Mr BAKER (2:48 PM) —My question is addressed the Minister for Education, Science and Training. Would the minister update the House on the government’s plan to ensure that plain English report cards are delivered in Australian schools, and are there any alternative policies?

Dr NELSON (Minister for Education, Science and Training) —I thank the member for Braddon for his question and his commitment to plain speaking for the people of Braddon. I announced early this year that there would be a national inquiry into reading, and its chairman, Dr Ken Rowe, whom I met earlier this week and who will soon present me with a report, informs me that one in four Australian children will leave the Australian school system unable to read and communicate effectively with fundamental errors in grammar, punctuation and spelling. There are many reasons for that, but one of them is the language-neutered jargonistic report cards that parents have been receiving at home about the school performance of their children. They have left many parents, who might themselves be educationally disadvantaged, in the dark as to how their kids are actually going.

One of the conditions that the Howard government has placed on school funding, in a determination to drive national consistency and lift standards in this regard, is that there will be plain language reporting to parents as a condition of funding to any school that wants to receive Australian government funding. From next year, schools, whatever method they use, will report A, B, C, D or E. In addition to that, the schools will be required to tell parents where their child is going in relation to the rest of the class. I am pleased to inform the House that the states of New South Wales, Western Australia and Tasmania have agreed to that. Also Victoria and South Australia have agreed to A, B, C, D, E and, in addition, they will place a statement on the report that advises parents that they can receive the ranking of their child on request from the school.

The sort of nonsense that we are having to deal with, which the member for Braddon and Bass know only too well, is reflected in what the Tasmanian Department of Education is doing with a thing called ‘Essential Learnings’. In fact, when I discussed ‘Essential Learnings’ with the Tasmanian Minister for Education a few weeks ago I said, ‘Do you mean “subjects”?’ For example, parents are being told whether their child is being literate, and I actually had to say to the minister, ‘Do you mean reading and writing?’ Don Watson, who was a former speech writer for Mr Keating when he was the Prime Minister—he has written a few books about jargon—has described this nonsense:

You cannot consult the community in this language because the community does not speak it. You might as well consult in Swahili. As a typical example, the Tasmanian Department of Education have produced a jargon buster to explain to parents what their jargon means. One of their jargons that they want to put on school reports is called a ‘concept plan’. The jargon buster, in part, says that a concept plan:

What on earth does that mean to the average parent? There would not be a member of this House that would understand that. Hang on, I suspect there is one member of the House who does understand that kind of language because he speaks it every day—the Leader of the Opposition. From next year parents will get plain language reports. They will know exactly how their kids are going and we will lift the standards of education in this country.