Page 558 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 19 March 2014
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We know that the ACT already has one of the highest levels of education achievement of all Australian states and territories. This is something the ACT should be proud of, for all our children and our young people. But in the ACT and Australia we need to strive for even better outcomes in terms of education achievement for our children and young people.
In the 21st century, the Asian century, it is not just about how well the ACT is performing nationally. We should all want our children and our young people to rise up and meet the challenges, to participate in and to enjoy the benefits of the Asian century—including our children and young people that choose vocational pathways.
For example, manufacturing employs nearly one million Australians and remains one of the largest sectors of the Australian economy, currently accounting for 8.7 per cent of gross domestic product and 34.4 per cent of total exports. Our children and young people choosing vocational pathways in manufacturing will need the skills and abilities to contribute to the manufacturing of innovative, high value-added and high-performance goods and services.
The national plan for school improvement is to lift the performance of all schools and to make sure no child is left behind—that is, to not only increase the number of high performing students but also reduce the number of students who are not achieving and deliver an overall increase in the qualification levels of the ACT community.
For this to happen, we need a school system that is amongst the best in the world, that raises the aspirations of all our children and young people. We need a school system, in the ACT and Australia wide, with teachers who are among the best in the world. We need a school system—government and non-government—funded on the basis of meeting each individual student’s needs.
To make our great schools here in the ACT even greater, we need to empower those at the fore of school operations who are best placed to make decisions that support the needs of students. It is also about students having the resources to reach their full potential, including through a strengthening of family and community engagement.
For certainty and security in implementing a significant school reform, the bilateral agreement between the Australian government and the ACT government sets out six years of funding—for 2014 right through to the end of 2019—for a needs-based school funding model for the ACT. It appears to me that the current Australian government has only committed to 3½ years of funding for the national education reform agreement. For certainty and security in implementing a significant school reform, the national education reform agreement sets out six years, as I have mentioned.
Of course, as I said in the beginning of the speech, there is quite a lot of debate. Yesterday, at Richardson primary, we heard from educators, P&C members and parents on the importance of needs-based funding for our education system. We also heard that Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne are threatening to take an axe to the Gonski reforms. We heard that they have committed to less than four years and less than one-third of the total funding.
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