Well, can I say, Ben, thank you so much for having me this morning.

I’ve never quite had an introduction like that.

When my wife says to me, “How did your speech go this morning at the conference?”

I can say it was greeted by a standing ovation before I’d even said anything. So, you know, it can only be downhill from here.

Can I say it’s such a delight to follow Sarah.

I feel what I’m going to say is much more prosaic than what Sarah did.

She reminded us of the good, the true and the beautiful, and the importance of those things in a liberal education.

And the importance of those ideas in a classical education, of asking ourselves the question how does one live the good life?

How do you achieve human flourishing?

And I was thinking as she spoke about the importance of that wonderful poet from the early 19th century John Keats with his Ode on a Grecian Urn.

Where he said beauty is truth, beauty that is all you know on earth and all you need to know, and I thought what he was doing there is exactly what Sarah was asking us to do.

Towards the end of the speech there was to take the western tradition which is the birthright and inheritance of every Australian born in this country, and to reflect on it and reflect on it in our own day, and the way Keats was reflecting on the ancient world at the end of the 19th century.

I think the challenge for us these days is that too many of our Australian children are being denied their birthright to know about the Western tradition.

And so before they can even have the challenge to reflect on it, they need to know what it is.

And that is part of my task here today and part of my task as the shadow minister for education.

So Ben, thank you for that lovely introduction. And Sarah, thank you not only for your great speech but for your work in bringing us all together.

I want to acknowledge all the people who are in this room who’ve been involved in and who believe in education for human flourishing.

And while running the risk of mentioning some and not others, I particularly wanted to acknowledge my friend Simon Haines, the inaugural director of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, who is here today, and Kevin Donnelly, who has been an inspiration to me in my thinking about the curriculum and my thinking about the importance of liberal education.

Ben’s stolen my best jokes and my best lines here, unfortunately, because I wanted to retell the story of a piece that the Sydney Morning Herald journalist Jacqueline Maley wrote when I was first elected to parliament 10 years ago.

This is what she said.

Julian Leeser is a federalism freak, a young fogey, a Gilbert and Sullivan tragic, and a policy nerd who dates his ambition to enter parliament to about his 10th birthday, for which he asked his parents for a copy of the Australian Constitution. And I’m sad to say that all those things are true.

Though I’m sure there are far better classic scholars than me in the room. I think the Latin for this term is Nerdus Maximus.

I did ask for a copy of the constitution for my 10th birthday.

And I do regard Australian democracy as one of the great liberal achievements of our country.

And I am a policy nerd for education policy in particular.

I spent a great deal of my life in and around educational institutions.

Before I was a member of parliament, I worked at Australian Catholic University under Professor Greg Craven.

I ran the Menzies Research Centre and as Ben said, I was a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

I was commissioned by the late Paul Ramsay to produce a report to give life to his vision for the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation.

And I was privileged to serve on the board of the Ramsay Centre from its foundation until the time I became shadow minister for education.

I also sat on the board of Teach for Australia and I’ve seen some of the extraordinary things those teachers do around the country.

And those of you who’ve read or seen my address to the Garma Festival earlier this year, wearing my other hat as the shadow minister for indigenous Australians, would know I specifically listed education as one of the primary priority areas which I think has the potential to have life-changing impacts down the generations for indigenous people, alongside wealth creation and suicide prevention.

Because as I’ve said many times education is life-changing.

It’s nation building and I know you in this room understand this that it is in the schools of today that we lay the foundations for the Australia of tomorrow.

What we teach and the way we teach matters. Those who know me know how excited I am to be involved in education policy.

I’ve joked that being the shadow minister for education is the second best job in the parliament.

And I’ve particularly got an investment in this as a parent of two children in the education system.

And I believe education’s fundamental to Australia and it’s foundational.

The state of play today

Now Sarah asked me to speak today on a couple of very small topics here.

My vision for Australian education and its capacity to impact the formation of the Australian identity and affect greater social cohesion and in particular to address issues like the Australian curriculum for schools, liberal arts education, regulatory pressures and what we should strive for in our education system.

So, while you’re still sitting here well into next year, it was an extraordinarily generous invitation.

Sarah, thank you. But she only gave me half an hour to speak and so I don’t think I’ll have the opportunity to cover all of it.

But I wanted to focus my remarks on the Australian education system, where it stands today, and how it needs to change to give our children the best chance of success in life.

Now, unfortunately, the picture’s not particularly rosy.

Our academic performance is worse than ever.

Our boys are disengaged and falling behind.

Our classrooms are disrupted and in some instances they’re dangerous.

We don’t have enough teachers, but it’s also harder than it used to be to become a teacher.

