Education Funding

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (14:24): My question is to the Minister for Education. Can the minister advise why the NAPLAN results in South Australia have shown lower mean scores and fewer children meeting the national minimum standards than all other states—Western Australia, Queensland and Tasmania, in particular—across the majority of categories?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Higher Education and Skills) (14:24): I am interested to hear that the question was worded more carefully than that of his predecessor in the role of opposition spokesperson earlier today, who seemed to completely disregard the question of facts being used in this parliament.

Mr Knoll interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Schubert is warned for the second and the last time.

The Hon. P. Caica interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Colton is called to order.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: There are good signs within the NAPLAN results as well as challenges within the NAPLAN results, but the opposition shows absolutely no interest in the work that has been done by teachers across the state, nor by the students across this state.

The SPEAKER: Point of order, member for Unley.

Mr PISONI: By the minister offering commentary on the opposition, she is entering debate.

The SPEAKER: Yes, I uphold the point of order.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: What we have seen is that year 7s—and the only policy the opposition in fact took to the last election on education was to move where year 7s are taught—did better against any other jurisdiction than the other years.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: I trust that the member for Morialta is going to make a point of order that none of us can hear the minister because of the bellowing of the leader, or was it something else?

Mr GARDNER: Prior to that, she was defying your ruling to get back to the question.

The SPEAKER: No, in fact she made the briefest aside while talking about year 7 results. The leader is warned. Minister.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: Numeracy on all levels for all age groups is up slightly on last year, but do we ever hear about that from the opposition? Not a word because all they are interested in doing is running down the work of schools in this state. Here is where we do need to act because being stable—which is broadly the case across Australia from last year to this year; broadly, when you look at the statistically significant differences, the results across Australia have remained stable—is not good enough. We need to not just remain stable: we need to get better.

We need to get better because the modern economy is putting increasing demands on the skills and knowledge of students as they exit school at the other end. They need to be good at literacy and numeracy in order to obtain all the other skills and all the other content knowledge that they are going to need in order to work in the workforce. What we need to do is not run down what schools are doing now and what students are doing now but come up with ideas on how to improve, how to lift standards. To do that, you need money.

Because this government stuck to Gonski without a word—not one word—from the other side about Gonski, because this government has stuck to our side of the bargain, we are increasing funding to education in the next two years and we will be able to spend it in a way that will make a difference. Therefore, yesterday we announced the $67.5 million that we will be spending over the next four years to target not only students who are not meeting the standards that are required but also students who are not growing—students who might have done reasonably well but did better two years earlier and need to live up to their potential. We are spending money on that.

Imagine the world where the Canberra government stuck to their side of the bargain the way we did. Imagine that world where we would have $210 million more for every school in this state over the next two years, if they had stuck to their bargain. Admittedly, it could have been worse because, under the Hockey budget, we would have lost $335 million but, instead of being supine and accepting whatever it is that Canberra gives us and blaming the schools and saying that money does not make a difference, we stood up and fought.

Not just this Labor government but every school community stood up and fought and said 'That's not good enough.' They insisted. We did not win all the money back and that is to the everlasting shame of this federal government, but we won some of it back and we will spend it because we need to spend it on interventions that will make a difference. It is not about how you front NAPLAN: it is about the individual student and their experience, and we need to be able to do interventions to support them.