Ms Paul:

Well welcome everyone, my name is Lisa Paul and I'm the Secretary of the Federal Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. Welcome. This is the first time we've ever done a live national conference with parents where we are streaming live to internet. We are live in our terrific Canberra venue and we are being followed on Twitter as well. But before I turn to the star of the show, and that is of course our minister, Peter Garrett, can I please acknowledge respectfully the traditional owners of the land that we're meeting on today, the Ngunnawal people, and pay my respects to their Elders past and present. Now the way we're going to do today is I'm going to hand to the minister in a minute, and he's going to make some opening remarks, and then I'm going to throw to questions, many of which are from you in the audience here live in Canberra, some are from Twitter and some might be from the internet. And we'll see how we go back and forth like that. There's a lot of questions to get through. But without any further ado it's absolutely my great pleasure to introduce the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, the Honourable Peter Garrett MP. Over to you, minister.

Mr Garrett:

Thanks very much Lisa, and I too am absolutely delighted that we're having this national conversation with parents and to all those who've come here in Canberra this afternoon and who are watching on-line, a very, very warm welcome. Look, firstly, we want to continue to have a real and genuine conversation with people who have an interest in education, particularly parents but stakeholders as well, because we're in the midst of an extremely important and ambitious reform agenda. This government has put education right at the centre of what it wants to achieve for the country, and I think many people would be aware that there's a lot happening in education at the moment. Big investments in education, about $65 billion, twice as much as we saw invested previously by the Coalition Government; particular focus on teacher quality, on lifting literacy and numeracy, on supporting low socioeconomic schools so that every kid in Australia, wherever they're living, no matter what their background, has the opportunity it to be the best student that they can. As well as that, we're looking in the future at funding arrangements for education. That's a matter of considerable interest to the education sector and the parents as well because we know that the classroom is changing. The digital revolution, the expectations that people have and the learning demands that are there in the classroom mean that schools, as we know them, whilst still naturally performing the important, fundamental, basic and valuable task of educating kids well, are different places to the ones that they were when either me or my parents went to school. So I'm absolutely thrilled we are here, very much looking forward to those questions, and really pleased that we've got so much to talk about because we care so much about education itself.

Ms Paul:

Now, to get the ball rolling, I'd like to call the President of the Australian Council of State School Organisations, Peter Garrigan who's got the very first question.

Mr Garrigan:

I'll stand, thank you Lisa and thank you for the opportunity minister for the opportunity to have this national conversation with you. As you're aware, the Gonski review is going to be submitting its report to government fairly shortly and as part of that I think it's recognised that there's a strong need to ensure that we'll have funding provided on a needs and accountable basis. In your speech to the Grattan Institute in March earlier this year you indicated that the public state schools, government schools, are the backbone of the Australian education system. So my question is, taking that analogy to the next stage and recognising that the backbone is one of the most important bones in the human body, how will you and your government ensure that funding that's coming out of the review of the Gonski report will clearly identify that if funding is based on needs that the funding will be provided in a needs basis to deliver a quality education to all Australians? I suppose in looking at that, could we also look at getting your definition and your government's definition of what quality education is.

Mr Garrett:

Thanks very much for the question, Peter. Let me deal with what we think quality education is. It's an education that equips students to reach their potential and enables us to have a highly skilled highly literal and numerate population. It means that when we teach children we realise that we're in a process of giving them instructional skills in the national curriculum and across a range of subjects, and teachers and education systems and school systems are also providing them with learning about how to develop and to grow as a person. I mean, I'm also the minister for youth, so I have a really keen interest in what our young people need to know in order to be successful and happy citizens, but it is something that lies at the heart of where we see education going. On the question of the Gonski review, well as I've said before, Mr Gonski's terms of reference: to recommend to us fairness, effectiveness, a recognition of certainty, transparency about how moneys are expensed from the Commonwealth; these are the things that lie at the heart of what a future funding system might look like and that panel has already identified a number of issues in the work that it's commissioned, and I look forward very much to those recommendations coming back to me. Just to say one thing finally, it is certainly the case that I did say very clearly that we recognise that the government school system, the public school system, effectively is the crucible of the provision of education for anybody in the country. We also recognise that parents exercise choice, that we have a system where there are a number of non-government schools and non-government school systems, we value and recognise the contribution they make to educating those kids who go on to become citizens of our country. Now, there will be a great deal of interest in Mr Gonski's recommendations, I'm am interested in them as well, but we do want to have a system which is fair, which delivers funding effectively, which provides certainty for everybody, and is clearly understood.