Parents and teachers are in a day-in, day-out fight against screens.

And all of this is going on while we’re pouring more and more money into our schooling system.

Achievement and curriculum

Issues around academic performance in the curriculum shot into the spotlight in the last fortnight with the release of the 2025 results for the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, or “PISA”.

PISA is a test given to 15-year-olds and it’s done every three years and it’s probably the most respected international benchmark that shows how Australian students are tracking both over time and more importantly how they’re tracking against peers in other countries.

And Australian results in 2025 for maths and reading were the worst ever.

The worst ever.

We saw a 7-point drop in scores for reading, from a score of 498 just three years ago to a score of 491 today.

We saw a 9-point drop in mathematics. From 487 to 478.

Only 55 per cent of Australian students reached the national proficient standard in reading, 49 per cent in mathematics and 60 per cent in science.

This is grim reading for what has happened in our school education system in the last three years.  

When my opposite number, the education minister, Jason Clare, was asked about this in question time on Wednesday and Thursday last week, his response was to praise Singapore and the United Kingdom.

Let’s just take a moment to reflect on this.

The Australian Minister for Education, asked about the results of Australian School Students, chose instead to speak about two other countries.

His choice in the answer to that question tells you everything you need to know about the overall trajectory.

If there were good things to say he would have said them. But the truth is grim.

And the long-term picture is even worse.

In the year 2000, the first year for which we have scores – before the national curriculum and before David Gonski’s needs-based funding – our reading score in PISA was 528. What we’ve seen is a 37 point decline since the year 2000.

In 2003 in maths – again, the first year for which we have scores, and also before the national curriculum and the Gonski reforms – our raw score was 524. That is a decline of 46 points.

Now sometimes these points can be a little bit abstract.

So let me read from the OECD’s own publication which explains the relationships between the points and the years of learning the time spent in schooling.

This is what the paper that sets out the PISA results said:

Finally, [this paper] reports estimates suggesting that students around age 15 typically gain about 20 score points over one year of schooling, i.e. this number of points could be considered to be equivalent to one school year of learning.

So 20 points is basically a year of learning.

There are variations between countries, and you need to have a degree of caution about applying it mechanistically.

But as a broad indicator, what Australia’s results means is that in the last 3 years, our students have fallen behind by around 4 months in reading and 6 months in maths.

Extraordinary, and in the last quarter of a century, we have gone backwards by around two years.

This is a big wake-up call for our country.

PISA v NAPLAN

What happens when you compare PISA with the NAPLAN data?

Well there’s a really important point that emerges.

In 2008, the first year of testing for NAPLAN, the mean score for year 9 reading was 582.2 points. This year it’s much lower, 573.9 points.

In 2008, the mean score for year 9 reading was 578 points. This year it was 562.2 points.

Around one third of Australian students now fall into the ‘developing’ or ‘needs additional support’ categories in NAPLAN testing.

Now you have to apply some caution with NAPLAN because there is a break in the dataset between 2022 and 2023, after Labor came to office. So again we can’t just simply do a subtraction of post-2022 scores from the earlier ones.

What does NAPLAN testing show us?

Well, if you account for that break between 2008 and 2022, the NAPLAN data for year 9 maths and reading – the results that are most directly comparable to what is measured by PISA – are relatively flat.

So, NAPLAN is flat, PISA is declining.

So too the data from 2023 onwards.

In fact, ACARA explicitly says that the NAPLAN results from 2008 to 2022 were effectively unchanged, and the changes we have seen since 2023 as, quote, “negligible”.

So PISA says we’re backsliding.

And NAPLAN says we’re just not improving.

Neither is a good story.

But the stories are different – and this is the key message for you today.

Because NAPLAN and PISA measure different things.

NAPLAN is expressly linked to the Australian curriculum. It is designed to measure the literacy and numeracy that our children learn through the Australian curriculum.

PISA is not linked to our curriculum.

It tests whether students can take what they have learned and apply it in unfamiliar, often real-world scenarios.

So what does this mean?

What conclusion can we then draw when, on the one hand, testing shows that student performance against the national curriculum is flat, but that testing of those very same students against other nations and in real world terms shows you that they are effectively backsliding?

What does it tell you if the curriculum says you’re going fine, and the real-world testing says you’re going backwards.

It tells you that the curriculum is part of the problem.

The evidence is in, the curriculum is part of the problem

PISA shows us that, year on year, our 15-year olds are slowly sliding backwards in their ability to apply maths and reading in real-world situations.

And NAPLAN shows us that our performance against the curriculum is flat.

This isn’t me.

It’s just the evidence.

