Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott launched the Coalition’s education policy at a visit to Penrith Christian School this morning.
Joined by Shadow Minister for Education Christopher Pyne, Liberal candidate for Lindsay Fiona Scott and NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell, Mr Abbott announced the policy promising to improve the nation’s school system.
It was his third visit to the Lindsay electorate since the campaign began.
“I want all schools to be better schools and I want more and more of our schools to be great schools. It doesn’t matter how great you are, you can always be better and the challenge for Government is to work with schools rather than to work against them,” he said.
“In particular, the challenge for Government is not to impose a sterile uniformity on schools, the challenge for Government is to encourage creativity, diversity and excellence and to allow schools and those in them to be their best selves. That is what the policy that I am launching is all about.”
Mr Abbott said that the key to bettering local schools is not about funding, as he promised to match Labor’s plan dollar-for-dollar, it is about improving the quality of education.
“We want to give every school the opportunity to make more of the money that it gets, every school to have more opportunity to be closer to its best self. That means over time, more autonomy for schools, more independent principals, it means improved teaching methodology and better teachers,” he said.
The policy places a large focus on improving the quality of teachers in schools across the country.
“Most importantly we want to focus in this policy on teacher quality because a very good teacher can produce excellent results in any school in Australia but a poor teacher obviously cannot do so. We want to invest in our teachers both in the undergraduate level and then in professional development throughout their teaching career,” Mr Pyne said.
Prior to launching the Liberal Party education policy, Mr Abbott took part in a morning assembly and addressed students before visiting a Kindergarten class.
Here, Mr Abbott was questioned only not by the media or local voters, he was fired a number of questions by the five or six-year-olds in the classroom who were curious to know what the Opposition Leader’s favourite sport is, what he likes about his job and why he “likes visiting schools”.
“It is always good to visit a school because you get the opportunity to see what fantastic young people the next generation of Australians are now. It gives you hope and confidence for the future of our country,” Mr Abbott answered.
