Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

The Schools Assistance Bill 2008 is the primary funding instrument for non-government primary and secondary education in Australia for the 2009 to 2012 period, appropriating $28 billion for that purpose. The Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 is a complementary piece of legislation focused on simplifying the legislative arrangements for Commonwealth funding of schools with a high proportion of Indigenous students. It appropriates more than $640.5 million for non-Abstudy payments and anticipates Abstudy payments of an estimated $102.1 million, an amount that will be adjusted as per demand.

The coalition is committed to improving educational outcomes for Indigenous Australians and will be supporting the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. The coalition is committed to ensuring that the non-government sector remains a real option for parents who wish to make the sacrifices necessary to exercise choice in relation to their children’s education. The Schools Assistance Bill is the vehicle through which the government says that they are fulfilling their election commitment to continue the previous government’s funding level for non-government schools.

One thing we are learning about the Kevin07 new Labor government is that the key is to note what they do, not what they say. The Prime Minister spent much of 2007 reinventing himself as a new style of Labor leader, a faux economic conservative, a supposed safe pair of hands. The rhetoric has continued into government, but now we have the opportunity to judge the quality of their conduct in government. We find that the rhetoric only rarely matches the reality. Unfortunately, the Schools Assistance Bill is one such example.

We have heard that Labor is no longer the party of class warfare and the politics of envy. They claim that the Latham-Gillard resource index and the hated private schools hit list of 2004 have been consigned to history. At the last election we saw a pledge of support to continue the SES funding model for non-government schools. The SES or socioeconomic status funding model is, of course, the fairest method yet suggested for providing government support to school students. The model incorporates census data of the average socioeconomic status, based on occupation, education and income, of the census collector districts of the parents of students at a school. In this way the school is given an SES score. Schools are then funded per student at a level commensurate to that score.

Many parents from struggling working families make significant sacrifices to be able to send their children to schools that reflect the values they hold or specialise in programs in which their children excel. The SES model reflects government’s appropriate role in enabling those parents to make the choices that are best for their family and best for their child.

The SES model replaced the discredited education resource index or ERI. The ERI model was not concerned with fairness according to what parents were able to afford. Rather, it was open to political manipulation and arbitrary judgement of the wealth of the school. Meanwhile, schools could achieve more or less advantageous ERI ratings, depending on their familiarity with the calculations involved. In its later years it was found that the schools were increasingly using the services of financial advisers or accounting firms with ERI specialists so they could maximise their government support. During the debate in this House in September 2000, when the SES model was introduced, former Minister Kemp explained the inadequacies of the ERI model using the example of the eight non-government schools in Launceston—which should interest the Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs at the dispatch box. The schools were classed in categories 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11 and 12 under the ERI model, suggesting that the school communities might represent all ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. The truth is those school communities drew students from a very narrow socioeconomic range, which was reflected in their SES scores all rating between 101 and 104, a small band in a much broader index. As then Minister Kemp said, there was ‘very little differentiation in the communities served by these schools which are attracting vastly different rates of funding’.

In the eight years since, the SES model has served us well, so well in the fact that its maintenance became official ALP election policy last year. It is interesting to follow what happens when we observe a party’s political contortions as they adopt a position of political expediency that they do not believe in. So it is with the SES model. When the Prime Minister and the member for Perth announced on 9 October last year that a Rudd Labor government is committed to adopt the existing socioeconomic status funding model for the next funding quadrennium, you can be sure that one member of the Labor frontbench who would have been gnashing her teeth in response was the member for Lalor. It is important to consider what the member for Lalor thinks of the SES funding model as it is now she in her part-time capacity as Minister for Education who has framed this legislation that will implement the election commitment. One might look for evidence of her commitment to the Labor election policy of supporting the SES model in some of the 605 media releases, speeches, released transcripts or contributions in this House that she has made since becoming education minister, but you would have to look very hard. It seems that prior to introducing this bill she has only managed to mention the SES funding model seven times, each time couched in the explanation that it was an election commitment, as if that is the only reason she can bring herself to maintain it. It is usually quickly followed by a reassurance that the whole model will be reviewed in 2010.

The fact is that the Deputy Prime Minister let the cat out of the bag in September 2000 when she described her objections to the introduction of the SES funding model in this place. She said:

The last objection to the SES model is more philosophical, that the model makes no allowance for the amassed resources of any particular school. As we are all aware, over the years many prestige schools have amassed wealth—wealth in terms of buildings and facilities, wealth in terms of the equipment available, wealth in terms of alumni funding raising, trust funds, endowment funds and the like.

…            …            …

… it must follow as a matter of logic that the economic capacity of a school is affected by both its income generation potential—from the current class of parents whose kids are enrolled in the school—and the assets of the school. The SES funding system makes some attempt to measure the income generation potential of the parents of the kids in the school but absolutely no attempt to measure the latter, the assets of the school. This is a gaping flaw …

The fact is that in reading the detail of the Schools Assistance Bill 2008, we find that Labor’s politics of envy, their private schools hit list, has not been abandoned at all. It has just been partially deferred, and partially hidden in the devilish detail of this bill.

