Melbourne
[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS OMITTED]
As a proud graduate of public education, I'm delighted to be with you today.
As a proud trade unionist, I'm delighted to be with you today.
You know the respect I have for you and all that you do.
I wanted to become a teacher myself.
I ended up becoming a politician.
But I trust that means I can make as a big a difference for our children as you strive to do.
I know the abiding commitment you have for education.
Believe me, I feel it too - because the future of our nation depends on it.
And every waking moment I have is dedicated to Australia's future.
I want every school to be a great school.
All 9,500 of them.
City and country.
Public and private.
Large and small.
I've called it a crusade, and it is.
It's a crusade because 3.5 million young lives are at stake.
If we fail them during 13 years of schooling, you don't get those years back.
If education counts, then teachers count.
Each teacher is an agent of change.
In some cases, the only figure who can bring aspiration and inspiration into a young life.
So much is asked of you.
Yet many of you feel you work with so little.
You chafe at the lack of resources.
You yearn to restore the standing that your profession once had in our national life.
Some of you also resent the heavy hand of bureaucracy in your state.
And, yes, some of you are concerned that graduates joining your ranks don't always have the skills they need.
Our National Plan for School Improvement is a plan to fix these things and much more besides.
It's a plan for great schools.
And so it's a plan for great teachers as well.
Education is a keystone of Australian citizenship.
Of realising the human potential of every student.
And as the Asian Century unfolds, it is vital to our economic success.
We cannot win the economic race without winning the educational race.
But at the moment, we're behind.
The average 15 year old maths student in Australia is two years behind a 15 year old in Shanghai.
89 per cent of children from the poorest quarter of Australian homes are reading below average by Year 3.
So our most fundamental conversation in education has to be about results.
What are we doing right.
What are we doing wrong.
How can we do better.
That's why we need a comprehensive National Plan for School Improvement.
Yes, dollars matter.
But they are only ever a means.
The end - the goal - is achievement by students.
That means better schools.
Great schools.
Each and every one.
Our first and biggest challenge is to hold a mirror up to ourselves.
How are we going?
Well today, we have the data and the transparency to know how we are going.
We have put in place the reforms that mean we can do better.
A world class national curriculum, creating an entitlement to learning for every student.
A focus on literacy and numeracy for those falling behind.
Empowering principals to focus on teaching and learning and work together with parents and the local community.
A relentless focus on quality teaching, underpinned now by rigorous, national professional standards.
Only then does it make sense to talk about money.
With these reforms defined and being delivered, we can focus on funding reform.
I've spoken often of the opportunity denied to my father.
But that was 70 years ago and in another country.
I've spoken of the opportunity denied to some of my own classmates at Unley High. But that was almost 40 years ago.
Since then, Australian education has improved.
Overall, our schools are better equipped and better resourced than ever before.
Since 2008, funding has doubled, driven by the National Partnerships I was proud to introduce while Minister for Education.
But still children are being left behind - one in 12 are not meeting minimum standards in reading, writing and maths
In the dramatic growth of school funding since 1974, we became so focused on the competing claims of public and private, federal versus state, that our formulas stopped working.
Too many schools and students fell through the cracks.
Some in non-government schools.
Many in our public schools.
Our nation's generosity was passing them by.
Friends, it's time to fix a broken school funding system for the century ahead.
For the first time, every school will be supported by a Resource Standard based on evidence of what it costs to educate a student at the schools we know already get strong results.
On top of that, extra needs will be met through a system of “needs loadings”.
That's extra funding, per student, to help students from low SES backgrounds, indigenous students, students with disability and students with limited English skills, as well as to help with extra costs for small and remote schools, the very areas where public schools carry the heaviest load.
Our kids need a plan for change in their schools.
Every school will see their funding continue to rise.
No school will lose a dollar.
Because it's not about systems, it's about students.
We won't do school funding based on assertion or tradition or ideology.
We will do it based on need, informed by fact.
That's a great progressive outcome for all who care about schools in Australia.
But it comes with a responsibility.
When these reforms are delivered, teachers will finally be assured of the resources they need to do their job properly.
