Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, my question is to the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator Carr. Can the minister inform the Senate what the government is doing to assist disadvantaged schools and students?

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Brown for her question. We on this side do not just believe in equality of opportunity; we also believe in equality of rights. We believe that every Australian has the right to fulfil their potential. That right is fundamental and it imposes important obligations on government. It means that we have a duty to provide the resources children need to do their best. It means we give every Australian child access to a quality education, not just the gifted and certainly not just the well-off.

Exactly how gifted a child appears to be depends very much on their socioeconomic background. English researcher Leon Feinstein has found that richer kids of lesser ability overtake poorer kids of greater ability by the age of five. This happens because richer kids have access to more social, cultural and economic resources. If we are serious about equity and fairness, if we are serious about social justice, we have to tackle the disadvantage being faced by children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, Indigenous children, children from non-English-speaking backgrounds and children from remote and regional areas.

We already know that these children are less likely to achieve high academic standards. They are less likely to finish school and they are more likely to end up unemployed or working in poorly-paid jobs. This has nothing to do with a lack of ability and has everything to do with a lack of opportunity. It all comes down to a lack of resources. After 12 years of the Howard-Costello government Australia lies in the bottom half of the OECD ranking for year 12 or equivalent qualifications. University participation rates from students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds have fallen over recent years. Urgent action is required to reverse these trends, and that is exactly what this government is doing.

Today we enter the second phase of the education revolution, a major new agenda for school reform. First, we will work through COAG to improve the quality of teaching by rewarding the best-performing principals and teachers and by increasing investment in teacher recruitment, development and excellence. Second, we will make transparent performance requirements for individual schools a condition of the national education agreement to come into effect from 1 January 2009. Third, we will lift achievement in disadvantaged school communities by establishing a further national policy partnership with the states and territories to tackle underachievement. This is a very tough agenda, but we cannot and should not tolerate underperformance in our schools. It wastes talent. It hurts the economy and it leads to social exclusion. Worse than that, it violates the rights of all Australian children.