The State Opposition has congratulated Queensland school students and pointed to the LNP’s Great Results Guarantee initiative as a contributor to some of the best ever NAPLAN results.

Shadow Education Minister Tim Mander said the positive turnaround is due to the hard work of teachers, principals and students as well as the success of LNP’s Great Results Guarantee initiative.

“The Great Results Guarantee was introduced by the LNP and provided funding directly to schools to improve numeracy and literacy of their students,” Mr Mander.

“It has been successful because it gives schools the autonomy to tailor programs to meet the specific needs of their individual students.

“When in government, the LNP worked very hard to ensure that funding was targeted, so that our kids had a quality education experience.

“Our focus was always on achieving better student outcomes, with an end goal of being one of the best performing jurisdictions by 2020.

“We did this by boosting teacher quality, increasing school autonomy and improving student discipline.”

Mr Mander said the recent budget sparked grave concerns about the future of the Great Results Guarantee under the Palaszczuk Government.

“This money from the Federal Government was given directly to schools with the sole purpose to improve literacy and numeracy outcomes,” he said.

“Worryingly, the Palaszczuk Government’s budget papers didn’t outline how this money was going to be distributed in the future.

“I know for a fact how important this funding has been to lifting student results and I can only hope that Labor won’t use the money to plug a hole in their budget that could have been filled by something else.”