PM: It is great to be here today with the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education Julia Gillard, Andrew Barr from the ACT Government and ACT Education Minister, and Annette Ellis our local member.
It is good to be here at the Gordon State School here in the ACT and its been great to see what our kids have been doing in new and innovative ways of approaching the big challenges of numeracy and how they are doing their fractions, how they are doing their multiplication, how they are doing their division. Its been good to see these practical programs at work.
The Government was elected on a platform to bring about an education revolution in Australia. Yesterday the Government announced a further chapter of that platform which is quality school education for Australia.
What we are committed to doing is not just increasing the amount which the national Government invests in school education but also to ensure that those funds are also directed towards lifting the quality of school education across Australia as well. And we sought to do so in four specific areas: one is to boost school leadership across the country and to provide greater power for school leaders and school principals.
Secondly to provide greater investment for the support of teacher quality to encourage more and more of our best and brightest university graduates into the teaching profession and for those who become our best and most effective teachers over time to provide them with real incentive to stay in the classroom.
Third, to ensure that we have got a proper reporting and public accountability and transparency of the performances of schools. And that doesn't mean creating arbitrary league tables, what it does mean is ensuring that we've got proper comparisons of what schools facing similar challenges are doing in one part of the country against schools with those sort of challenges in other parts of the country.
And the fourth element of our quality schools education program is this. To provide real additional investment for schools in our most disadvantage areas.
And that's to ensure that those schools are given a decent start not just with the same expectations as other schools who may not face the same range of challenges but are given an additional shot of funding to make sure that they can do the best by way of their kids.
Overall therefore what we stand for is this: we want an education revolution in the amount of money we invest in schools but we also want an education revolution in the quality of schools performance.
The Australian Government is not going to write a blank cheque on these questions, the Australian Government is in the business of negotiating with the States and Territories to make sure we boost the overall investment across the nation in our school but at the same time we are achieving measurable improvements in the quality of our school education as well.
The last thing I'd say is this. The great thing about our education system nationwide is that we have so many fantastic teachers. I would argue that teachers are the greatest economic resource Australia has and our job as the national Government is to get behind teachers and to support them. Support them intelligently, creatively, with more funding and to enable them to lift the performance of their schools.
The last thing I'd say before handing to Julia is about literacy and numeracy. Literacy and numeracy is a very, very practical way in which we can help schools with innovative programs such as those which are being deployed here at Gordon.
Here we looked at numeracy programs this morning and the sort of work being done with these clusters of year 5 and year 6 students on improving their skills in basic mathematical computation.
This is good but what the Education Minister will now talk to you about is how we are rolling out $40 million worth of pilot programs across the country as part of our $500 million plus new Australian national investment to lift literacy and numeracy performance across the country.
Over to you Julia
GILLARD: Thank you Prime Minister and its been great to be here today and to see the children of this school of Gordon Primary School, and we've got the uniforms proudly on display, doing their numeracy work. And I think what you have seen today is kids there learning, but that learning also made fun, very engaged in it because it has been made fun.
Now as the Prime Minister outlined yesterday we want to bring an education revolution to the quality of Australian schooling and as part of the we want to make sure that in schools right around the country we are getting the basics right. Because there is nothing more important than learning to read, learning to write, learning to do maths, these are the foundation skills for everything else in education.
On the 1st of September we start national literacy and numeracy week. It's a great time to celebrate literacy and numeracy and to remind ourselves right across the nation how important it is to make sure every Australian child gets a great education and every Australian child gets the basics right.
Today I'm proud to announce that as a down payment on our more than $500 million dollar plan to get the basics right and improve literacy and numeracy we are funding $40 million of trial programs.
These programs are right around the country, one of them is here in this school. This is money that has been targeted at those schools that face particular challenges, those schools serving communities with a lower socio economic status where we know it is so important to get the basics right.
The money for this school, more than $280,000 is going on the program you just saw in action. This school's been using this program, it is a further investment in creative ways to get numeracy happening at school.
