Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor will support this bill. This bill seeks to enable the extension of the Unique Student Identifier, USI, from vocational education and training to higher education students. A USI is a secure online record of a student's nationally recognised training. Students and prospective employers will be able to generate a consolidated record of achievement prepared by a single authoritative agency.

Labor developed the proposal for a national USI scheme almost a decade ago. USI for the VET sector was introduced by Labor in the 43rd parliament but was not voted on before lapsing when parliament was prorogued. It was reintroduced by the coalition government in 2014 and then passed into law. The coalition government has neglected the education sector by wasting time, when they could have been extending this important scheme to include higher education, and failing to extend the scheme to all education sectors.

The March 2018 Gonski review reported to achieve educational excellence in Australian schools and recommended to:

Accelerate the introduction of a national Unique Student Identifier for all students to be used throughout schooling.

Labor understands the importance of evidence based policy. Labor took a $280 million commitment to the 2019 election to establish a national evidence institute to evaluate what works and what doesn't work in Australian schools. Labor believes that to give students the best education we need to put an end to the decades of ideological battles about school education. Education policy based on credible research, along with data collection through a national USI scheme, would improve outcomes for all students.

The bill seeks to enable a single student identifier to record a student's entire tertiary education journey by decommissioning the Commonwealth Higher Education Student Support Number and expanding the Unique Student Identifiers to higher education.

However, for school students and their parents and carers this bill does nothing to alleviate a problem of a school student's educational history being left behind when a student moves from school to school. The 2018 Gonski review said this was an important problem that needs addressing. A USI that included all school students would facilitate a smooth transition to a new school for students and would result in less impact on their learning development. It is important that the national rollout of the USI to school students is accelerated, as recommended by the 2018 Gonski review. The benefits to students, employers and the education sector will be enormous. It will be important to ensure that the new system is protected by a adequate security safeguards and the information is used only for the purpose for which it was collected. Labor will support this bill.

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.