Literacy boost for children and teachers

The Coalition has promised to boost student outcomes while pouring scorn on Labor’s promise of a substantial funding boost.

Education Minister Dan Tehan. Picture: Gary Ramage

The Coalition has broken its ­silence on education policy, promising investments linked to boosting student outcomes while pouring scorn on Labor’s promise of a substantial funding boost.

With education funding at rec­ord levels, the Morrison government yesterday outlined plans to support effective early literacy instruction in schools, including $10.8 million to develop a free online phonics “health check” for Year 1 students and pushing universities to better prepare teaching graduates to teach phonics in the classroom.

The policy also includes an extra $15m for Teach for Australia to attract high-achieving professionals into the field.

Making the announcement in South Australia yesterday, Education Minister Dan Tehan said funding alone would not achieve the improved academic results the nation was working towards.

“We want to make sure that not only do we have record investment but we’re getting the outcomes,” he said. “And making sure our young students can read and can write is incredibly important.

“We also want to make sure we’ve got the teachers, and the quality teachers, that we need going forward.”

Mr Tehan has maintained a lower profile than many of his colleagues through the campaign so far, reflecting the Morrison government’s emphasis on its economic policies as well as the edge Labor has on education given its promise to boost public schools spending by $14.1 billion.

The Coalition, however, has moved to undermine the pledge, claiming “the only time in the last decade that government school funding has been cut was under Labor”.

“When Labor was last in office, Bill Shorten as education minister cut $1.2bn to schools through ­secret funding deals,” it said.

“Labor cannot be trusted with education.”

Opposition education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek hit out at the claim Labor had presided over cuts. “When Labor was last in government, we made the biggest education investment in Australian history,” she said. “It’s sad the Liberals have got no vision for the future, just more lies.”

Centre for Independent Studies education research fellow Blaise Joseph said both major parties were promising to significantly increase funding for schools, well above inflation and enrolments growth, across all school sectors.

“However, it is student results which matter,” he said.

“It’s not just a question of how much money is spent, but how it is spent.”

Commonwealth, state and territory recurrent funding for schools has risen substantially over the past decade — from $36.4bn in 2007-08 to $57.8bn in 2016-17 — yet Australia’s performance internationally across maths, science and reading has declined.

Grattan Institute school program director Peter Goss welcomed the Coalition’s investment in youth mental health and noted its investment of “small dollars into a grab-bag of political talking points”, such as phonics. “In isolation, all sound like decent ideas, but several are the domain of states,” he said, adding that the ­Coalition “could have gone harder on initial teacher education”.