is a very clear cut, and it is a devastating cut for every school right across the country. The budget papers need to be crystal clear about this.

Mr Pyne interjecting—

The minister interjects and says, 'Lies'. He may try to say that 2.5 per cent is not less than 4.7 per cent. I would challenge the minister to try to put that case to the Australian public, because the government continually take the Australian public for fools. We know that this is a cut. It is spelt out in their budget papers how big a cut this is and it is ripping almost $30 billion from schools right across Australia, and then they come into this House and say that black is white and that it is not really happening. We know that they have not had the guts to change the act, but it is a cut in anyone's language.

Of course, we know that there are two hallmarks of this government's approach to education policy. Firstly, there is uncertainty and chaos, which we have seen in both schools and in higher education policy over the last year. Secondly, and arguably worse, there is the hypocrisy and the deception. We have seen that, again, in a statement that the minister just made to the House. I would like to refer to the actual words of the minister where he stated: 'Education policy must now be measured by where public funds are being spent on what works to improve student outcomes'. I would say that the minister is absolutely right in those words, but he is not right in what he is actually doing, which is something very different.

On too many occasions to count the Prime Minister and the minister have actually stressed that Commonwealth funding for schools is, 'No strings attached'. The minister then comes into this House and tries to argue: 'It's not the amount of money; it's what you are spending it on that is important'. At the same time he is saying to the state governments: 'Here you go. Here is a blank cheque. Here is some school funding, but you can spend it on whatever you like, because we are getting rid of these so-called control-and-command elements and we are offering'—their own words—'a no-strings-attached approach'. How you can reconcile those two sentences and not be seen to be entirely hypocritical is something which I would love to hear the minister explain?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Don't you trust the states?

Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister asks: Don't you trust the states?' What I actually believe is that the Commonwealth government should have accountability mechanisms to make sure that we are increasing school funding, not just for the sake of the dollar figure, but to make sure that that funding is going specifically towards programs to improve outcomes for students. I do not think that is a particularly radical approach. I think it makes sense that the Australian public would think that the government has some accountability mechanisms in place and is making sure that dollars are being directed towards the areas which are going to have a real impact and lift student results.

The Gonski agreements have made it crystal clear that enforcements should be made. This government have walked away from ensuring that that additional funding is directed towards the five key areas of reforms. They have washed their hands of the responsibility, and it is unimaginable that such an irresponsible approach could be taken to billions of dollars in Commonwealth schools funding. Of course, we already know that there are states that are making the most of this in that they are receiving money from the Commonwealth for their schools but they are cutting more money from their state budgets for schools and seeing school results actually go backwards.

Contrast this with Labor's vision with the work that was done, not just by the previous government, but by the entire sector who all took part in the biggest review that we have had of Australia's school system in over 40 years. We went through this process and we had students, teachers, parents, academics and principals come together and say: 'What do we need to do to lift our school outcomes?' We need to recognise that we do have a serious problem in Australia's schools. We do need to recognise that we have serious inequality when it comes to the results of our students. We need to recognise that the gap between well-off and disadvantaged students is wider than the OECD average, and it is growing. We also need to recognise that in this country, right now under our watch, regional students lag behind their city peers by almost a year and remote students are almost two years behind. We were willing to tackle this head on. We went through the process and came up with the solutions. The important thing is that this nation now knows the solutions that this minister refuses to implement. He should be absolutely ashamed of that.

Sadly, we are not just lamenting a year of failure when it comes to our schools. We are also looking forward to what is next on the agenda. I think it is important to note that we have seen a number of examples recently where the Prime Minister has made statements. For example, earlier this week he said:

It would be better if the states could deal with their responsibilities from own-source revenues rather than having to argue with the Commonwealth to fund their schools.

What we see in the year ahead is that this government have set themselves up to try to wash their hands of all responsibilities for public schools. We need to make very clear that this is not about reform. This is about more cuts on their behalf. We also make very clear—and I have no doubt whatsoever—that whilst those opposite might want to completely walk away from schools funding and from our public schools, it is the absolute role of the federal government to try to ensure this nation's international competitiveness. It is the role of the federal government to ensure that our nation has the skills that we need for the future, and it is the role of the federal government to make sure that we are as productive an economy as we can possibly be. You cannot do that if you walk away from our education system and from investing in having the best possible schools across the nation.

We know that the minister also bragged about his school chaplains announcement. How hypocritical is it for a government to talk about the need for schools to have more autonomy yet, at the same time, for the federal minister to say: 'You no longer have the choice about whether you have a welfare officer, a counsellor, or a religious chaplain. We as the federal government, I as the federal education minister, are dictating that you no longer have a choice'? The over-600 non-religious welfare officers have to go. No longer will the government fund them because, rather than giving schools autonomy, rather than leaving it to principals and school communities to work out who can best serve their community, this minister has made the decision for them. If they are not strictly linked to a religious organisation, they can no longer attract funding. How is that in line with increased autonomy for our schools?

The minister talked about higher education and tried to claim credit for the recovery in international education. Anyone who actually understand international education will know that reputation and quality is everything, and it was the hard work of the previous government— (Time expired)

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present a copy of my ministerial statement to the House.