Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Better and Fairer Schools (Information Management) Bill 2024, a measure which seeks to extend the unique student identifier to students across the school sector across this country. Implementing the unique student identifier, or the USI, is a reform measure of the former coalition government's National School Reform Agreement. The USI is an important part of the coalition's school reform agenda to drive better student outcomes in Australian schools. It has been in use for higher education and vocational education and training students since 2015. Importantly, allocating a USI to every school student will help provide a better understanding of a student's progress throughout their school life, travelling with them from one school system to another, allowing for the efficient and timely transfer of personal information so that they can be easily identified.

Subject to the agreement of education ministers, there is also the potential to use student identifiers for a broader range of purposes, such as to support the identification of students who are falling through the cracks or to target students needing additional support through any part of their school life and their school journey. They could assist with building the evidence needed to deliver improved teaching methods and other measures to support every child's schooling journey. Subject, of course, to the appropriate agreements and sanctions by the education ministers, other issues they may assist with are around issues with school refusals, non-attendance or even withdrawals from school.

Since 2015, more than 15.6 million USIs have been generated for higher education and VET students. Privacy is a very important part of this measure. The bill specifies the very limited circumstances where the collection, use and disclosure of information is authorised. The Student Identifiers Registrar and any other entity administering student identifiers are also required under the bill to protect this information from misuse or unauthorised access and disclosure.

Of course, the ability to identify a student's progress has never been more important. We know that one in three children are not meeting the expected proficiency standards under NAPLAN. As a nation, we need to do a better job for our teachers and students to ensure that every young Australia can reach his or her best potential.

We have seen some very concerning NAPLAN results that don't seem to be getting any better, so I am pleased we had a very strong reform agenda when we were in government. And I am pleased that the government has picked up this reform and is pushing through with it. I do want to raise a number of concerns about the government's reform agenda, though. While the USIs are important, I've raised continuing concerns about the government's proposal, the new National School Reform Agreement. While there are important reforms in that agreement, I have raised concerns that they don't go far enough, and they're not appropriately detailed.

An example of that is Victoria. I very much commend the Victorian government for moving away from balanced literacy, or whole language learning, to explicit instruction, the explicit teaching of phonics between prep and grade 2. But, at the moment, the government is planning to only provide 25 minutes of phonics in the classroom each day, and the evidence overwhelmingly is that is not sufficient. So, when we see school systems within states and territories, thank goodness, moving to evidence based teaching and to celebrating and implementing the science of reading and learning, it's incredibly important that it is consistent with the evidence. We don't want this to fail. We don't want the Victorian government to fail. So making sure we have all the right reforms in the next school reform agreement is critical. I am concerned there is not the appropriate amount of detail in relation to what those evidence based reforms should look like and how they should be implemented in the classroom. We don't want systems implementing measures that they think are appropriate when, in fact, they don't meet the requisite standards.

Senator O'Sullivan shared a very significant inquiry into classroom disruption. We have some of the most unruly classrooms in the world. Many, many teachers are leaving the profession because of safety fears, and this agreement was a very significant opportunity to drive reforms to combat classroom disruption, including to implement a national behaviour curriculum.

It is regrettable that this agreement doesn't go far enough. Those details really do matter.

As I said, this bill implements the USI in Australian schools. It is an important reform measure. It will enable students to move schools and to move interstate and take their information with them and to ensure when there are issues in student progress that those support interventions will perhaps be more easily able to be implemented. I do commend this bill to the house, but we really want to see those additional reforms driven in Australian classrooms.

I end by saying that while we have passed the bill to increase funding for government schools it is very regrettable that it's now almost the end of November and that for more than 81 per cent of government schools there is still no reform and funding agreement. That means there has been no national reforms delivered, and it is deeply concerning that time is running out. We have to get these reforms in every classroom in every corner of our country. We have no agreement. The government has failed to enter into an agreement with New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland—and that, as I said, represents more than 80 per cent of government schools. There are four weeks to go. The agreement runs out on 31 December. The minister set a deadline of 30 September. If the government is serious about driving these reforms, I would say: please get on and finalise these funding agreements. This is so important for students. This is so important for teachers, for parents and for our nation.

Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was going to thank senators for their contribution in this debate, but I'll just thank Senator Henderson. I note that she did commend the bill as part of her other commentary, but I will leave that for another day given the hour.

The Better and Fairer Schools (Information Management) Bill 2024 amends the Student Identifiers Act 2014 to extend the system of national unique student identifiers to the school sector, allowing school students across the country to have a singer identifier that will travel with them throughout their education, from school to higher education and VET. The bill meets the Commonwealth's obligations under the current National School Reform Agreement to set up the architecture for school identifiers to be issued to students.

Practical use cases for school identifiers must be agreed between the Minister for Education and state and territory education ministers. This important safeguard is backed by robust privacy protections in the bill. These safeguards keep privacy at the centre of the student identifier system, protecting students whilst they benefit from the opportunities a streamlined and unified system offers.

I table an addendum to the explanatory memorandum relating to this bill. The addendum responds to matters raised by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee. I thank Senator Henderson for her contribution on this bill and I commend the bill to the chamber.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.