Mrs ANDREWS (McPherson—Assistant Minister for Vocational Education and Skills) (15:23): I am delighted to speak on today's MPI for a number of reasons. Firstly, I am recently appointed to the role of Assistant Minister for Vocational Education and Skills, and I have to say that I am delighted to be in this role because there are so many opportunities for us as a government to do good work in the education sector. It is important to note that education is like a highway, and we have the opportunity as we go along that education highway to exit at many different points, including at the vocational education destination. But schooling and school education is a critical part of that education highway, and it is very important that we get that right not just for ourselves but also for our generations yet to come. As a member of the government, what I want is a quality education outcome for the dollars that we are spending on education. As a taxpayer, I want value for money, value for the dollars that are spent on education. And, as a parent, I want a quality education for my children and for other children, so that they have the best opportunity to achieve their life goals. There is outstanding research and a considerable amount of work that has been done on funding. It is important to note that we have record funding going forward in education—$73.6 billion over the forward estimates to 2020. But there is significant research that says that there is no automatic link between high per student funding and student outcomes but that improved outcomes are driven by policies and reforms both in the school and in the wider education system. I note that the member for Sydney talked briefly today about Gonski, and it has been a recurrent theme. It is important to make it very clear that, contrary to popular opinion the current arrangements are not Gonski; they are a corruption of Gonski, as has been clearly put by Mr Boston. Ken Boston, one of the panel members on Gonski, said: In the run-up to the 2013 election, prime minister Kevin Rudd and education minister Bill Shorten hawked this corruption of the Gonski report around the country, doing deals with premiers, bishops and the various education lobbies … and they led to a thoroughly unsatisfactory situation. I do not particularly want to go down the Labor-bashing approach, but I think it is important to put in some sort of context here. There was an opportunity to come up with a national model that met students' needs, but what we got was a hotchpotch of some 27 different agreements. Having said that, I think it is important to actually move forward, because what we need to be talking about is the quality education outcomes that are needed. We released a document back in May, Quality Schools, Quality Outcomes, which I would encourage everyone to have a good look at. It talks about how important funding is, but it says that what we do with the funding matters more. Ms Plibersek: That is what we all think. Mrs ANDREWS: I am pleased that we are all agreeing on that, because what we do with the funding is very important. It may well be that there are differences of opinion, but perhaps what the debate needs to turn to is what we can do with the money that we have available and how we can ensure that that is used wisely and provides the outcome that our students need into the future. Despite significant funding growth in the past decade, NAPLAN results and our international rankings show that there have not been sufficient improvements in student outcomes. So, whilst we are spending record amounts of money, we are not achieving the outcomes that we need into the future. As I said, it is time that we focus on quality education, and that is exactly what this government is doing. Through our Quality Schools, Quality Outcomespaper we are focusing on five key areas. The first one is 'Boosting literacy, numeracy and STEM performance'. We are not just talking about it; we are actually doing it—and I will come back and talk a little bit more about STEM. The second one is 'Improving the quality of teaching and school leadership'—doing the things that actually make a difference. The third one is 'Preparing our students for a globalised world'—where they have to get a job and compete with students who are ahead of them globally. The fourth one is 'Focusing on what matters most and those who need it most'—genuine attention to needs. The fifth one is 'Increasing public accountability through improved transparency'—not the corruption that Ken Boston so accurately describes. I will start by talking about STEM education—science, technology, engineering and maths. As many in this place would know, my background is as a mechanical engineer. So science, technology, engineering and maths are subjects that are very near and dear to my heart. I was actually trained as a problem-solver, as most engineers are. What we know about STEM and particularly the jobs of the future is that, whilst it is not possible to predict exactly what those jobs are going to be, we do know that 75 per cent of the jobs of the future are going to require skills in science, technology, engineering and maths. But our record in producing students with those skills and expertise is actually quite poor. If we compare the number of students studying maths and science from 1992 to 2012—a 20-year period—there were 30,800 more students in year 12 in 2012 than in 1992 but there was a significant decrease in the number of students who were studying maths and science subjects. There were 8,000 fewer physics students, 4,000 fewer chemistry students and 12,000 fewer biology students. Action needs to be taken to make sure that we can increase the number of students who are studying science, technology, engineering and maths, particularly science and mathematics at school. We in the government understand that we have to be producing a pipeline to make sure that graduates are coming through with the high-level science and mathematics skills that we need. Already we have taken some considerable action to make sure that we are introducing science and maths at almost the earliest possible level by funding two programs, including the Let's Count program at the kindergarten level and the Little Scientists program, which will look at supporting our youngest learners to develop a love for science and a love for maths. That is critical and is important as we take those students through school. We also know that there are some other critical points to be focusing on as the students go through their education, certainly at year 5 but also further up, at years 8, 9 and 10, where we will be needing to focus on STEM skills for students. Year 10 is a critical year for our skill students. I had the opportunity to speak to a number of Australian Apprenticeships Ambassadors this morning, and they talked about their experiences at school. I think it is probably fair to say that they felt they were a little bit let down by their schooling system, because the support that was given by their career advisers was really aimed at getting students into university without focusing on the vocational educational needs of the future. That means we have a significant skills gap that we need to be filling in vocational education. This is one of the key areas that have been identified to us as what we should be doing in schools, which is providing additional support to the career advisers so they are in a better position to support students in the very important decisions that they are making about what their future should actually be. When talking to these students it is very clear that they have been let down by the current school system and that serious action needs to be taken in a number of areas. There is very little time remaining, but I am sure that my colleagues will continue the debate along similar lines. One of the things that we need to focus on quite clearly is quality teaching and supporting our teachers to make sure that they are in the best possible position to impart the knowledge that our students will need into the future. There are a number of key areas, as I have identified, in which the government continues to take significant steps forward to improve education in our schools. I would encourage those opposite to take a proactive and positive approach and to work together with the government.