Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education and Training. Will the minister update the House on the government's program to expand direct and explicit instruction in 34 remote schools in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

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

I can tell the member for Durack that, in more good news from the coalition government, we are moving decisively to try and address the gap in Indigenous education through some of the methods that we are employing since being elected.

We believe—and I am sure that this would be a bipartisan view—that we have to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians around education. Therefore, today is a good day to talk about some of the measures the government has implemented.

I can tell you that we have put $900 million, over the next four years, into the extra Indigenous loading for Indigenous students as part of the new school funding model. I personally reversed the cut that Labor made to the boarding schools for Indigenous students, putting $6.8 million back into support Indigenous students in Australian boarding schools. The member for Solomon played a very large part in bringing that about.

Today I can announce that 300 teachers—

Mr Snowdon interjecting—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Lingiari will desist or leave!

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

He took the money out, Madam Speaker, so he is a bit embarrassed that we put it back in!

Today I can announce that 300 teachers have been trained intensively in explicit and direct instruction as part of the $22 million-program that the government announced last year and that we implemented as part of last year's budget to expand explicit and direct instruction, back-to-basics teaching in very remote and remote schools—34 across Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory.

This is great news. It means that the transformative program run by Noel Pearson's Cape York council for the last few years—the Good to Great Schools program—will get a much wider airing across rural, remote and very remote schools. It is a trial program—it is a pilot—because I see 34 schools as the beginning of that program. I would like to see that expanded further so that all students who need access to explicit and direct instruction get it.

The transformative impact of being able to address education disadvantage must be known to everyone in this House. Getting students to school and keeping them there is going to happen much more easily if, when they are there, they are having a good experience—they are learning. And explicit and direct instruction has proved in Cape York that it does transform the lives and the attitudes of young Indigenous students. It makes them want to go to school and it makes them want to learn. And if we can address education, and if we can address jobs and the rule of law in Indigenous communities, we will go a long way to closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.