There are some serious areas that need redressing before the opposition can give its support to this bill, and I foreshadow that we will be moving substantive amendments in the consideration in detail stage to sections 15, 22 and 24 of the bill. I hope that the government will take these amendments seriously, and by accepting them demonstrate that their election commitments reflected a wholehearted philosophical expression of support for choice in education for Australian parents.

The realist in me fears that the Deputy Prime Minister is all too aware of the implications of the clauses in question, as their implementation could clearly foreshadow an end to fairness in school funding and a return to class struggle and the discredited envy-based funding arrangements of days gone by. First, section 15 of the bill specifies grounds upon which the minister may refuse to authorise or delay a payment to a non-government school. These grounds include: if the school is being wound up—section 15(a)—or is unable to pay its debts—section 15(b). Section 15(c) of the bill provides for new reasons for such refusal or delay in the case that:

(c)

if a law of the Commonwealth or a State requires the body or authority to be audited—the relevant audit:

(i)

is expressed to be qualified; or

(ii)

expresses concern about the financial viability of the 7 body or authority.

The opposition is happy to support this clause to the extent that it requires that an audit confirm the financial viability of the school, but subsection (c)(i) presumes that if an audit statement is qualified, then it necessarily signals that a school’s financial situation is precarious enough to warrant the minister refusing or delaying payment. There may be grounds for an auditor to qualify an audit that do not go to financial viability but instead to a hesitation about a school model, whether a financial hesitation or otherwise. Audits can be qualified for all manner of reasons that have nothing to do with the school’s financial viability—indeed they could be qualified simply on the basis that an auditor was reluctant to completely endorse an educational model used in the school with which they might be unfamiliar. The change would allow the minister to delay or refuse funding in spite of absolute financial viability. This subsection would be procedural gold for a minister who was looking for excuses to suspend funding to a private school, for whatever reason.

Secondly, section 22 of the bill deals with the national curriculum. It mandates that any school receiving funding from the Commonwealth comply with the national curriculum. At this stage we have very little idea what the national curriculum in maths, science and history will look like—all we have are very broad framing documents. For the English curriculum we are yet to even see the framing document, although we know that the gentleman drafting it believes that: ‘Literacy education is not about skill development, not about deep competence.’

There is much to be concerned about in relation to where Labor is taking the national curriculum. The final documents will not be presented until some time in 2009, yet this bill seeks to tie school funding to that curriculum’s acceptance. Even were there no concern about the framing documents of the national curriculum, this clause would still elicit concern. Section 31 of the previous legislation required schools to commit to curriculum related activities, such as statements of learning in five areas—English, mathematics, science, civics and citizenship education, and information and communications technology—but not specific curriculum.

Comparable state legislation demanding adherence to a specified curriculum will usually include a qualifying statement, for example that a school implement the curriculum, or other curricula deemed as broadly equivalent. If this clause is to remain in the legislation, despite the fact that we are still in the dark as to what the new national curriculum being developed by the Deputy Prime Minister’s team of academics will actually look like, then at a very minimum it should include an additional subsection allowing for equivalent curricula to be practised within a school.

This is particularly important to schools using those alternative curricula that are already well accepted and in demand in Australia and have also been deemed appropriate by relevant state bodies, despite the fact that I do not see how they could comply with the national curriculum being proposed. For a start, the national curriculum will cover four discipline areas. It is unclear how prescriptive the curriculum for these four discipline areas will be in terms of content and materials. Schools offering alternative curricula, such as the international baccalaureate or the University of Cambridge international examinations, may face problems because they will be forced to comply with the national curriculum in the four specified areas while continuing to teach other subject areas within their chosen curriculum. Students cannot qualify for an IB diploma without, for example, completing all components of the diploma including IB specified curriculum in the four disciplines covered by the national curriculum.

Similarly, schools offering alternative educational philosophies, such as Steiner or Montessori schools, will face great difficulties in meeting the requirements of this clause. These schools offer specific curricula to meet the particular needs of their student cohort, and to place restrictions on these curricula is to restrict parental choice in making decisions that may be in the best interests of their children. Of particular concern to me is that even individual education programs at special schools could be affected under a strict interpretation of this clause. This clause must be improved to allow for these curricula to continue operating as they currently successfully do, or it should be removed.

Our third serious concern is in relation to section 24(1) of the bill, which reads as follows:

24  Funding agreements—reports on programs and financial operations

(1)  A funding agreement must require the relevant authority for the non-government school, or other non-government body, to ensure that a report (or reports), of a kind (or kinds) required by the Minister, is given to the Minister in relation to each of the following:

(a)

programs of financial assistance provided under this Act, so far as they relate to the relevant authority;

(b)

the financial operations (including the financial viability and funding sources) of:

(i)

in any case—the school or other body; and

(ii)

in the case of an approved school system—the schools (including each particular school) in the system.