Ms Paul:

So minister now I thought I might turn to a question that's coming in from the internet, from an e-mail. It's from the President of Parents Victoria, Sharon Healey and she says this: public school parents feel and believe they are being asked for more money every year to resource their local school via school fees, fund-raising and their voluntary labour. Public school principals and school councils feel they have to pressure or pass on the burden to parents to pay or donate more money when school budgets are not able to meet all the costs to deliver a quality education for all their students. What is your government's view of this?

Mr Garrett:

Well thank you very much for that question. I think the first thing to say is that we recognise that parents feel cost of living pressures, but we recognise that in the context of the answer that I gave previously about the big levels of increased support that we've seen from the federal government for schools generally. So, many, many schools around Australia are benefitting from the additional assistance we've given. Just take the Literacy and Numeracy National Partnership, some 1100 schools benefitting from that. But the question's a good one, and I mean it's really often a case of working that through between the parents and citizens organisations and the school in question, making the school aware that there is always going to be a need for parents to have the opportunity to contribute but sometimes they can't be asked for everything. And I guess my hope would be that in individual school communities, in the interaction between the parents and the school communities themselves, the needs are identified, prioritised and focused on and you reach agreement about where you think the fund-raising needs to go. What I can say is that from a Commonwealth government perspective there has never been a period of such significant investment in our schools as the one that we've seen recently.

Ms Paul:

Yes, well, well said, minister. Now, I was going to turn to Caz Bosch from the Australian Parents Council, and Caz is here, aren't you, but I hear you've lost your voice. So you can just nod. So instead you have delegated your question to your executive director Ian Dalton, so I invite Ian to stand up please and ask your question.

Mr Dalton:

Thank you on Caz' behalf, minister, for the opportunity to have this conversation. We'd like to ask you to tell us why the Australian Government seems to have a preference for rewarding outstanding teachers by the payment of bonus payments as opposed to working with the states and territories to develop a national pay structure for teachers that would complement the national professional standards for teachers that have recently been developed by the Australian Institute For Teaching and School Leadership.

Mr Garrett:

Well look I think that the question of how state systems deliver remuneration to teachers is properly a matter for them, and it is not an area that the Commonwealth either wants to nor in my view should have active participation or involvement. That's a question for those jurisdictions to work through and some of them are working that through now as you know. On the question of acknowledging and rewarding teachers for the great job that they do, I think the key thing here is, look, we know there are great teachers in schools but we also know that parents quite often, even when they go to the teacher-student or the principal-family interview are sort of saying, I know there are some teachers here who I think are actually going to be more effective than others. We want to be able to sure that we're able to lift the effectiveness and the capacity of teachers generally. And we want to do it in such a way that encourages those who are good and recognises them at the same time. I'm confident that we can deliver a policy solution to this which the teaching profession itself sees as one which is productive and which recognises some of the other reforms we've had in place. Things like the teachers' national standards, pre-service training and the like.

Ms Paul:

Thanks, minister. Now I'm throwing to another audience member, Dennis O'Dea.

Mr O'Dea:

My question relates to teacher workforce training. Most of our teachers are in the 50, 45-plus age group and I just inquire what modelling is being done by the department to attract people into the profession and in terms of the initiatives that the government's taking, how effective does the government believe those measures will be in terms of matching a need in the workforce.

Mr Garrett:

Look you're right to point to a question about a big sort of bubble that we have of baby boomer generation teachers, and I see a lot of teachers in the classroom now who are in this sort of 50 age bracket. And you're right, they will retire soon. Interestingly, there are fairly significant differences in the numbers of available graduates for teaching in jurisdictions around Australia, in different states. And I think it's something which the universities who train the teachers do need to keep an eye on. I'm very mindful of the fact that we need to have a bunch of people coming through who can teach maths and science. We've got a shortage already, an existing shortage already of teachers who teach in those areas, and that's for example why we have had initiatives like Teach Next, which we want to bring forward which gives a different career path for teachers to come into the teaching profession. So it's a good question. The data itself is data which won't be aggregated to the national level specifically, it is something which happens both across jurisdictions and out of the universities that train teachers. But I do think we need to be mindful of the kind of needs that we have and I'm certainly more than willing to have discussions with Minister Evans, who has responsibility for the universities, about whether or not we need to be providing some representation about the mix of training for the future.

