To Andy Mison and the leaders of ASPA, principals and deputy principals from across Australia, colleagues and guests, thank you for the opportunity to be with you at the 2026 ASPA National Summit.

I acknowledge the vital role principals play in our communities.

It is not just the leadership of your schools and your communities

Long before I was Shadow Education Minister, I always made the point of getting to know my government school principals: having regular gatherings, sitting with and staying on top of developments in schools and education. Those relationships have enriched my understanding and support for government schools.

Leadership can be lonely, and expectations are understandably high, and classrooms are more and more complicated.

Few outside the profession realise the myriad issues you are dealing with: from behavioural issues to mental health.

From challenging students to challenging parents.

Managing and leading staff in an ever-changing environment. 

I have often described teachers as addicts.

You are addicted he the lightbulb moment when a student gets a concept for the first time. It is a feeling that never gets old.

We as parents see it too in our own children, and it is a thrilling experience.

Setting expectations for Australian students that they will achieve their potential and help them do their best is fundamental to what the teaching profession is all about.

I have always enjoyed my relationship with the public secondary school principals in my electorate.

I have fantastic Comprehensive high schools.

Galston; Pennant Hills; Cherrybrook Tech; Cheltenham Girls; New Hornsby High School and Asquith High School—former Asquith Boys and Asquith Girls.

Some of my students go to Carlingford, Epping Boys and Turramurra.

I have some amazing selective schools.

Like Hornsby Girls and Normanhurst Boys

You only need to stand at the train station to see how far people are travelling.

As far as Gosford High, Sydney boys and Sydney girls—and to other places around the city too.

And I make the observation that the distances now being travelled by students in my electorate to attend selective schools begs the question: do we need another selective school in Northern Sydney?

Coalition beliefs

I believe – and we in the Coalition believe – that it is critically important to support parents in making the choice that is right for their family.

It’s not my job to tell parents what’s best for their children.

They know what’s best for their children.

It’s my job to make sure parents have a range of options.

Whether it is government or non-government, single-sex or co-educational, comprehensive or selective, specialist or generalist, my aim is to ensure they are all good options.

My role is to ensure that whatever choice they make is a good choice.

I only need to look in my own electorate, where we have outstanding government, Catholic and independent schools. 

As Shadow Education Minister, you will never hear me attack our teachers or principals. You will often hear me praise them for the way they create schools that bring communities together.

Australians love their schools. They know their teachers work hard and care deeply about their students.

Foundational knowledge

I am a strong believer that students need deep foundational knowledge to set them up for success and help them understand the world around them. 

The basics of a strong education—reading, writing, maths, science and a proper understanding of our history—are non-negotiable. 

Without that foundation, we are failing to equip our children with the tools they need to build successful and productive careers. 

We should expect our education system to set high standards and drive excellence in these fields.

We do not want to fall into the trap of low expectations. We owe it to our children to deliver explicit teaching and to combat classroom disruption. 

These are the foundations of learning. It is only when these foundations are right that we can properly prepare our children for the future. 

Theme for the conference

The theme this year is “Agency for Equity and Excellence”—an excellent theme—and this summit is promoted as a capstone moment for “collaborative reform”.

So let me start by saying a few words about collaborative reform.

And the obvious place to start—speaking as the Liberal Shadow Minister for Education—is with collaborative reform across the political aisle with my counterpart, Jason Clare.

Collaborative reform

And to be perfectly upfront, when it comes to schools, there are a number of places where there is a meeting of the minds.

That is why I have acknowledged Jason Clare’s recent moves to endorse explicit teaching, phonics, and knowledge-rich curricula in schools.

These are longstanding positions on my side of politics, but the reason they are longstanding is that the evidence supports them. I give credit to Jason for recognising that.

It is also why I welcome Jason Clare’s recent call for the curriculum to teach Australian values in schools, which I think he defined as “freedom, democracy, the rule of law and a fair go”.

I agree with that.

