Erica Stanford: Education Minister 'excited' to expand maths tutoring after funding boost in Budget 2025

The Education Minister says she's excited to expand maths tutoring - after a pilot with 3,000 children launched.

About $40 million will go into small-group tutoring in years seven and eight. 

It's part of a $100 million boost in maths funding over four years, announced as part of Budget 2025. 

Erica Stanford says just 20 hours of tutoring is already producing a marked improvement. 

She says it's great for students. 

"They can now be involved in the whole class teaching because they understand the concepts - so it's been massively positive across the board."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good afternoon. The government is putting money into maths, almost
one hundred million dollars over four years to help kids
who are falling behind. Education Minister Erica Stanford is with me, Hey, Erica, Hello, okay,
So what's the money actually for. What's it going to buy?

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Well, there's three things, and it's really closely aligned to
what we do in literacy, but it has never been
done in maths. The first thing is to make sure
that we are doing a light touch, low stakes check
in year two in terms of a skills math skills
check for our very youngest learners to make sure that
they're on track, and when we see that they are not,
we're going to invest fifty six million dollars into what

(00:36):
we call Tier two. But that's just our lingo for
a maths intervention teacher who takes small groups to catch
them up with their learning. We do exactly the same
instructured literacy. Now we're doing it in maths. So that's
the second part, that's all the way up to year six,
identifying those learners as early as we can to catch
them up, make them feel confident. And then the last
thing is we did a trial this year of our

(00:57):
year seven and eights who haven't had the benefit of
all of the resource and the new curriculum and all
the fancy structured maths, and we did a twelve week
trial of intensive four times a week tutoring to catch
them up with their learning. Early findings are really positive.
We're going to roll that out to thirty four thousand
students at startup next year.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah, so this was the pilot that you guys announced earlier.
Is what is it actually found?

Speaker 2 (01:20):
We haven't got the final results back yet, but the
early findings are showing that just after twenty hours worth
of tutoring, we're already seeing that they are accelerating their learning.
We're seeing that they are getting confident, that they love it,
that they want to be there, that the teachers are
saying that it's translating into the classroom where they can

(01:41):
now be involved in the whole class teaching because they
understand the concept. So it's been massively positive across the board.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Do the teachers feel like they were able to teach
it though, because this has been one of the complaints
that teachers don't feel up to teaching the.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Maths, Well, what we're doing is exactly what we did
with structured literacy, be providing kits, and we do the
same for structured literacy in the form of a small
group TEA two kit, and we'll do exactly the same
for mass will provide professional learning and development for those
interventional teachers, same as we do for literacy, and we'll
be providing them with a kit so that they can
sit in front of the students and they have all

(02:16):
of the resource that they need to catch them up
with their learning. That's the quite a bit of the
funding is for these kits and the professional learning and development,
not just the teachers themselves.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Erica, listen, it's weird that you guys made two social
media announcements in one week. Right, did you make the
announcement last Wednesday whenever it was midweek in order to
get ahead of the launch of that charity.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
No. Catherine Weir has been working on that member's bill
for a long time. She's done a really good job
to get our caucus across the line and to get
the bill together. She's been working on it for a
really long time. It just happened that she had it
really had just been through caucus. She was excited to
get it out. She did a whole lot of work
and since then we have had overwhelming feedback, positive feedback
about it, and the government, the Prime Minister feels very

(03:01):
strongly about this and always intended that, you know, we'd
love to take this on as government worker.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Now we are okay, good stuff, Hey, Erica, Thank you
was always appreciated. Erica Stanford, Education Minister. For more from
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