The programs right around the country are there in literacy and numeracy, they are going make a difference for children today, and of course what we learn from them about the best of teaching, is going to make a difference for children ultimately right around the country.
This is a practical step, $40 million going to programs where children can immediately benefit and we can learn more about how to get the basics right for every Australian child in every Australian school.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister what do you say to teachers that, after the message yesterday feel bullied or stigmatised (inaudible)
PM: What I would say is our teachers are the greatest resource Australia has. And I would say that what we are committed to doing is investing more in quality teaching across Australia. Our message is a positive one for the country. It is a positive one for education, it is a positive one for teachers, which is: how can we, as the Australian Government, not just preach as the previous government did, but actually come to the party with funding, real funding long term to assist in improving quality teaching, quality school leadership, quality reporting of school performances. And in addition to that provide real additional amounts of money for those schools in our most disadvantaged areas.
If you were to go to a school for example in a disadvantaged area, with an average school budget and say that we will look towards providing you with an additional half a million dollars a year - let me tell you, innovative teachers, innovative school leaders can do a lot with that sort of commitment.
So what we are saying is, we want a quality revolution in Australian schools, but we are going to be there for the quantity as well, which is the additional funds to be invested.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister the opposition leader said this morning that there is already law brought in last year to tie performance to funding, he wants to know will you be (inaudible)
PM: Well as I said yesterday, we intend to adopt a pretty hard line approach on this and we have got a lot of negotiation to undertake with the states and territories in the period ahead and these will be tough negotiations.
But on the question of differences I think it is pretty interesting to note that what is the core difference here is the previous Liberal government which preached about this for 12 years and did very, very little.
And if you look at the bottom line in terms of the extra dollars committed, very, very little indeed. What we have is a quality education agenda for the future, but also a preparedness to fund. That is the difference.
That is the core difference here. And in terms of those negotiations with the states and territories, it will be tough, it will be hard, but we believe, absolutely, I think you can say from the pit of our stomachs that this is the right thing to do and we intend to prosecute this.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
PM: What I would say to our friends in the teachers unions across Australia, and many of them are fantastic people, is that it is time to arrive in the 21st Century. And that is, let's get past the name calling, let's get past all this sort of pointless debate about blaming someone here or blaming someone there.
Let's get on with the business, two core objectives: how do we lift the standards of Australian schools across the nation and how do we provide the funding necessary to do it. Now, presumably what some of our friends in the trade unions would like us to do is just hand over a blank cheque.
Well guess what, I am not going to do that. What we will be doing is providing extra funding but at the same time, making that funding conditional on lifting school performance, while recognising that individual schools across the country often face really hard practical challenges given the immediate environment and social economic circumstances which they face in those communities.
That is why the four pillars of this program are so important: quality teaching, quality school leadership, transparent reporting, but at the same time, extra funding not just for those but for schools in disadvantaged areas as well.
JOURNALIST: Are you to blame for the collapse in business confidence represented by the Sensis survey this morning?
PM: One of the things I noticed from that particular survey was their concern on the part of small and medium enterprises about interest rates. And they are right to be concerned about interest rates. And interest rates were at the second highest in the developed world as of when this government was elected only eight months ago. And that followed 10 interest rate rises in a row and that followed inflation running at 16 year highs.
So when I look at the text of that particular survey and I look at the reasons given by small to medium enterprises, they legitimately go straight for interest rates and they go straight for the fact that we have had 10 interest rate rises in a row, as to the point of which we were elected, and therefore, what is the response?
The response must be a clear headed strategy to put downward pressure on inflation and downward pressure on interest rates. That is why we are committed to a $22 billion surplus through the budget, to do our bit to put downward pressure on inflation and on rates.
And the Liberals approach is to do two things, ignore the fact that they delivered us 10 interest rates rises in a row and the second highest interest rates in the developed world and on top of that, to bury their heads in the sand and say, we are going to make it worse, by pulling billions of dollars off the government's surplus.
And what does that do? It puts further upward pressure on inflation and further upward pressure on rates.