In a briefing arranged by the Deputy Prime Minister’s office, I was told that this clause simply followed the form set out in the previous legislation. However, this is not true. ‘Funding sources’, for example, is a new concept in this context and could give the minister substantial new powers to demand information about the internal financial affairs of a school community. This section requires schools to publish information about all of their sources of funding. Such information might specifically include details of scholarship funds, bequests and other sources of funding, including community fundraising activities undertaken by associated bodies such as parents and friends associations. This could include money raised by the dunking machine or the cake table at the community school fete—events many members of this House would have attended over the years. Some data relating to school income is currently collected by government surveys of schools, but it is protected and not published.

This is a key change introduced by the Deputy Prime Minister in this legislation. The data is completely superfluous to the calculations of the socioeconomic status of a school and it is completely superfluous to the requirements of the SES model. Why does this clause exist then? It is because the government’s real plan is to abolish the SES model and revert to an ERI model? Earlier I quoted the Deputy Prime Minister’s philosophical objections to the model. To this we can add the thoughts of the Assistant Treasurer, who spoke about school funding in this place on 1 December 2004. He said:

… the SES index …is a fundamentally flawed index. It replaces the Education Resources Index, which was much more based on the needs of the school and the capacity of the school to reach educational standards.

More recently, last year, the member for Eden-Monaro was reported as referring to the SES as a ‘ridiculous postcode system’ and promised that the Labor Party would ‘get down eventually to a proper needs based approach’. The detail of this bill shows that the member for Eden-Monaro was telling the truth about Labor’s real plans, to punish schools that receive support from their community above and beyond the basic school fees.

This clause exists in order to lay the groundwork to build up a case to radically alter the SES funding system in the next funding period to one where those schools who are the beneficiaries of acts of philanthropy by parents or old scholars are to be penalised through reduced or abolished Commonwealth support. We should be encouraging parents to make contributions to their children’s educations, not penalising the schools when they do. The reference to the new criterion of ‘funding sources’ should be excised from section 24 of this bill.

Some stakeholders have raised other concerns in relation to which we would be satisfied if the minister will commit to providing solution through suitable regulations. The cooperative organisation that is managed in some states for funding for Indigenous student programs could be put under threat by this bill. For example, some 40 independent schools in South Australia, each with a small Indigenous student enrolment, currently use the Association of Independent Schools of South Australia to cluster that funding to deliver support across the sector. Provision should be made in the regulations for the Indigenous education funds included in the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 to be managed by the current approved authority. Section 11(4)(c) indicates:

The State must pay amounts of assistance to the relevant authority of the school … as soon as practicable …

There are currently considerable differences across Australia in the timing of the release of Commonwealth funds from state government to non-government school authorities and schools, even though the funds are released at the same time by the Commonwealth. State governments should be required to distribute the Commonwealth funds within a reasonable time—say, five working days—of receiving the funds. This matter can be clarified in the regulations and in the Commonwealth funding agreements with the states and territories—and again we seek the Deputy Prime Minister’s assurance that this will be taken care of.

Finally, the opposition’s last major concern with the Schools Assistance Bill is with the abolition of the new non-government schools establishment grants. The previous government saw merit in increasing the viability of the non-government sector and encouraging new schools where community demand and private sector interest warranted the same—an aspiration supported through this grants program. I know that in my state, in the electorate of the new member for Mayo, one such example is the Encounter Lutheran Primary School at Victor Harbor, established in 2001. In the years since, the local community has demonstrated its support for the school, with enrolments more than doubling to 250. Parents saw an educational alternative develop in their area that they wanted for their children. Section 100 of this bill puts the final nail in the coffin of Labor’s decision to end these grants, ensuring that success stories like the Encounter school will not be supported in this government’s post-revolution Australia. Rather, the Labor Party seems to prefer the old Hawke government policy, with the astonishingly Orwellian title ‘New Schools’, a policy which ensured that no new schools were able to be established under that government. And you can check that.

Finally, I use this opportunity to foreshadow that, when we have come to the end of the cognate debate on these bills and we have dealt with the second reading of the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008, I will move as a second reading amendment to the Schools Assistance Bill 2008:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: “while not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1)

reaffirms its commitment to providing genuine choice in education opportunities for parents and students through both government and non-government schooling;

(2)

notes that the Government is committed to continuing the Socio Economic Status model of funding for non-government schools until 2012 and that, while this Bill fulfils that commitment, it contains a hidden agenda evidenced by:

(a)

granting greater power to the Minister to delay or end funding to non-government schools because of an audit qualified for non-financial reasons;

(b)

requiring adherence to a national curriculum without flexibility that puts at risk the uniqueness of Steiner, Montessori, International Baccalaureate, University of Cambridge International Examinations and special needs schools;

(c)

forcing non-government schools to comply with a requirement to inform the Minister of every funding source to a school or an associated body that can be published—information which is both superfluous to the operation of the SES model, and is the Trojan Horse from which opponents of the SES model will head a campaign to remove it through the 2010 review; and

(3)

condemns the Government for ceasing funding for new non-government schools establishment grants, and urges the Government to reconsider this Budget decision to ensure that parents, particularly in new communities, across Australia will be able to access choice in their children’s education”.

See this speech in context