Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

If you are happy to come to Waubra, Member for McEwen, I will introduce you to the parents who came to me saying: ‘When are we going to get some action on this? When will we get the Prime Minister to take notice of what her “wonderful” program is doing to our poor students? Here we are having to contemplate reducing school hours.’ I think that says it all. I have that on the record now. The member for McEwen’s comments about me and the BER have been clarified, so we are all very clear on that. Before I turn to the bill itself, I say that I would also be happy to take the member for McEwen to see four, five or six BER projects in my electorate which are not shining examples of this Prime Minister’s program. Pity help us with future programs if they are going to be rolled out like this one was.

The coalition support the Schools Assistance Amendment (Financial Assistance) Bill 2011, as it extends recurrent funding arrangements until 2013 using the coalition’s socioeconomic status, or SES, funding model. While schools know exactly where they stand with the coalition on school funding, a very serious question mark hangs over the future of school funding under the Gillard Labor government. Nine years ago, the Prime Minister described the SES funding model as flawed and unworkable. The decision to extend the existing SES funding model was made during the election campaign, as the government faced mounting pressure to outline what form the new funding model would take. It was a desperate attempt to avoid a showdown with the non-government school sector. Further evidence of this was seen in the initial refusal of the then education minister, Simon Crean, to guarantee during the election that funding of non-government schools would be maintained in real terms, inclusive of indexation, beyond 2012. Based on published information from the department of education, that indexation and supplementation for all non-government schools over the four-year life of a school funding agreement equates to approximately $1.3 billion. It was only at the eleventh hour in the election campaign that the Prime Minister, after intense pressure from the coalition and the non-government school sector, was forced to guarantee indexation for non-government schools until 2013 by extending the SES funding model for another year.

Schools and school communities do have a right to be concerned about the Prime Minister’s commitment to this funding arrangement because we have seen already this year the commitment made by the Prime Minister that there would never be a carbon tax under a government she leads shamelessly, disturbingly and utterly ignored. There is a real concern that the same will happen when it comes to school funding. On 20 August 2001 the Prime Minister said:

This government, for its funding for private schools, has adopted a flawed index, the so-called SES model, which does not deliver on the basis of need. We know that model is flawed …

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The debate is leaving this government behind: as it is left defending its flawed SES index, we know that there is research, becoming available in Australia to the community that cares about education, which is challenging us to move on in terms of how we define need, and challenging us to realise that in fact using a socioeconomic status may in itself be a flawed idea.

On 4 September 2000 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 fundraising, 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 …

I could go on. There are many examples of Julia Gillard saying she does not like the SES funding model. That is why what is happening with the MySchool website is so disturbing.

We have received packs telling us how wonderful the MySchool website is going to be and how wonderful the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage is as a base tool for the website. We have been told that ICSEA was created by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, ACARA, specifically to enable fair and meaningful comparisons of Australian schools. We have also been given a guide to understanding it. It is a long guide printed on lovely glossy paper. I am sure it would have cost the education department a lot of money to produce this. But in none of this do we get the true facts about ICSEA. A report in the Age last month stated:

PARENTS in the top income-earning occupations are not taken into account by the My School website when it calculates which schools are the most advantaged, prompting allegations it is producing grossly unfair results.

That is very true. The member for Herbert would not believe it, but it is true. The article continued:

They say it has led to bizarre anomalies, such as Douglas Daly Primary, a one-teacher school in remote Northern Territory, which was ranked the most advantaged in the nation according to the index used to calculate parental wealth, education and occupation.

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