Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

How could I, of all people, make such a mistake, Mr Speaker! The Leader of the Opposition and I visited the co-located schools on Monday. These were built in a greenfields community in Adelaide’s north in the 1980s as part of a joint schools project. There was an identified need for a public secondary school in the area and demands for religious schools. Three schools were developed on the one site to meet this demand for choice in schooling, but they were co-located to ensure all of the schools would be able to provide high-quality facilities for their students.

The result was Golden Grove High School, a public comprehensive coeducational secondary school, sharing a campus with Pedare Christian College and Gleeson College, a Catholic school. Each school has its own oval and quadrangle area, but the schools have many shared arrangements such as a recreation and arts centre. The campus shares specialist facilities, including science and computer labs, electronics rooms, music facilities, libraries and trade training workshops. The three campus schools have their own philosophies, identities, buildings and management, but share some specialist buildings and sporting and cultural facilities. The schools work cooperatively in the sharing of facilities, and senior staff members conduct regular meetings to administer their use. As a result of the schools collaborating, they have been able to afford outstanding facilities—far better than the schools could possibly aspire to if they were acting alone.

The collaboration has even extended beyond the campus. The local district’s seven secondary schools have combined to develop a package of vocational education and training courses available to students. Each of the three schools operates the same timetable to enable cross-campus study and there is constant communication concerning the joint use of the shared facilities. Beyond this, though, the separate schools have their own ethos, traditions, rules and manner of operation.

The Golden Grove educational precinct has been successful in raising the profile of public schools, with Golden Grove High School being in high demand. In Golden Grove, all three schools benefit from the joint approach. The Catholic school, Gleeson College, has asserted:

The facilities we share, as a campus, offer students well resourced and equipped learning areas that would be unaffordable as stand alone schools. As a campus we also offer very broad curriculum opportunities for senior students too.

In addition to the educational benefits of the project, the schools have achieved significant efficiencies from sharing facilities at Golden Grove, including a capital saving of $40 million and an annual recurrent saving of $5 million.

Here in the Australian Capital Territory, Holy Spirit Primary School and Gold Creek Primary School have recently become the first schools in the Australian Capital Territory to share facilities. The schools, which the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Rudd, and I visited yesterday, are located together and share facilities including a car park, resource centre, canteen, gymnasium and oval. Both education systems provide funding for equipment and resources for the shared facilities, such as computers and books for the library and gymnastics equipment for the gym. The gym, library and canteen are much larger than would be found in single new schools because both education systems have contributed towards their building costs.

As well as committing to this innovative policy that will encourage government, Catholic and independent schools to work together locally, Labor is currently developing a comprehensive schools infrastructure funding election commitment that will provide funding for the infrastructure needs of Australian schools. Instead of welcoming this positive new policy announcement from Labor and acknowledging that collaboration between public and private, religious and secular schools is a good idea, the minister simply accuses Labor of recycling a 2004 election policy.

Regrettably, the minister is really clutching at straws and simply should have embraced a good idea. Labor’s 2004 election commitment was for so-called education precincts, which dealt with a range of matters, including curriculum, assessment methods, teaching materials and professional development. Yesterday in question time the minister for education criticised Labor’s Local Schools Working Together program. In response, at question time, I asked the minister the following question:

Can the minister tell the House how much money the Howard government has allocated over the past 11 years specifically to enable Catholic, independent and government schools to share school facilities?

In her answer, the minister said:

The Howard government has a number of programs in place that encourage schools to share resources. The Boys’ Education Lighthouse Schools project, the school chaplaincy project and the Investing in Our Schools project are all programs that are designed to ensure that schools can share resources in appropriate circumstances.

Unfortunately for the minister, not one of these programs relate to schools—whether government, Catholic or independent—jointly sharing infrastructure facilities. The Boys’ Education Lighthouse Schools program, for example, is a school based approach to developing and testing the effectiveness of strategies for improving learning outcomes for boys. Under the government’s school chaplaincy program, schools can share a chaplain but not infrastructure facilities. And under the government’s Investing in Our Schools Program, guideline 5.3, Ineligible Project, says:

IOSP funding is not available for projects located at an eligible school, which are for the benefit of an ineligible population of students, including Kindergarten/Pre-school ... and transient student populations ... An example of this would include the building of an environmental centre to be used by students at the applicant school as well as visiting students from other schools and the wider community.