The evidence is grim.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Behaviour and discipline

The PISA results show that Australian students are more likely to experience bullying or cyber-bullying than their OECD peers.

They experience much higher rates of noise and disorder in the classrooms.

How can you learn if you’re in a noisy, disorderly classroom?

Under the heading ‘truancy’, the country report for Australia says this:

In 2025, around 44% of students in Australia reported having skipped at least one day of school in the two weeks prior to the test (OECD average: 22%)

That is double the OECD average.

In science, 21% of students say their classes are so disrupted that the cannot work in most or all of their classes.

That is extraordinary.

How are we going to create the engineers that will build the Australia of the future if we can’t effectively teach science?

How will we develop the innovations and breakthroughs that solve problems, save lives and drive productivity if our kids don’t learn science?

We owe it to Australia’s kids to do better.

Boys’ education

Let me turn then to another of the serious issues that is confronting our education system.

Because it is time for us, as a country, to have a discussion about boys’ education.

It is a point I have been articulating ever since I was appointed Shadow Minister for education, last October.

This is not a zero-sum game.

In the last thirty years we have made extraordinary strides in the education of women and girls.

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

By 2025, 37% of women between the ages of 15 and 74 had a degree at bachelor’s level or higher, compared with 30% of men.

And if you drill down into the 25-34 age bracket it is 53.3% of women who have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 40% of men.

It is fair to say now that, based on our national data, 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.

I want both boys and girls to succeed in their education – and can I say that I have a personal stake in this as I have both a son and a daughter in the education system right now!

But as I said, it is not a zero-sum game – and the data we are seeing on boys’ education is clear and it is compelling.

The data today shows that while girls are still behind in numeracy, there are warning signs for boys in all the literacy domains, in engagement, and in retention—and that these gaps flow through into higher learning.

Boys do better on numeracy, but continue to trail girls across the board on all the NAPLAN literacy assessments—reading, writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation—and this trend also shows up in PISA.

In PISA 2025, boys were ahead of girls by 17 points in mathematics, but behind by 32 points in reading.

In NAPLAN 2026, Year 9 girls’ mean writing score was 591 for girls compared with 553 for boys, a gap of 38 points; in numeracy it was 582 for boys and 566 for girls.

Remember 20 points is a year’s worth of learning.

This means that, as with PISA, boys are ahead by about 16 points in maths but behind by 38 points in writing.

That means that, in writing, our year 9 boys are somewhere between one and two years behind the girls.

Importantly, the NAPLAN data t shows the gap in numeracy is relatively stable as children progress from year 3 to year 9, but in the literacy domains it grows. 

In other words, in literacy, our boys start behind and then they fall even further behind.

And there is evidence that NAPLAN statistics may in fact be underestimating the gender gap.

A report last year on boys education called Echoes of Disparity by NSW Catholic schools pointed out that, and I quote:

Boys are 94% more likely than girls to be exempted from participating in NAPLAN, and 76% more likely to be withdrawn.

Assessment rates are lower for boys than for girls in all twenty NAPLAN assessments, including the Numeracy tests. Overall, boys are 27% more likely than girls to be non-assessed.

Let that sink in for a second. We’re saying the Catholic schools are saying boys are less likely to be there at the assessment for the NAPLAN tests.

If these non-assessed students are likely to score lower than average, which is a reasonable assumption, then the higher non-assessment rate for boys is artificially narrowing the gender gap in available statistics.

What they’re saying is effectively, the gap in performance for boys is probably even worse than the statistics are telling us.

There is no real question that this flows through to our higher education sector.

In NSW, there is now an 11-point gap between boys and girls going on to higher education in NSW.

And there’s a disturbing pattern when you look at the longitudinal data at a national level.

In 2015, 168,000 young men enrolled in higher education.

By 2024, the most recent year for which we have data, that number had fallen to 158,000.

The numbers of young men progressing from school to higher education fell by 10,000 – even though Australia’s population increased by approximately 3.4 million over the same period.

There is a gap in university completions that is pronounced and growing.

According to ABS data about undergraduate domestic students, in 2020 there were 28,000 more young women than men who completed their degree.

By 2024—again, the most recent year for which we have data—that gap had expanded to 35,343.

In other words, in 4 years the gap in female to male undergraduate completions blew out by a massive 26%.

And if you want to talk proportions rather than raw numbers, the same trend emerges.

Compared with their female counterparts, male completion ratios dropped significantly over those 4 years.

What this is showing us is not only that men are less likely to commence higher education than they were 10 years ago, they’re also much more likely to drop out, and the rate at which they drop out compared to women is increasing.

The downward trend around boys’ educational performance shows up in other markers, too.

