Wednesday, 20 March 2024

Education system

Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:46): (795) My adjournment is for the Minister for Education. Government funding into schools almost doubled between the years of 2012 and 2022. Meanwhile, student learning outcomes have been on the decline. According to the Programme for International Student Assessment, over the last 24 years we have seen declines in the standards of reading, science and mathematics. Students who took the test in the year 2022 were almost a year behind in learning when compared to those who took the test in the year 2000. Students are now 16 months behind in mathematics, over a year behind in reading and 10 months behind in science when compared to students who took the test 24 years ago.

The problem here is not funding, because record funding has not been met with record achievement – in fact the opposite has been true. A 2023 report, Who Teaches the Teachers? An Audit of Teaching Degrees at Australian Universities, found that the equivalent of just 10 weeks of classes across a four-year bachelor of education degree are dedicated to teaching core literacy and numeracy skills. It also found that fewer than one in ten teaching subjects focused on literacy and numeracy education. Under the back-to-basics program endorsed by the federal education minister, there will be a new accreditation regime for teaching degrees. It will be mandatory for universities to instruct student teachers in evidence-based reading, science and arithmetic, and classroom management practices. This is a wonderful step, but there is not any clarity on how it will be implemented. So the action that I seek is for the Minister for Education to outline how this will be implemented in the state of Victoria.