Ms Paul:

That's great, thanks minister. I thought I'd better go to our on-line forum now, so I am going to get into the live event.

Mr Garrett:

Yeah, let's do that.

Ms Paul:

We have got a question via Twitter, minister, and it's a short one. Did science, education cuts fund chaplains?

Mr Garrett:

Right. Well, the short answer is no. Science, education and the programs to support it, were fully delivered and the budget for the chaplains program was completely separate to that. And I think that one of the things that was very interesting to me was to see the level of demand that was there for the chaplains program. I very recently visited a school near Ipswich which had been really strongly affected by the Queensland floods at the beginning of this year. They took and ask for additional chaplaincy services, Lisa, because there was a real need in that community for them. And we've made some changes to the chaplains program. So there is the provision for secular welfare workers as well. It's really a question for the school. The school chooses what kind of chaplain it wants, whether it wants a chaplain or a secular worker. I'm very mindful, too, that because we're are providing such a lot of support for the states I want them to lift their support in the school for their science teachers in particular.

Ms Paul:

Yes. Yes. Well said, and I think the changes to chaplains that mean qualifications have to be met, etc, are all positive too, aren't they? Now back to the live audience I've got a question from Danielle Casey, where are you, Danielle? No. There you go, I don't have a question from Danielle Casey. That's all right, I'll will move on. I will go to the Federations of Parents and Citizens Association of NSW, Rachael Sowden. Rachael, are you here?

Mr Garrett:

There she is.

Ms Sowden:

I'm here. So my question was regarding the elements of teacher standards. We've been told that element 7.3 which is in regards to parental engagement is different to gain competency on and difficult to articulate. What processes are in place to help teachers demonstrate this and is there any professional learning to support this?

Mr Garrett:

I'm really pleased, by the way, that we now have national teacher standards. I mean, I think that's been a great achievement and I want to thank my state colleagues, the education ministers in the state for continuing that education agenda at a national level; it's very important to this government. There are a lot of standards there and that's the one that you've pointed out is an important one. Look, the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership has been charged with the responsibility of producing materials to support those standards, and I understand that it's already underway doing that work. It will also produce things like videos, so you've got sort of a bit of a visual idea of how that standard can be applied. The other thing I think to say is that now we've got national standards out in the marketplace my expectation is that we will see both different states but also other bodies think about developing supporting material for those standards too. That's an important one, but there are many others there and my expectation is because of the national articulation that we've set up we're going to see lots of material come through to support them. But the short answer to your question is that the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership already beginning that work.

Ms Paul:

Now minister, I'm going to move to a question that we received by e-mail. It is quite different again and it's from the Chairman of the Taminmin College Council, Beverley Ratahi. She says: According to OECD data Australia outperforms America in reading, science and maths, yet the Gillard Government persists in following the American education reform agenda. Would you please advise why the Gillard Government does not seek to engage with higher performing countries, particularly Finland, as a basis for modelling education reform?

Mr Garrett:

Well, look I think we can learn a lot from all countries, although it's really important for me to state at the outset that we have a distinctive and unique education system with many strengths, and it's on that basis that we're delivering our reform. Look, I visited America to see what they were doing, and we had an education round table with the American Education Department as well. And that's a useful discussion and it's a two-way discussion. But we're not following slavishly what happens in America at all, Lisa; the two systems are very different. And, I mean, I make one quick comment about this. In some instances when the American system has wanted to reform schools they've simply closed down schools that weren't performing well. We've taken completely the opposite approach where we've gone and seen where schools aren't performing perhaps as well as they, or education authorities, or governments would like, we've provided them with the resources and the support so they can. It's an entirely different way of looking how you support education and improving education right around the country. Now, not only did I go to America, but I quickly went across to Europe as well and I met with the OECD and had an opportunity to hear from them on the reforms that are working well in countries such as Finland. So, I mean, I think the sensible way to approach this is to say that we will look closely at how other countries are going. Education is an absolutely red-letter issue for governments right around the world, and we will learn from those, from the experiences that they're having, but we will test it against our own well-developed distinctive system.