That's only ever what you've asked for.
The chance to give your best.
In his appeal for American help in 1941, Churchill famously said:
“Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.”
With the National Plan for School Improvement, you will get the tools.
And with those tools, I know you will finish the job.
Education is the defining passion of my political life.
That's why I commissioned the Gonski report back in 2010 and launched it one year ago.
So like you, I want this thing done.
But like the NDIS, it must be done properly.
This isn't just tinkering around the edges.
It is the biggest reform to schools policy in 40 years.
It's a long-term funding plan for all our schools, and all our students.
I can say we are much closer to the end than the beginning.
In fact, we're at the pointy end.
A great deal of analysis and modelling has been done.
Peter Garrett has led fruitful dialogue with his State and Territory colleagues.
And there's been a huge amount of work at officials' level.
There are still gaps to fill.
But one simple understanding is enough to bridge them: we can't afford not to reform our schools.
I don't just mean in a moral sense.
I mean financially.
We are the twelfth-biggest economy on earth.
While the model proposed by Gonski has been costed in the order of $6.5 billion a year, this sum represents less than 0.4 per cent of our annual GDP.
Our nation spends twice that amount each year on tobacco.
We spend twice that amount again on alcohol.
We can afford school reform.
I'm not asking the Premiers to put money on the table today.
The full school improvement plan will come into force gradually between 2014 and full completion in 2019.
At the moment, most states are engaged in fiscal consolidation, just like the Commonwealth.
Admittedly, many of the Premiers' particular funding cuts are ones I oppose.
Federal Labor is showing how you can make responsible savings if you have the right priorities.
It's time for all State and Territory First Ministers to share the leadership on schools.
The big test will come at COAG in April.
I hope the Premiers will rise to the challenge.
Australia's children are counting on them.
The job isn't up to them alone.
It's up to me and Wayne Swan and Penny Wong as well.
As leaders of the national government, we have to find our share of funds for the School Improvement plan.
We will get this thing done.
Since NDIS and Gonski are huge reforms, our savings will be correspondingly ambitious.
They won't be a nip and tuck.
They will be a statement of where our priorities lie.
That in times of fiscal stringency, when dollars are scarce, we save from where it needed least and invest where it is needed most.
Without fear - without favour.
It's time to think big in this nation.
Big solutions.
Big ideas.
2013 will be a memorable year.
The year we launch the NDIS.
The year we begin the National Plan for School Improvement.
It's also the year in which we, the nation's elected representatives, return to face the people.
So if you value my National Plan for School Improvement, it's not enough to just nod in agreement or hit ‘like' on a Facebook page.
The Government I lead will deliver Gonski.
If this Government goes, Gonski goes with it.
Mr Abbott's Liberals will always stand in the way of this reform.
As their time in government proved they have never shown any care or concern for disadvantaged children.
Now Mr Abbott's Liberals are being joined by the Greens Party.
Senator Milne will tell you today that it is all about the mining tax.
It isn't.
It's all about your commitment to Australia's children.
If this moment is missed - frittered away in petty politicking by the Greens Party - then it will never come again.
The only way this major change can be delivered for this nation is by this Labor government this year and by this Labor government in the years beyond.
So you as teachers and unionists need to be part of the fight.
We have a vision worth fighting for.
An Australia that is not just prosperous but smarter, fairer and stronger.
An Australia where every school is a great school and every child receives a great education.
In the weeks and months ahead, I will govern to that end - working with the Premiers for the school improvement plan our kids need and deserve.
And I ask you to join with me in the fight for the future of our nation.
Remember I walked with you in that sea of ‘Gonski' hands on the lawns of Parliament House.
I planted one myself.
I know the passion and impatience you feel.
The sense of injustice.
The sense of unfinished business.
The sense that our schools - and our nation - can do better.
I feel these things myself.
I feel them very deeply.
And so I say:
Don't lose heart.
We're nearly there.
The goal is in sight.
United in purpose, and joined in respect, we will get this done.
And we will get it done together.
For our kids.
For our nation.
For the future.