School retention rates now sit at 77.6% for boys, compared with 85.3% for girls—a gap of 8 percentage points.

That’s a big difference. That is thousands of young lives.

And as the Echoes of Disparity report pointed out last year, referring to the 2022 PISA results, boys are significantly more likely than girls to be disengaged from school, get lower marks and repeat grades.

In their words, the over-representation of boys among the most academically vulnerable school students is, quote, “driving negative outcomes for young men in higher educational attainment, employment participation, and other stages of life”.

And that’s why very soon after I became the Shadow Minister, I wrote to Jason Clare and asked him to set up an inquiry into Boys’ education and to his credit he did – it is called the House of Representatives inquiry into “educational attainment”.

And if you haven’t got involved in that inquiry and made submissions and sought to appear before it, let me encourage you to do so.

And I hope that inquiry gives us the clear answers we are looking for.

Because it is clear to me that no serious agenda for student success can overlook the performance of our boys through the education system.

I should pause and apologise for the level of statistics that are in my speech today.

There’s a lot of numbers that probably you won’t take away from this until you read the speech.

But I want to show you how strong the evidence base is for the crisis point that we have reached in our education system and why we need some of the reforms that I’ll go on to explain.

What explains the trend

Now, looking at these trends, what becomes apparent very quickly is that most of the explanations that are peddled don’t withstand scrutiny.

For the past 15 years or more, we have been told a story that educational success and attainment are a function of two things: school funding and socio-economic status.

Those claims, no longer stack up – if indeed they ever did.

School funding has increased consistently.

Between 2014 and 2022, total funding paid by the Commonwealth to support Australian schools rose every single year and increased by 86 percent over the period, with the government school component of that funding more than doubling.

In calendar year 2026, recurrent funding is estimated to be $33.3 billion, and the budget forward estimates show year-on-year increases in funding to schools out to 2029-30.

In other words, school funding paid by the Commonwealth has increased every single year since 2013, well above inflation, but our performance is worse than ever.

The other claim that is made is that the variation in results is accounted for by socio-economic status.

The evidence just doesn’t bear that out.

As the OECD explicitly stated in its 2025 PISA results, socio-economic status accounted for just 9% of the variation in science performance in PISA 2025 in Australia.

And, in particular, the sharpest decline in PISA results between 2022 and 2025 actually came from the most socio-economically advantaged students. That’s the key thing.

The 10-year trend in PISA results is similar. Australia’s advantaged students declined in science while disadvantaged students remained stable.

This year’s PISA report for Australia says, and I quote:

…a one-unit increase in the curiosity index is associated with a difference of 26 score points in science performance…

… students who perceive greater value in school and disagree that it is a waste of time tend to achieve higher scores in science (by 44 score points)…

And the data also shows that students who believe that intelligence can be cultivated through work, through effort and through feedback—in other words, those who have a growth mindset—score 47 points higher against an OECD average of 28 points, after accounting for students’ and schools’ socio-economic profile.

In other words, non-SES factors are hugely important predictors of academic performance.

And there is a raft of other data going back years, showing the same trend.

The Australian Education Research Organisation, AERO, in their research summary looking at NAPLAN data between 2013 and 2019 made clear that between years 7 and 9, between 60 and 70 per cent of numeracy variance and 63 to 66% of literacy variance occurs between students within schools, rather than between schools.

In other words, most achievement variation isn’t simply attributable to which school or social context a student is in.

In 2017, the Melbourne Institute published a paper analysing the “Trends in Mathematics and Science Study” or TIMSS as its known. They showed that approaching 10% of the variation in high school student achievement is explained by teacher effects in Australia.

In other words, a good teacher is at least as important, if not more important, than the background you come from.

In 2014, the NSW Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation published research showing that prior NAPLAN achievement was the strongest predictor of later achievement. Once it was accounted for, the additional effects of parental, socio-economic background and other individual contextual variables were described as being “relatively small”.

All of this just backs up common sense.

We all instinctively recognise that a child from a poor background will do well if they have a good teacher, an orderly classroom and a curriculum that is fit for purpose.

We also know that well-off children will struggle to succeed if their classroom is disrupted, the teaching methods are ineffective, and the curriculum is vague or poorly sequenced.

The evidence is clear that school funding makes a difference up to a point but will not lead to the turnaround in results that Australia needs to see.

It is time to move beyond arguments about school funding and socioeconomic status in national schools policy.

The Coalition’s policy to restore excellence in Australian schools

So, what have I said so far. The data is clear.