Ms Paul:

And we've been learning from some of the countries in Asia that are performing; back and forth. They look to us for some things, and we look to them now for how they do some of their testing and training and so on too.

Mr Garrett:

I think that's right. You don't necessarily always have all the answers straight away as a minister, and you're very keen to hear what other people are doing. But you test that against where your system's at and we listen pretty closely which is why we are having this national conversation to our own parents and our own sector.

Ms Paul:

We just want to keep learning, don't we?

Mr Garrett:

Yep, definitely.

Ms Paul:

From whoever is doing a good job basically, yes. I have got Stephanie Gotlib from Children with Disability Australia, the executive officer. Where are you Stephanie? There you are. Would you mind standing up and asking your question. Thank you

Ms Gotlib:

Hi, one of most significant barriers facing students with disability is a widespread culture of low expectations. It is often assumed students with disability have limited or no ability to learn and as a consequence they have limited opportunities to reach their full potential, as we've been discussing today. Many parents actually go so far, and this is a common comment made to us, is that they liken the school experience of their kids to babysitting. What's the government doing to address this?

Mr Garrett:

Well we take pretty seriously this issue because we know it's right at the forefront of parents who've got kids with disability, and it is something which we hear a great deal about from the schools themselves. And, I think, Stephanie, schools do want to do the right thing by kids with disability when they're in that school system. A couple of things quickly, and they are some things that I know you've got knowledge of. We committed an extra $200 million in the last budget that was new spending, and I was really pleased that we were able to get that money, to deliver to kids with special needs and disabilities. And we'll do that proportionally to those that are already receiving some assistance under the agreed definitions and systems in the states. We expect schools to look at the disability standards and to meet the needs that these kids have in the school setting. We are also asking Mr Gonski in his review about school funding, to come to us with recommendations about students with disability as well. I don't have a culture of low expectation, both as someone who's been a parent of kids luckily without disability but I've certainly experienced it in the classroom when my kids were coming through the school system, nor as somebody who has worked and seen the kind of challenges that parents have with these kids in school settings. I know that there are resource intensities at play, and you do need expert additional assistance sometimes to enable kids to reach their potential. So we've already got that money in place and that will go some way towards meeting the need over the next 18 months to two years, and then when Mr Gonski brings us his recommendations on how to deal with this question of disability we will look very closely at them.

Ms Paul:

Thanks minister, it is such a vitally important...

Mr Garrett:

Yeah, I know it is.

Ms Paul:

...topic, and the $200 million I think has been really welcomed. Now I think we have in front of us a question that's actually come in live during the conversation and I will read it out: can we relax on grades and push for heightened learning resilience and thinking skills and more student managed projects?

Mr Garrett:

My answer is we can do both. We certainly need to make sure that we've got the basics in place for people: literacy and numeracy. That's why we have the NAPLAN test and that's why we have a national curriculum that provides us with a sense of where we need to get in terms of what we're teaching kids in the school as they progress through their school journey. But is there the opportunity for thinking about more learning and resilience and thinking skills; of course there is. And there is a whole heap of programs that I already see working in schools, and I know that is something that teachers do focus on. I'm particularly pleased in the second tranche of subjects coming through for the national curriculum that arts is on that list of subjects coming through because we are seeing increasingly the benefits to kids resilience, the benefits to their learning, that exposure to an arts rich education can give them particularly in their early years. The question is right in saying that it's not just about the competencies at an intellectual and educational level, it's also about the social competencies, resilience competencies, and I'm particularly aware that everybody has a role to play here, it's just not about governments. I don't expect teachers, for example, to have to manage too great a burden of developing resilience programs when they've got to meet a whole set of requirements to deliver a curriculum, although I do expect them to be aware of those things, but I expect parents too, and careers and the family and the community, to think about how we provide the opportunity for kids to develop the level of resilience that they'll need not only at school but when they go on to later life.