So the assertions made yesterday by the minister in question time were, frankly, a nonsense. The correct answer is that, after 11 years of the Howard government, there is not one program, and not one dollar has been spent, to specifically enable government, independent and Catholic schools to share facilities. The minister would have been better off simply admitting that, rather than bungling yesterday in question time as she did.

In addition to our Local Schools Working Together program, Labor has this year released a range of positive policy proposals on education, including providing universal access to 15 hours a week of high-quality early childhood education for all four-year-olds; encouraging young Australians to study and teach maths and science; and establishing a national curriculum in the core areas of maths, English, science and history, in collaboration with the states and territories.

Earlier this week, Labor also made a commitment about schools funding. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Rudd, and I have made it crystal clear that: we believe a greater investment should be made at all levels of education, including schools and schooling; we will fund all schools on the basis of need and fairness; we will not cut funding to any school; and we will not disturb the current average government school recurrent cost indexation arrangements for schools’ funding.

Which schools parents decide to send their children to is entirely a matter for them. It is their choice. Parents make their decisions on the basis that they want to maximise their child’s potential and give them the best start in life. Often parents make these decisions at considerable personal financial cost, and often that choice is based on a variety of reasons, including religious or personal conviction. A Rudd Labor government will support parental choice. We will do that by funding all schools, whether government, non-government, religious or secular, based on need and fairness. A Rudd Labor government will be concerned about the quality of education rather than engaging in a government versus non-government schools debate. That is, in my view, very much behind us.

Previous attitudes by federal Labor to a so-called hit list in non-government schools were wrong. Our objective is to raise standards in all schools—government and non-government. Funding all schools on the basis of need and fairness will also ensure we do not end up with a two- or three-tier school system. Federal Labor has made it crystal clear, through its continued education revolution policies, that it will make a greater investment in education at every level. This includes schools and schooling.

Labor will not cut funding to any government or non-government schools. We are about supporting schools rather than taking money away from them. We will invest in our schools. As a consequence, no school will be worse off and no school will have its funding cut.

Federal Labor is now working on options for funding schools and on its approach to the next four-year schools’ funding round, the 2009 to 2012 quadrennium cycle. This will be reflected in Labor’s detailed schools funding election commitments. Federal Labor will consult widely with the Catholic and independent education systems, as well as the public sector, on our approach to schools funding generally and on detailed funding issues.

In response to those statements by the Leader of the Opposition and me, I noticed yesterday the minister suggested that that would mean that our commitment to funding all schools would see funding frozen for Catholic and independent schools. That, frankly, is a nonsense. The Leader of the Opposition and I have made it crystal clear that we believe a greater investment should be made at all levels of education, including schools and schooling; that we will fund all schools on the basis of need and fairness; that we will not cut funding to any school; and that we will not disturb the current average government schools recurrent cost indexation arrangement for schools funding. It is not possible for funding to be frozen under that approach. So rather than clutching at straws, the minister should not, as she did again yesterday in question time, continue to embarrass herself on that point.

I am very pleased that Labor’s policy approach to the funding of schools has been warmly welcomed. I note the press release issued by the Executive Director of Schools at the Sydney Catholic Education Office, Brother Kelvin Canavan, who warmly welcomed the announcements. I also note the press release from the Executive Director of the Independent Schools Council of Australia, Mr Bill Daniels, who did likewise. I note also that Mr Stephen O’Doherty, the CEO of Christian Schools Australia, Dr John Roulston, the Executive Director of Independent Schools Queensland, Mr Dick Shearman, the General Secretary of the Independent Education Union, and Mr Ian Dalton, the Executive Director of the Australian Parents Council, all did likewise with media releases on 19 March.

I am very pleased with the response we have seen both to the Local Schools Working Together infrastructure program and also to the general commitments that the Leader of the Opposition and I have made so far as schools funding is concerned. I indicated at the beginning of my remarks that I would move a second reading amendment. I move:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:“whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House welcomes the additional funding for the Investing in our Schools program, it notes that when making the announcement the Minister was silent on the change of criteria for Government schools halfway through the life of the program and condemns the Government for:

(1)

leaving many Government schools ineligible to apply for additional funds by reducing the funding cap from $150,000 to $100,000; and

(2)

failing to guarantee the future of the Investing in our Schools program beyond the current funding round”.

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