• Our school educational performance is at its lowest level ever, even though funding is at record levels.
• The curriculum is part of the problem.
• Our discipline and classroom behaviour standards are holding learners back and creating risks to teacher safety and wellbeing.
• Our boys are falling behind and are disengaged.
• And we’re fighting a battle against screens – which I’ll come back to.

But there is a way forward.

The situation calls for a comprehensive national schools’ education policy.

A policy grounded in evidence, with the best interests of children at its heart, underpinned by clear and mutually supporting lines of effort.

That is why today at this conference I am proud to announce the Coalition’s policy to restore excellence in Australian schools.

Our policy is a policy that is unashamedly framed around excellence.

We want to restore excellence in school education and we want that to be the centrepiece of our discussions about school education policy all the way through to the next election—and beyond if we should form government.

The Coalition’s policy to restore excellence in Australian schools will be based on five key pillars.

Let me outline our conceptual framework.

The first pillar centres on curriculum, standards and assessment.

This pillar focuses on improving the academic performance of school students and, importantly, returning time to principals and teachers. This is an issue that Kevin Donnelly has championed for years.

It also means supporting national identity and social cohesion by restoring pride in Australia, its history and its place in the world. That includes our Western traditions.

The second pillar of our policy to restore excellence to Australian schools is teacher workforce and school leadership.

This means a focus on having more teachers, with deeper subject-matter knowledge, teaching within their area of expertise.

The third pillar of our policy on schooling excellence is about discipline in the school environment. This means that ensuring that classrooms are less disrupted, and that schools are safe for students and staff. 

The fourth pillar is about effective teaching methods and education architecture. This is about embedding explicit instruction, cutting screen time, reducing the education bureaucracy, and ensuring that both boys and girls are set up to succeed.

The fifth pillar is about school choice and the costs of education. This means supporting parents to choose the schools that are right for their families and recognising cost and funding pressures as appropriate. 

These five pillars will guide the our school education policy through to the next election.

We will have more to say.

We will have more to say because there is a lot to do.

The ‘downpayments’ on our policy platform

The down payments on our policy platform is what I want to talk to you a little about today. I want give an initial set of commitments about how the Coalition plans to restore excellence in schooling.

First, we will do root and branch reform of the national curriculum.

The evidence is clear that the curriculum is part of the problem.

I have been the Shadow Minister for education for almost a year now.

In that time, I’ve spoken to teachers. I’ve spoken to principals. I’ve spoken to parents and students.

I’ve visited Catholic independent and government schools.

I’ve seen single-sex schools and co-ed schools, primary and secondary combined schools and special education schools, schools in the city and schools in remote areas where conditions are extremely hard.

I’ve been to majority Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander schools.

I am yet to encounter a single person who sings the praises of our curriculum.

Almost to a person, and that’s obviously a view that is widely held in this room too.

Almost to a person, I am told it has the unique distinction of being both vague and overcrowded.

That the content is not clearly sequenced.

That it doesn’t build the foundational knowledge, layer upon layer, in a carefully planned way.

That you can’t pick it up and teach the teaching points.

That in fact you can’t pick it up at all.

It’s in an online form and is not even downloadable in a single document. If you print it out, depending on the font size, you’ll get some 3,000 pages. But what you won’t get is a teaching plan.

A year ago, in response to the declining scores in Maths, Jason Clare was saying our curriculum needed keyhole surgery, and that was the reason for the K-2 review of the maths curriculum.

And then this year, in response to PISA, he stretched that keyhole just a little bit more and it is now a review of K-6 maths.

Well we don’t need keyhole surgery.

We need open heart surgery.

More importantly, our academic performance shows that we can’t afford to wait until 2032 to have that much broader look at our curriculum.

The whole curriculum must be reduced to make it shorter, to make it clearer and to make it more usable.

We owe our children better.

I’d like to see a curriculum that is precise about what is taught.

I’d like to see a curriculum that is shorter.

I’d like to see a curriculum that aligns with the evidence.

And most importantly of all, I’d like to see a curriculum that gives time back to teachers and principals.

Wholesale reform must aim for a shorter national curriculum that returns time to teachers and principals.

This frees up teachers and principals to focus on effective teaching to have those moments of reflection that Sarah talked to us about.

It also means reducing the burden that we ask the states and territories to take on.

This starts with removing the cross-curricular priorities.

All the evidence points to the need for clear, sequentially structured teaching points that build on layers of knowledge.

How is that consistent with the cross-curricular priorities, which almost by definition just cannot be sequenced in the same way.

The evidence points to the benefit of subject matter expertise among teachers and yet if you’ve got cross-curricular priorities then almost by definition they’re not being taught by people who’ve got subject matter expertise.

I also think it does the subjects themselves a disservice and it does our teachers a disservice.