Ms Paul:

It is interesting I have seen some of these other countries, going back to that previous question, that come to us seek our expertise, are actually after the way that our Australian teachers teach things like resilience or that schools support resilience, or that parents and citizens support well-being in the schools. It is quite interesting because some of these other countries just tend to do more the rote learning sort of approach

Mr Garrett:

Yeah, I think when you do look internationally you can see that Australian students by international measurements are actually reasonably resilient and quite happy. Now of course there are kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, kids in adolescence that might hit some really rocky and tough moments, but our kids on the whole do pretty well. And I think that's a testimony to the schools and to the parents that we have in place. But if we want our kids to be better problem solvers, more resilient in the future, it's going to a whole of community effort. It's just not something schools can do, everybody's got a role to play.

Ms Paul:

That's a very good point. I'm going to open it up for questions from the floor so think of your questions, the minister will take any question from the floor and we've got a bit of time which is terrific. So while you are thinking and writing down a few words, whatever you want to do, I'll start the ball rolling myself. Minister you visit schools all the time of course, and you sit down with teachers and with students and with parents, particularly when you sit down with parents because that's what the conversation is today, what do they say to you in terms of what do they care about most? What are the hot topics at the moment for parents in Australian schools?

Mr Garrett:

I think there is a couple of things that are important to parents in schools. They want to know that their kids are being well taught and well looked after within the school gate and I think that is always the case. In every single school I go to I'm really struck by the level of professionalism and care that exists in a school environment. They are great places to visit. Issues of concern to them, I think cyber bullying is the one that really stands out. This is an issue that has clearly emerged quite recently, kids have got access to their emails, their handheld devices, texting, iPhones; whatever it might be. And whilst we've seen some welcome decreases in physical bullying incidents in the school ground, clearly cyber bullying is a big issue. I think one of the other big issues, especially for young girls, although it affects young boys as well, is body image and the kind of high level of expectation that can sometimes be generated through the media and through peer groups about how best to manage those issues. We are providing some national frameworks or national information about that to assist schools, but think it's a bit of a conversation for us all to continue to have. I really see the opportunity that kids have at school as one to not only, you know, really start to do well with the subjects that they like and in sport and build up their friendships, but actually to develop an idea about what they can be without too many things barraging them from the outside. But that's a touch naive or idealistic nowadays, given how many of them are really basically on-line, the on-line accessibility world is there. It's happened in our generation and it's completely transforming the information sources that kids are reaching. So I think parents are mindful of that, they want to know how it's going to be managed in the school community and they're concerned that it's not done in such a way that their kids might be exposed either to pressures or material that's not appropriate.

Ms Paul:

They're tough issues, aren't they, and it's great that the government is doing so much on both of they, both cyber bullying and body image and so on, because they are both issues that are due to the new technologies and so on. They didn't exist when I went to school, for example. So people have to come to grips with them.

Mr Garrett:

That's right. Yeah.

Ms Paul:

Any questions from the audience? They are everywhere. I will start from the front row. Please do, A, stand up; B, say who you are and where you are from; and then ask your question.

Carla:

My name is Carla, I'm a parent of a severely special needs child who attends a special school and he's fine but I'm representing my girlfriend who has two children that are in the mainstream with cerebral palsy and Down syndrome. They are more points, I haven't worded them as questions but one is about how can we address accountability and auditing for funding that's given to specific schools for specific needs for special needs children to make sure that money is actually used for that particular child's needs; whether it is modifications, or equipment; anything like that. And the second issue is about teacher's aides, the support officers who assist in the classroom. Can there be some level of education or training to assist to properly support these children. I have one specific example of my girlfriend's son who the aide worker was not willing to support him with his toileting. These are basic things. OK, yes we want to help. She also had issues with spelling so there is the education side, but also the support side for physical care, personal care. And quite often he would come home being soiled. So these are the sort of grass roots main issues in the mainstream public school system.

Mr Garrett:

Look, there are absolutely legitimate particularly the second one that you raised. It is really important for the school principal and school staff to know what the explicit needs of kids with disability are, and that that's communicated if there is a teacher's aide in the classroom. And my expectation would be that schools would have in place the procedures to make sure that that happens. If they don't it is certainly appropriate for your friend, in this case, to raise it with the principal or more generally with the system. On the first question, it's really important that we know that the resources are actually being delivered as where they're needed, and certainly from the Commonwealth's point of view in terms of the money that I was talking about before, the 200 million, we will closely watch and evaluate the expense of that money. Bearing in mind that we are specifically giving it to schools or school systems who are already providing support for kids with disability. I will just make one other quick question, because we quite often get questions about this. I think this is the next thing for us to lift our effort on generally, and I'm not just talking about government support, although I realise that that's important and there will always be calls for it, but think it's really important for us as a nation to lift our effort here. We've had disability advocacy groups, and Stephanie and others, saying quite loudly and quite clearly: hang on a minute, kids with disabilities aren't second class citizens and they can't be treated like that. I think the same thing applies right across the sector, and that means everybody, whether it's governments, businesses, communities and schools, have got to lift their game and have got to lift their effort. I'm very keen for them to do that and I'm in a government that's taking it pretty seriously. We're proposing a National Disability Insurance Scheme that will be as big a reform for disability as Medicare was for health in general. So it is something that's really on our agenda and we are going to keep very focused on it, I want to assure you of that.

Ms Paul:

Another question right down the front; the gentleman on the corner. Please tell us who you are and where you are from.

Mr McCandless:

Hello I'm Shaun McCandless, I come from the Special Education Advocacy Group here in Canberra. I have a daughter with cerebral palsy. I'm interested, can the Commonwealth play a role in the development of consistent assessment tools that recognises a child's disability so that psychometric testing accurately describes the child's IQ based upon their knowledge and not on the mean of the general able-bodied population of their peers.

Mr Garrett:

Yeah, look another good question around this disabilities issue which is clearly really important, particularly to families and communities with that experience. The ministerial council is looking at the national definition of 'disability' and how that might be applied in terms of identifying kids who are those with special needs and whether programs will follow. It's a very important piece of work. We've gotten further than anyone's gotten before, which I'm really pleased about, but we still have a little bit more work to do. It's a matter of some concern to me, and this is why we talk about national reforms for education, a national curriculum, national testing of NAPLAN and the like. We do have different standards and different testing regimes applying in different states. So you mate may have a child with a special need in one state actually receiving quite a considerable different amount of support than a child in another state with effectively the same condition, or if the child goes from state to state. But we are very aware this is an important issue and I think that work that we're doing on the national definition will go some way towards providing the mechanisms that you've referred to in your question.

Ms Paul:

We are going to go to a question that's come in during this conversation over the web and it is: can we count on you to continue to support us in our fight against these unfair government preschool fees in NSW. We need you.

Mr Garrett:

Yes, you can. I really encourage the NSW Government not to load up preschool fees at this point in time. I think that that's incredibly unfair to parents that have got kids at that preschool age and who want to get them into preschool. We've got a big investment in preschool education, the national quality framework in universal access. The first time the federal government has ever spent any money in a big way on preschool education, we are actually doing that, and I definitely don't want to see state governments start to jack up the fees in their schools as we roll out those reforms and that support.

Ms Paul:

That's right, particularly when so much extra funding has come to them that was never there before.

Mr Garrett:

Absolutely.

Ms Paul:

I have got another question from the internet which is: how will schools access non-sectarian chaplains, the secular support workers under the new guidelines I guess this is about.

Mr Garrett:

I spoke briefly about expanding the chaplaincy program to enable welfare workers, secular workers, to work through the program as well. This program works as one which is a choice by schools to the kind of worker that they want to have. So I would encourage any schools who either want a chaplain service or want the non-sectarian chaplain to have a look at the guidelines, to identify a provider of that service, and then to work as a facilitator with the school and with the provider to see whether there's the opportunities for support under the program. There are certainly opportunities there at the moment and we're encouraging all the school communities who are interested in the program to jump on-line, on the DEEWR website, and have a look at get some ideas about how to take it forward.

Ms Paul:

Apparently we are being flooded with things coming over the e-mail so I will take one more and then I will take an audience one: do you think parents should allow kids to mimic your dance moves listening to the Oils?

That's a great question

Mr Garrett:

It's not the best question of the day but it's certainly an enjoyable one. Well of course I do, yeah. I mean, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! But we won't hold them to any stand standards when they do it.

Ms Paul:

I have got to say I have seen it happening in your department too. Any age could be trying to mimic your moves with the Oils I'm afraid.

Mr Garrett:

Let it happen, I say.

Ms Paul:

Fair enough. One more from the audience. Let's see, the lady right in the middle up the back.

