Libs would axe student performance portal

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has suggested axing a Gillard government election promise that allows parents to assess students against tests as part of his party's proposed spending cuts to fund flood reconstruction efforts in Queensland.

Given the National Curriculum and Assessment program, the government pledged to provide an online platform to provide feedback on individual students' performance and how they can improve to schools and parents.

The individual student diagnostics promise followed the original My School launch, which ranked schools and attracted some controversy.

The Opposition yesterday said that the cancellation of the online diagnostic tools program would put an extra $37 million back into the budget. It was one of a number of cuts that would add $2 billion to flood recovery efforts in Queensland. The Coalition said this would prevent the need for the $1.8 billion flood levy proposed by Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

"The Coalition believes that schools are best placed to achieve these objectives which can be met from existing funding arrangements," the Coalition said.

Although the Coalition had proposed cancelling the $37.5 billion National Broadband Network project to pay for the costs of the flood rebuild, it was not listed as one of the savings in the budget. In a press conference yesterday Abbott said the way the NBN was budgeted prevented the Coalition from cutting it this way.

"If the government wasn't blowing $50 billion plus on the National Broadband Network, admittedly most of it off-budget, we would not need to find this money," Abbott said.