The three cross-curricular priorities are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Culture, Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia, and sustainability.

As you know I’m the Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians. I want to see our students learn about our Indigenous heritage, just like they learn about our British foundation and multicultural character.

I’m the co-chair of the both the Parliamentary Friends of India and the Parliamentary Friends of China. I understand the importance of Australia’s engagement with Asia.

And I have been on the record about the need for a sensible and balanced approach to sustainability.

All three topics are important, each in their own way.

But that doesn’t mean they should be delivered thematically to our children as cross-curricular priorities.

Teach them as discrete, carefully planned topics that fit properly within geography or history or science classes.

Give them the respect as subjects that they deserve. 

And the same goes for the teachers who are teaching them.

If you’re teaching a maths or science or history class – I’d like you not to have to worry about incorporating those additional bits.

So when we talk about curriculum reform, let’s be very clear in what we’re saying.

Giving time back to teachers and principals.

Being clearer about the expectations at every level.

Building them sensibly over time.

Reducing the dross and the distraction.

And it’s something I don’t think can afford to wait.

Let me say something else about curriculum.

Within the context of our shorter, more precise national curriculum, I want Australian students to specifically learn about what is their birthright as Australians and that is our Western values and culture.

That includes basics like democracy, the rule of law, a fair go, the development of Australia’s system of constitutional monarchy and federation and the incredibly stable system of government that has been the result.

Our Judeo-Christian inheritance, all of which have been part of liberal education policies for the last 30 years and which only now Labor has started to belatedly accept.

But I would also like to see Australian students taught and exposed to the foundations of Western culture.

The classical works of literature and art and music and philosophy that underpin and enrich the ideas that have shaped our country, the very things that you in this room are dedicated to.

In my very first speech as Shadow Education Minister delivered 48 hours after I became Shadow Minister, I said

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

I am on the record repeatedly saying that I want Australian students to learn more about all three great strands of our history – our Indigenous heritage, our British foundation and our multicultural character.

Each of them is important and we should be taking pride in all three.

But a root and branch of reform of our curriculum should also take these things into account and should build a sense of pride in our country.

Let every school have a flag and let every student take pride in the flag, in the history of the flag and the values for which is stands.

On teaching our children about national pride there is much to do.

The second policy commitment which I make today is about streamlining the path to become a teacher. This is a teacher workforce measure and it builds on the work that my predecessor in the portfolio Sarah Henderson did in our last term of parliament.

The Coalition will support a return to one-year teacher accreditation, making it much easier for mid-career professionals to become teachers by reducing the cost and time disincentive.

Until the early 2010s, teachers in Australia were generally accredited on the basis of one-year teacher training courses. Since that time, teaching in Australia has generally shifted to accreditation to a system of two-year courses, generally at the Masters level.

The two-year requirement has not led to an improvement in performance.

It has, however, created significant barriers to those seeking to join the profession – both initially and for professionals seeking a mid-career change.

In 2023, the NSW Productivity Commission released data showing that the shift to the longer qualification led to 9,000 teachers not entering the profession between 2015 and 2022.

We lost out on 9,000 teachers in this state alone because of this silly two-year qualification.

This was due to the additional time and expense associated with longer initial teacher education.

In NSW alone, the two-year requirement imposed $3 billion in net costs on the community.

In terms of its impact on teachers specifically, it has collectively left them $1 billion worse off over that 2015 to 2022 period.

The numbers will be even higher today.

The Commission estimated that teacher shortages and out-of-field teaching as a result of the lost teachers had cost NSW school students $2.1 billion in lifetime earnings.

That is an extraordinary cost for no gain.

Let me say this: One of the things I really enjoyed in the years before being a Member of Parliament was sitting on the board of Teach for Australia.

I have seen the difference that motivated mid-career professionals bring when they come into teaching. They are amazing.

And there is room for creative options too.

We will also explore new pathways.

The other day I spoke to a number of journalists about discipline in schools in the wake of PISA, and about options.

And one of the options I floated, and which I would appreciate the community’s feedback, indeed the feedback of people in this room, is the option of supporting our defence veterans into the teaching profession as part of their post service career.

I have never put on the uniform, but I have enormous respect for those who have.

And when I think about the need for better classroom behaviour and more discipline in our classrooms, about the need for more support for Australian values, it seems to make sense.

The Australian Defence Force is one of the very few organisations in our country which has no problem with discipline.

Almost every junior non-commissioned officer teaches other personnel as a core part of their service in the Defence Force.

And when it comes to encouraging them into classrooms, it means our children get to see and learn from people who have lived the service ethos, the best values of our country.

They are role models for good behaviour, and they keep our communities and country strong.