Ms Frape:

I take the opportunity to recognise Elders past and present of this nation. Minister, my name is Janice Frape and I'm from the Federation of P&C Associations in NSW. You said at the beginning of your speech that you thought that expectations were changing. I tend to disagree. I believe that our parents of our primary school children still expect that children will be literate, to read and understand with comprehension, they will be numerate. Not only understanding numbers, but they will also understand the logic of mathematics, the logic of life, and the logic of learning. Secondary parents look to their children being able to fulfil their ambitions in being able to get a job. The federal government in this national conversation has obviously got a role model. Punitive measures against indigenous populations of taking money away because their children don't attend school; students with disabilities who are left with funding deficits in trying to education them; mainstream students who need support when they get into a block where we haven't got the counselling services that we need; our gifted and talented children who need the support of special programs that need to be there, when is the federal government going to take the opportunity of bringing all of the inter-agencies from all of the departments together to get hold of the one song book and sing it together, that we are going to educate every child in this nation to the best of that child's ability to allow them to fulfil the future? What role model are you going to show used to that will say yes, every child in this country can be educated and we are going to ensure that they receive that education?

Ms Paul:

Thank you.

Mr Garrett:

Thanks for that question Janice, and I couldn't agree any more about most of what you've said but I disagree about one item which I will come to in a second. There has never been either the level of support for education, a focus on both lifting literacy and numeracy, applying those resources to low socioeconomic communities, or helping and working with teachers to lift teacher quality than we've had in the national partnerships over the last three and a half years. Ever. There's never been, by the way, the level of investment in the buildings that these teachers and these kids have to teach and learn in as there has been from this federal government. Ever. Nothing like it, nothing goes anywhere near it. But I very much share the guts of your question, about enabling every student to be absolutely the best that they can be. Let me quickly just deal with a couple of the other issues that you raised indirectly. I disagree with you in your remarks about the initiatives that we've announced to increase school attendance for particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids in the Northern Territory on attendance, and I will tell you why. Attendances are so low in the Northern Territory even though we have put a large amount of resources into supporting education there, more teachers, better buildings, provision of housing and the like, and there are quite a lot of programs in place to encourage the community to work positively to make sure that there's a good engagement between community and school. But we still have persistently low levels of attendance. And what we have said today is, let's provide an opportunity for parents, teachers and social workers to sit down and agree together an attendance plan for their children, lay out those things that everybody agrees will make a difference in attendance, and provide the support for the families to do that. Now, Aboriginal people themselves told us very clearly that they have an expectation that Aboriginal parents will make sure that their kids go to school, so I know that's shared by the Aboriginal community generally, and what we've announced today will make it better and more easier for that to happen. Just very quickly on your other points, one of the things that we're looking at pretty closely is how do we have better interventions into both early childhood and also the school system for kids where they run into trouble, they may have mental issues or emotional issues that they need to receive support and assistance to work through to get them back on track as they go through the rest of schooling. As you know, we have the Australian Early Development Index which is giving us a nation-wide snapshot of the developmental barriers and issues that kids have within census districts. That means with that information that we can have schools working with psychologists, health professionals, the community and others, to address some of those particular issues. We have KidsMatter and Minds Matter, both supported by the federal government but from the health portfolios and from the community services and mental health portfolios. So we are looking at trying to bring other services into the schools to basically make sure that if kids have got issues that they can be addressed professionally and enable them to move on. Finally, on the question of gifted kids in the schools and the provision for them, I was asked this question when I was first minister and I really tossed it around in my head and I actually asked parents and students and teachers when I go into schools how this works for them and what they have in place to deal with those students. I think that as a rule most schools have in place a capacity or an awareness of how to make sure that their gifted are given the support that they need. It may not be perfect and it may not happen in every school yet, but I know it's something which the teachers are aware of and I know it's something that systems are continuing to bring through mechanisms to try and lift. Can we do more? I'm sure that we can. Is it recognised? I think that it is.

Ms Paul:

That was a really profound question, wasn't it, and it's therefore I think a really nice one to end on because we are actually out of time.

Mr Garrett:

Oh, my goodness. How incredible.

Ms Paul:

It's gone really fast, hasn't it? So thank you all here for all your questions and the people here live in Canberra will get a little chance more with the minister because we are going to invite you to stay for a while with the minister. To everyone else: farewell on the internet and those following on Twitter. Can you please join with me to thank the minister for his generous time. Minister Peter Garrett.