Erica Stanford: Education Minister on the Government's new $131 million education package

Ahead of Budget 2026, there's a promise of $131 million for education - which includes taking on students falling behind.

The pre-Budget funding announcement pledges to give schools more maths and literacy resources and 36 extra maths intervention teachers. 

Education Minister Erica Stanford says educators and principals have already voiced their excitement about the additional funding to her. 

"My focus is on parents and children and raising achievement - and parents can feel confident that no matter where their child is at school, it doesn't matter, it's the same curriculum." 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Together due to see Allen Right to the education announcement,
the governments announced it's going to spend one hundred and
thirty one million dollars on improving students reading, writing, and maths.
It's made the pre budget announcement as part of what
it calls generational reforms and primary and intermediate education. And
the Education Minister Erica Stanford is with us. Erica Hello, Hello.
So is this basically buying teachers and textbooks?

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Not at all. This is phase two of teaching the
basics brilliantly. You will remember the curriculum reform, all of
the structured literacy resources, the million maths books that went
into the hands of young people. This is phase two
of that. We told parents and we told teachers we
would continue to invest every year in more professional learning
and development for teachers and expert teaching practices, more classroom

(00:47):
resources like hands on math kits and tactile resources for
young people. More tutoring programs to catch up. So if
you've got a child in year nine or ten and
they're behind in mathematics, there will be now aasuring program
to help them catch up to where they need to be.
This is all about doubling down on our efforts to
make sure that more young people are at curriculum.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Do you think the teachers are going to thank you
for this, because there is the chance that they look
at this and go, oh, look, it's extra workload. We
have to learn these textbooks, we have to do extra training,
and they already reckon they work too hard.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
I hope that parents and students will thank me. I've
already had messages from Principles have responded to the email,
but I sent out saying, you know, thank you for
the investment. They're really excited about it. But in the end,
my focus is on parents and children and raising achievement.
And parents can feel confident no matter where their child
is at school. It doesn't matter. It's the same curriculum,

(01:44):
the same teaching, expert teaching practices, the same resources, and
the same results. And that's what matters to me.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Listen Erica on another subject, to see there's a headline
that less than half of the five year old's past
new phonics tests after their first year of a full
year of schooling last year. What's that about.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Well, welcome to sunlight on our problem. You know this
would have been in the shadows before, but now we
know the scale of the problem, which is why I
put forward today I'll read to succeed Reading action plan
to invest more in this area. And isn't it great
that we're all talking about are the execution kids to read?

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Are these the kids who have done the phonics lessons
that they're supposed to be doing or haven't.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
That some of them will have depending on when they
started they they may have had some of their education
doing phonics and some not. It just depends on when
they started school. But this is our baseline, heither, this
is the baseline. This is where we're at now. We've
just got a push to go further and harder.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Brilliant. Hey, thank you very much, Eric, I appreciated Erica Stanford,
Education Minister. For more from Heather Duplassy Allen Drive, listen
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