And for the veterans themselves, we can do more for them. Teaching, I believe, could be a great option for post-service career pathways

So, I’m calling for community feedback on proposals like that.

The third policy commitment that I announce today is a commitment to set behaviour expectations in schools and back principals and teachers to enforce them.

The Centre for Independent Studies’ Classrooms in Crisis report, released earlier this month, showed that roughly nine minutes in a typical 30-minute lesson were lost to disruption.

I mean, is there any wonder that the scores are the way they are when a third of the lesson is lost to disruption.

Forty per cent of teachers reported interruptions in most or all lessons, and 10 per cent said behaviour had greatly affected their health and wellbeing in the preceding week.

And I’ve already spoken about the PISA results.

But other data show that student behaviour has become a safety and wellbeing issue for teachers.

It’s hard to imagine. We don’t associate the ACT as being a place with violence, but WorkSafe has issued prohibition and improvement notices to schools based on student violence and assaults.

Work from Monash University and Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) shows that female teachers are frequently exposed to completely unacceptable student behaviour based solely on their gender.

Behaviour is a learning issue.

Behaviour is a safety and wellbeing issue.

But behaviour is not the responsibility of teachers alone.

Education is a contract between teachers, parents, schools and students.

The Coalition will support every school in Australia to develop a clear statement of behavioural expectations for students, and will back teachers and principals in enforcing those standards.

These standards should be designed by school communities to suit that community, and to reinforce the basics of effective teaching, such setting baseline expectations, predictable routines and structured lessons that support effective learning.

This is in the interests of teachers, schools and parents – but most of all it is in the interests of students who otherwise stand to lose out due to disrupted classrooms.

The fourth policy commitment that I make today is about drastically reducing screen time and AI use in schools.

And I know that will be something that is well received in this room.

I’m reminded of the debate we had eight years ago about mobile phones in schools.

I remember when my friend and colleague Dan Tehan was the Minister for Education and he called for a mobile phone ban in schools in 2018. He called it a no-brainer as a way to reduce distractions, improve learning and address bullying.

But Dan was mocked at the time.

State Education Ministers resisted the proposal just like they resisted Christopher Pyne’s proposal to mandate phonics a few years earlier. And haven’t we seen the fruit of those decisions.

The Australian Education Union said that smartphones should not be unfairly targeted and it was, quote, “much more productive to actually teach students how to use them”.

The head of the NSW Secondary Principals’ Council, said it was a, quote, “complete red herring” that it was, quote, “similar to banning cars to stop people from speeding”.

Dan was opposed by ACT Labor Education Minister Yvette Berry, who argued that instead of removing them from schools we should instead teach students “how to live alongside devices appropriately”.

Dan was opposed by Northern Territory Labor Education Minister Selena Uibo, who said an outright ban “fails to take into account the many ways in which [mobile phones] can enhance learning”.

He was also opposed by Queensland Labor Education Minister, Grace, who did not want to see a uniform ban.

Dan was right. We knew it at the time, and history’s proved him right.

The ban on mobile phones has now been a celebrated part of our national education policy across all jurisdictions for a year.

And there is a lesson in that.

So let me come back to screens.

I have been strong on this issue since my very first day in the portfolio.

Within 24 hours of being appointed as Shadow Minister for Education, in my very first interview, I spoke about the neuro and cognitive science about learning and the damaging impacts of screens.

I called for screen time in schools to be reduced across the board.

I received some pushback for that at the time. About the digital divide.

Well, that may be a real thing but as Shadow Minister for Education I’m more concerned about the learning divide.

Now I’m not an ideologue about this. I’m a pragmatist.

I recognise that there are cases where screens can enhance learning – in remote learning, for instance, or where there’s a student with disability and the screen helps to close the gap.

But I do not accept that screens should be the default – particularly in primary schools.

On Thursday this week I spoke with neuroscientist Dr Jared Cooney Horvath, who some of you may have read about and some of you may have read his work. And he’s been incredibly strong on how screen time hurts kids cognitive development.

And earlier in the week, my office was speaking with Dr Mark Williams OAM, who is an honorary professor of cognitive neuroscience and Macquarie University, and Dany Elachi of the Heads Up Alliance. And myself speaking with Jessica Mendoza-Roth from Wait Mate.

The evidence about the adverse impact of screens is broad, and it is compelling. It has been linked to:

• changes to the brain itself in terms of white matter and cortical structure;
• the “screen inferiority effect” on reading comprehension
• negative outcomes across all cognitive domains;
• lower working memory performance (regardless of external distraction); and
• poor classroom behaviour.

The evidence is clear. As we saw reported in the media earlier in the week, there is at least some work being done on potential links to ADHD.

