After speaking at The Learning Convention today in Melbourne today, the Minister for Education has announced that the Rudd Government will provide an extra $3.2 million to help put the latest teaching resources at the fingertips of all Australian teachers.

The Learning Convention, hosted by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, was held simultaneously across five capital cities and live-streamed online to teachers and school leaders around the country.

The dynamic professional learning event was held to celebrate outstanding teacher practice and provided a platform for collaboration and ongoing professional learning.

The Government’s $3.2 million commitment will make the latest teaching resources and good teaching ideas more easily available to teachers in every school through the national online teaching resource sharing tool called ‘Scootle’.

As the digital age meets the Asian Century, we have to pull out all stops to ensure every Australian kid gets the world-class education they need for the high-skill, high-wage jobs of the future.

That’s why we are developing Australia’s first National Curriculum, that’s why we have a Better Schools Plan that will inject an extra $15 billion into schools, and that’s why we invested more than $2 billion to deliver nearly a million computers into the hands of Australian students.

Today we build on these investments by providing extra funding to ensure that, for example, when a teacher in Broome develops a great lesson to help students understand long division, that lesson can be shared with teachers in every school in Australia.

Education Services Australia (ESA) will use the extra funding to maintain and expand the use of online services developed for Scootle under the $32.4 million Supporting the Australian Curriculum Online (SACOL) program.

ESA will ensure Scootle services are available to all teachers across Australia, provide teachers and students with access to a new Language Learning Space for Mandarin Chinese (and other languages into the future) and provide information and training sessions for teachers on how they can benefit their students by making the best use of the resources on Scootle.

MEDIA CONTACT: Andrew Porter 0419 474 392