It is almost exactly in line with the policy that we put forward in Government 2005 in the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools, which said:

These shared values, such as respect and ‘fair go’, are part of Australia’s common democratic way of life, which includes equality, freedom and the rule of law

That this has now become a bipartisan policy position says something powerful and unifying about the direction our country is headed.

And it is why I welcome Jason’s positive initial response to my call for an inquiry into boys’ education.

Boys education

Let me say first that the strides we have made in the education of women and girls over the past 30 years are an absolute triumph and deserve to be celebrated.

In 1996, similar proportions of men and women had degrees, with slightly more men than women – around 10%.

On the most recently available statistics, 37% of women between the ages of 15 and 74 had a degree at bachelor’s level or higher, compared with 30% of men in the same bracket.

If you drill down into the 25-34 age bracket, 41% of men but 54% of women have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

It is fair to say now that not only are Australians better educated in general than they were 30 years ago, but that women are better educated than men.

The successes we have had in women’s education are massive; it is a public policy achievement of which Australians should justly be proud.

But when I look at the outcomes we are seeing in boys’ education, I am very concerned.

The evidence on boys’ education is compelling and speaks for itself.

In NAPLAN testing, the results show that in every field except numeracy, boys start behind and fall further behind as they progress through school.

As they head into senior secondary schooling, that translates into lower rates of school retention for boys

The most recent ABS data, released just a couple of weeks ago, show a continued disparity in school retention rates for boys and girls.

School retention rates now sit at 77.6% for boys, compared with 85.3% for girls. That is almost an 8-point difference in school retention rates.

The trend continues into higher education.

I have made the point on a number of occasions that there are 168,000 young men who started in higher education in 2015, but that number decreased to 158,000 on the most recent figures, even though the population grew by 3.4 million over the same period.

We are seeing gaps at almost every level.

I raised this with Jason Clare late last year and asked him to launch a bipartisan inquiry by the House Standing Committee on Education.

I told him I wanted the Parliament to hear the best available evidence on what is driving these differences and to find solutions.

And to give credit, he was receptive and collaborative about it.

We exchanged correspondence about it in November and December last year, including draft terms of reference.

And as you would no doubt have seen over the weekend, that inquiry is now set to commence.

It is called an “Inquiry into Educational Attainment”, and there are some changes to those terms of reference, but to be perfectly frank, I don’t care about that.

The intent has been consistent all along—to canvass the disparities in educational attainment of boys and girls at all levels of the education system.

In ten years’ time, parents won’t be talking about terms of reference for an inquiry, but they will be talking about where the schooling system left their boys behind

So I want this committee to look at boys’ education in depth—to examine the problem properly, and find the solutions.  

And if it identifies improvements to girls’ education too—brilliant.

Because as I have said repeatedly—this is not and has never been a zero-sum game.

I have a son and a daughter in the education system, and I want them both to succeed. I think almost every Australian parent would feel the same.  

And my message to you in this room is simple: please write to the committee.

Tell the stories about what has worked, and what gets in the way.

Give evidence. Participate in this collaborative reform. Your contribution is so valuable.

It’s in our interests to produce evidence-based solutions to lift everyone up and improve outcomes across the board.

We need to fix this for the next generation.

Victorian schools funding

The point of saying these things, of identifying areas of shared interest, and common ground, is that where we disagree, it’s for good reason.

There are areas where we do not agree.

I have been very critical of the failure to land a deal on the funding of Victorian public schools under the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement process.

This is the agreement that the Prime Minister announced one year and one day ago, when he announced that every jurisdiction in Australia was on a pathway to receive the full “School Resourcing Standard” or “SRS” that was identified by David Gonski.

This was to be achieved over 10 years, out to 2034.

You might have seen that announcement, as I did, and thought good.

The funding uplift was a process that started under the Coalition. The previous Coalition Government nearly doubled annual school funding from $13 billion in 2013 to over $25 billion in 2022. It’s a core part of our political philosophy to support excellence and measures that drive excellence in outcomes.