Too many students spend their school day in front of a screen, and then come home and spend time in front of a screen again.

Our schools policy should aim to carve out spaces where children are free to be children – with flow-on benefits not just for education, but for families.

Restricting screen use is an important part of restoring excellence to our schooling system.

It is not the whole answer—but must be a key part of the discussion.

New South Wales and Victoria have recently moved to restrict individual screen time in classrooms.

I say: that’s a good start.

Let’s see other changes being rolled out across the board around our country.

Let us have a national standard on screen use in schools.  

And don’t let the current NSW standard – or indeed the Victorian one – become an anchor as the evidence develops.

So if we need to cut harder, we should cut harder.

Under the Coalition’s approach, screen use by school children nationally would be intentional.

It would need to be justified on the basis of need, especially for primary school children.

The intent of this policy is to protect children’s attention-span to sustain handwriting, reading, discussion and teacher-led instruction.

It would also remove routine device use where there is no clear learning purpose.

Let me explain.

Under our approach, the starting point must be that, if screens are used, their use must be specifically justified.

For example, when it comes to basics like reading, writing and maths, what is the learning outcome that requires a primary school student specifically to use a screen?

And that approach applies across the board.

Take year 9 maths, for instance. The mathematical concepts taught in year 9 haven’t changed in the last 25 years.

In the year 2000, year 9 kids did not have individual devices.

But they grasped those concepts better than children do today, according to the PISA data.

The point is clear.

If we are going to use screens, there should be a specific outcome in mind.

That is what I mean about intentional use, about screens not being the default—and about that being the standard that applies nationally.

The same goes for AI use by students.

What is the use case for it?

There is mounting evidence that AI use by students has come to be associated with adverse outcomes in terms of long-term learning and critical thinking.

While there may be cases where AI use might be justified it should not, as a rule, be incorporated into classroom work.

The fifth policy commitment that I give today is about lifting boys’ education while keep strong outcomes for girls.

I have already spoken at length about the issue.

About the compelling evidence.

About how girls are behind in numeracy, but in literacy, engagement and outcomes, our boys are not doing well.

There’s an inquiry going on, as I said, in the House of Representatives, and it’s yet to report.

And this is an important discussion to have in the community, in a sober, serious way and evidence based way.

So I will have more to say in this space in due course.

But let me be clear: the Coalition will make addressing these differences in educational outcomes a priority.

We will lift outcomes for our boys and maintain or improve outcomes for girls, so that both are set up to succeed.

The final policy commitment I make today is the Coalition’s School Funding Guarantee.

The Federal Coalition will honour the levels of school funding in existing bilateral agreements with states and territories.

These funding levels have been set in intergovernmental agreements that in most cases extend to 2034.

I want to call this the Coalition’s School Funding Guarantee.

The agreements are in place.

Our guarantee means that there is funding certainty for schools, for parents, for students.

It allows the national policy discussion to shift away from funding to quality. 

Instead of how many dollars we are pushing out the door, it’s time for us to have a different discussion about the quality of our teaching, our classroom conditions, and about achievement.

The Coalition’s Schools Funding Guarantee will also assist in neutralising, in advance, the inevitable Labor scare campaigns around school funding.

Now those who pay attention to these things might be asking what about Victoria?

That is because, contrary to statements by the Prime Minister and unlike every other jurisdiction, there is no bilateral intergovernmental agreement currently in place between the Commonwealth and Victoria that increases school funding.

What we have right now is a stopgap agreement which expires in 3 months, and which does not increase school funding.

Now I expect that this will be addressed by an announcement between federal and state Labor in the lead-up to the Victorian election.

The reason why Victoria delayed settling an agreement for increased school funding is for both the Federal and Victorian Labor governments  to explain.

However, pending the announcement of the bilateral agreement between the Commonwealth and Victoria, the Coalition at the Federal level will treat Victoria on the same basis as the other states in terms of its school funding commitments.

We won’t leave them behind.

They are also covered by the guarantee.

We as the Coalition will always take a strong line to ensure that spending on schools is effective and goes where it is needed.

But the guarantee gives certainty.

And let me say one additional point – about choice in education.

Every parent makes choices about their child’s education.

My job is not to tell parents what is the best education for their children. My job is to ensure that whatever choice that family makes, that the choice is a good one.

Labor is only for public schools, but we are for all schools.

We need to stop the class war politics and recognise that school funding is about funding for students, wherever they learn.

So let’s be clear.

The funding wars are over.

We’ve moved beyond that.

The evidence is clear.

It’s time to focus on quality.

It’s time to restore excellence to Australian schools.

Thank you very much.