Wednesday, 23 September 2026

 Brad ROWSWELL (Sandringham) (10:50): I also rise to address a committee report. The committee report I address today is from the Legislative Assembly’s Economy and Infrastructure Committee, a committee I served on in the 59th Parliament, and is on their inquiry into student pathways to in-demand industries. It is clear to me, having reviewed this report, that more needs to be done to strengthen the ability of students to be their best and to achieve their best within their school education in order to address a number of matters, including addressing and arresting the skills gap we have in Victoria. It is an impost upon the future of Victoria’s economy and our economic potential as a state to grow wealth, to grow opportunity and to grow our presence, not only in Australia but globally as a destination for investment. But more than that, it goes to the responsibility that the education system has to not just teach for the sake of teaching or educate for the sake of educating but to prepare young people to fully contribute to life and to the economy once they leave that educational setting. This is something which, from an opposition perspective, we have considered quite deeply.

With reference to the committee report and with regard and reference also to some of the policy considerations being undertaken by the coalition, I do want to address that committee report and its sentiments, specifically through the lens of some policies that I, as the state shadow education minister, have recently announced. The bottom line is that we do have an obligation to the next generation. Under a Wilson Liberal government we will not be striving for mediocrity. We will not be striving for average. We will be striving for excellence. We need to understand the potential of young people in school communities. We need to enable them the opportunity to do their very best and to be their very best.

That is one of the reasons why we have announced successful school starters, effectively a statewide neurodivergence screening program for every prep student in every prep classroom, to embed allied health professionals, both speech pathologists and occupational therapists, into the primary school nursing program so that young people if they are neurodivergent can be on a pathway to assistance at an earlier stage and so that at the very start of their schooling they have the supports in place to be and achieve their best. This will help teachers as well to understand the particular individual needs of those students. It will help parents in a supported framework to understand the needs of their children and to support them in that process too. It is a policy which we have announced, which we are particularly proud about, to get the best out of every young person, to support teachers and to support parents.

The fact that there are around 30 per cent of Victorian students who leave Victorian schools without adequate literacy and numeracy skills is of deep concern to the opposition. It is for that reason that we have announced a literacy and numeracy guarantee. We will achieve better standards in literacy and numeracy over a number of years. We have an interim target of a 15 per cent increase on current levels over 10 years and across all domains of NAPLAN. We will do that by instigating a time- and scope-limited review of Victoria’s curriculum. We will do that with a focus on professional learning opportunities for teachers in the areas of classroom mastery and of student behaviour management and on embedding even further explicit instruction into our classrooms and supporting our teachers to do that.

We will give Victorian students more choice. Just on the weekend, we announced that we will establish three additional select-entry schools. I want to be really clear about this: yes, we will establish these schools and will convert six existing high schools to partial select entry, but equity needs to be at the heart of this. It does not matter what your postcode is and does not matter where you live or what your socio-economic status is, the responsibility of the Victorian government should be to offer every Victorian student the very best opportunity.