By word count, about seven per cent of the Minister for Education, Jason Clare’s speech at the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) annual conference yesterday was devoted to international education, and he didn’t say anything we don’t already know.
The fact that only 150 of the 2270-word speech was devoted to international education is unsurprising, given that the international education sector is currently in limbo pending debate on the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024.
As reported by The Koala (TKN 131124), the Bill has been listed for debate in the Senate during the next Senate session commencing next Monday, 18 November.
Clare repeated the Government’s rhetoric that the ESOS Amendment Bill will “fix” integrity issues and that Ministerial Direction 107 will go once the Bill passes through Parliament. He also made the usual noises about how important the sector is for Australia, making both money and friends; the caveat being that the “primary and most important job our universities do” is to educate domestic students.
In addition to the ESOS Amendment Bill, Clare outlined five other Bills that will be considered by Parliament in the next two weeks, as part of the Government’s reform agenda that will:
- Deliver a 15 per cent pay rise for early educators
- Increase funding for public schools
- Extend the unique student identifiers system to school students
- Implement the first stage of the Universities Accord (incl. paid prac, free enabling courses, HECS debt indexation, a new Australian Tertiary Education Commission and so on)
- Create a National Student Ombudsman
It will be a busy couple of sitting weeks for the Minister, his colleagues and his portfolio.
