Speech - Bush Summit, Orange

I’m a kid from western Sydney not the Central West.  

They are very different places.

But when it comes to education they have got more in common that you might think.

I am the first person in my family to finish high school. In fact, I am the first to finish Year 10.

My Mum and Dad never even dreamt of going to university.  

They grew up at a time when most working-class kids in western Sydney didn’t even finish school.

It’s the same story here.  

We are a different country today to the one I grew up in.

When I was born in 1972 only about 18 percent of people finished school. Now it’s about 80.

Only 3 per cent had a uni degree.  Now about one in two people in their 30s do.

That’s nation changing stuff.

But it hasn’t reached into every corner of the country. Not in the same way.

In Vaucluse, around 60 per cent of people have a uni degree.

Where I’m from, in Bankstown, it’s 25 per cent.

And here in Orange it’s more like 20 per cent.

That might be okay in the world that we grew up in, but it won’t be for our kids or our grand kids.

The world is changing. The sort of jobs we do are changing. Fast.

And the fastest growing jobs now require either a TAFE qualification or a uni degree.

50 percent of jobs created today require a uni degree.

90 per cent require a uni degree or a VET qualification.

Just think for a second what that means for places like where I grew up or places like this.

What I think it means, what I know it means, is more kids from the suburbs and from the bush need our help to finish school and go to TAFE or go to uni, and get those jobs.

It’s more than just about making sure our kids get a fair go.

It’s what our economy looks like when our kids are all grown up. How strong it is. What we used to call micro economic reform.

Earlier this year I released a report called the Universities Accord.

It says by the middle of the century we are going to need a workforce where 80 per cent have finished school and gone to TAFE or uni.

The fact is that’s not going to happen by helping more people in Vaucluse.

It’s going to happen here.

Orange has a great university. A great medical school. A great dentistry school, and lots more.

Not every town has that. But the next best thing is a University Hub.

A place where you can do almost any degree at any university close to where you live.

There are 34 at the moment - scattered around the country.

A report out the other day showed people who study at these kinds of hubs are often the first in family to go to uni and nearly all of them stay in their communities after they graduate.

In other words, they work.

That’s why I am doubling them.

I have already announced ten more Regional University Study Hubs to bring university closer to students living in East Arnhem Land, Victor Harbour, Warwick, Chinchilla, Innisfail, King Island, Katanning, The Pilbara, Central Western Queensland and East Gippsland.

I have also allocated more funding for the Hubs in Cowra and Mudgee.

Applications are now open for another 10.

That’s just the start.

A lot of people need a bit of help before they are going to be ready to do a uni degree.

Newcastle Uni does this really well. They have got a free program there that they have now run for 50 years.

It’s like a bridge or bridging course, between school and uni.

One in five people who get a degree at Newcastle do one of these free courses first.

One of those is a young bloke I met a couple of months ago called, Liam Gleeson. As a teenager he struggled with drug addiction. He tried to take his own life. He was saved by paramedics.

Now he wants to be a paramedic.

Repay that debt.

And he’s doing one of these free courses as a springboard into a paramedicine degree.

That’s what these free courses can do. And there is a bill in the Parliament right now to massively expand them.

So there’s a bit happening. But there is a lot more that’s needed.

We need more teachers in the bush.  If you work in a very remote school for four years we will now repay your HECS debt.

We have also brought back Commonwealth Teaching Scholarships.

And today I can announce that almost 30 per cent of Aussies who are receiving them this year are from the bush.

That’s 282 scholarship recipients this year from regional, rural and remote Australia.

They are worth up to 40 grand each, and they come with a requirement that you have to commit to working in a public school for up to four years.

We also need more nurses.  If you’re a nurse practitioner living and working in a rural or remote town for the length of your degree, we will repay your HECS debt.

We also need more doctors. And we have just allocated more medical training places in Broome, Ararat, Rockhampton, Nowra, regional South Australia and regional Tasmania and the Northern Territory.

But none of that is enough on its own.  

We have got to reform every part of the education system.

Think about this.

Right across the country the number of kids finishing high school is going backwards.

In the last seven years it’s dropped from 85 per cent to 79 per cent.

In public schools the drop is even bigger, from 83 per cent to 73.6 per cent.

We have got to turn this around.

Every year we release NAPLAN data that gives us I snap shot of the literacy and numeracy skills of eight year olds. Ten year olds. 12 year olds and 14 year olds.

It always makes the front page.

But what I am about to tell you doesn’t always make the news.

About one in ten kids are in the lowest NAPLAN category. They are the children who are below what we used to call the minimum standard.

But it’s one in three kids from poor families.

It’s one in six in the regions.

And it’s every second kid in the really remote parts of the country.

And most of those kids never catch up. They are part of that increasing number not finishing school.

We have to help them.

And that’s what the agreement I am trying to strike with the States at the moment is about.

Fixing the funding of public schools and tying it to practical reforms.

Things like phonics checks and numeracy checks in Year 1 to identify children who are already behind and need help.

And evidence-based teaching and catch-up tutoring to help them catch up.

All up, I have put $16 billion of additional investment for public schools on the table.

But it is not a blank cheque. It’s tied to things like this.

But reform also doesn’t start there. We also need to go back further and reform our early education and care system.

The same story I told you about in higher education and school education is happening here.

It’s children from disadvantaged backgrounds and from the regions and the bush who are most likely to miss out.

It’s why I said Western Sydney and the Central West have a bit in common.

It’s not something we whinge about.

It’s not that sort of issue and we are not that sort of people.

We don’t march in the streets about it.

But we also can’t ignore the fact that we live in a country today where still not everyone is getting the same crack.

But we should be.

And that’s what drives me. Changing that.

I am not naïve. None of this is easy.

But most things worth doing aren’t easy. But we need to get started.