And that is why I have been dismayed to see that not only was it not true that every state was on a pathway to the full Schools Resourcing Standard back in March last year, but as we speak, there is in fact no plan to lift that funding for Victoria.

The reason for this is simple.

What was announced last year wasn’t an agreement that included some concrete mechanism to uplift funding for Victorian government schools.

What was in place in March last year, at the time of the Prime Minister’s announcement, was actually a “heads of agreement”.

A “heads of agreement” is a non-binding statement of intent.

It is a framework for future negotiation.

In fact, the document itself is explicit about this.

It says there is no uplift in funding to state or territory government schools unless the individual state or territory signs a separate bilateral agreement with the government.

Victoria had not signed a bilateral agreement in March last year, when the announcement was made.

In fact, by December last year, there was such pressure to be able to say at least that there was some kind of bilateral in place that they signed a stopgap agreement.

Let me be clear about the measure.

First, unlike every other jurisdiction, which has a pathway and funding certainty out to 2034, it expires in 9 months’ time. 

Second, unlike every other jurisdiction, it does not lift school funding to Victorian government schools.

It is distressing.

It means that if you put the Northern Territory to one side, as the Prime Minister himself has done due to the unique challenges faced in that jurisdiction this year, Victorian government schools are, as we speak, the lowest-funded in the entire country.

In 2026, Victorian government schools will receive 90.43% of the Schools Resourcing Standard from the Allan and Albanese governments.

That is lower than New South Wales.

It is lower than Queensland.

It is lower than Western Australia.

It is lower than the ACT.

It is lower than Tasmania.

It is lower than South Australia. 

This year, the estimated school resourcing standard in secondary schools is $18,180 per student.

If you apply the current Victorian funding figure, high schoolers get just $16,440 per student.

That is lower than every other comparable jurisdiction.

In 2026, that’s around $860 less per student than NSW, around $900 less per student than South Australia, and $1,740 less per student than Tasmania. 

And from here out, those figures are set to increase in every other jurisdiction. That is not the case in Victoria.

More than 667,000 students are being left behind relative to their peers.

That is a bad outcome for Australia and a terrible outcome for Victorian children.

Because it’s not just the decision to announce something that wasn’t true.

It’s the fact that for 2 years out of the 10-year window that is covered by the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement, children in Victorian government schools get nothing.

Two years is a long time when you’re educating a child.

So, I am critical. A collaborative approach to reform does not mean putting up with bad outcomes resulting from bad decisions.

It would have cost less to bring Victoria into line with NSW than it did to cancel the Commonwealth Games.

It would have cost far less to bring Victorian schools up to standard than the $15-30 billion dollars that the Victorian Labor government has funnelled into the CFMEU.

It makes me angry.

Money that could have been spent on educating children went instead to organised crime.

But it is Victorian children who will pay the price—through reduced inputs into their education, the education that I see as so important in creating opportunities for tomorrow.

Final words

I want to conclude with some parting thoughts.

There is a common thread to all of the issues I have raised today so far—they have all been about transforming systems.

And I have spoken about common ground and areas of disagreement.

But I’d like to change tack, if I may, by leaving you with some questions not about how and where we collaborate on reforms – but where those reforms are taking us.

What is the long-term trajectory? Is it the right one? With the exception of Victoria, there is now a certain pathway out to 2034. Will it take us where we need to go?

Winston Churchill famously said that the empires of the future are the empires of the mind. That was once true.

But we are now moving into an age where the so-called smartest person in the room—in every room—is the phone in your pocket.

What is the value proposition of our school education system in that future? In my view, it has never been more valuable.

And so for the final point of reflection, I ask this: how do we preserve and restore the fundamentally human experience of education over the next 10 or 15 years?

And what do our schools, our teachers, our pedagogy and our institutions need to look like for that to happen?

I look forward to continuing these conversations for years to come.

Thank you.