Prime Minister Julia Gillard has spent the day in Perth where she visited an Armadale primary school and announced schools and teachers will be given cash incentives under a rewards program for improvement and quality teaching.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has spent the day in Perth where she visited an Armadale primary school and announced schools and teachers will be given cash incentives under a rewards program for improvement and quality teaching.
The marginal seat of Canning was the backdrop for the announcement, where students and parents were given a run through of the reforms via powerpoint from Ms Gillard, who said she wanted to take a different approach to explaining the measures.
A rewards program would offer $100,000 for secondary schools and $75,000 for primary schools that demonstrate improvement in student learning, benchmarked against an improvement framework.
From 2013 Labor plans to give a 10 per cent salary bonus to the top 10 per cent of teachers.
Ms Gillard said an Australian Baccalaureate would be introduced under Labor to sit alongside existing senior secondary school qualifications and allow Australian subjects to be part of the criteria, in contrast to the International Baccalaureate.
"This would be a prestigious qualification for Australian students," she said.
One youngster asked Ms Gillard if teachers' salaries would rise anyway, prompting a laugh from the prime minister.
She asked the boy, from Challis Primary School, if he wanted to be a teacher.
His reply was: "I'm not sure yet."
"Bonuses for teachers would recognise the importance of good teachers," Ms Gillard said.
The reforms are costed at $482.1 million over the forward estimates period and would be fully offset, consistent with Labor's estimated return to surplus in 2013.
Meanwhile, Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan and shadow treasurer Joe Hockey have faced off on economic management at the National Press Club.
Mr Hockey has attacked the government handouts during the global financial crisis saying it was now evidence money had been wasted on programs like the 'education revolution' and insulation scheme.
"We said $42 billion was way too much money and we were proven right," Mr Hockey said.
"Remember the $900 cheques? 40,000 went either overseas or to dead people.
"I don't know what economies they were stimulating but it wasn't the Australian economy. There was a better way to do it," he said.
But Mr Swan retorted that the government had acted responsibly.
"Without action by your Government to stimulate the economy, Australia would have gone into recession last year," the Treasurer said.
"The economy would have actually gone backwards for three quarters in a row, there would have been 800,000 Australians unemployed today and thousand of businesses would have shut their doors for good."
During the debate Mr Hockey gave an "absolute guarantee" that a coalition government would roll out its $8.8 billion paid parental leave scheme exactly as promised.
"Yes, I give that absolute guarantee," Mr Hockey said when asked if the scheme would be introduced untouched.
"We will roll out the paid parental leave scheme as it stands.
"It is affordable - we have indicated how we'd do it."
