Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is certainly refreshing to be part of another school funding debate, something that happens here nearly every month. Those in the gallery will of course be hearing it for the first time, but this is an age-old divide now, isn't it? One side of parliament argues for more money, regardless of outcomes, and the other side is just desperately seeking what works. Let's look for outcomes and quality, and fund success. At the moment we do not have that. What we have in Australia is the third-highest increased school funding system in the world and it is still not showing results. In fact, Australia is going backwards—backwards on TIMSS, PIRLS and PISA. On all the objective models of how we have performed Australia is stable or falling. Extra money did not prevent that from happening three years ago and it continues today.

When this Gonski bus was put together you would have seen all the principals gathering around and asking, 'Which of us are unionised,' and 97 per cent of hands go up. 'Who wants to get rid of Malcolm Turnbull?' and 100 per cent of hands go up. 'Who wants to get a week of school?' and 100 per cent of hands go up. And you can see them all jumping on the bus. What are the inclusion criteria for jumping on the Gonski bus? Let's start with, 'Raise your hand if you have had some extra funding from Gonski,' and all the hands went up. There is a problem here: 24 principals got a seat on the bus and 14 of those principles had their funding go backwards under Gonski—but they are still down here in Canberra—and that is because 82 per cent of school money comes from the state governments.

Let's get a bit of a perspective on what the Commonwealth and state governments do in education. Over the last 10 years we have seen an increase in school funding of 58 per cent from the Commonwealth government, and state government funding, which funds three quarters of it, has gone up by only 18 per cent. That is 58 against 18. Who is doing the heavy lifting? Let's go to state schools, where they are all fully unionised. I tell you that the highest predictor of poor performance in a school is when you see those green Gonski signs on the fence. They are worried about politics but they are not worried about education. The best predictor of a poor-performing school is the Gonski sign on the fence as you walk in. I will talk more about that later.

When we look at state schools, the Commonwealth has increased funding by 72 per cent over the last 10 years. The state governments, in total, have increased funding by just nine per cent. Let's go to South Australia. The minute they signed the Gonski agreement with the Commonwealth for more money, South Australia reduced their state funding to schools by five times what they should have done as an annual increase. When you put a dollar in from Canberra the states are often pulling a dollar out.

Let me talk about the two schools I have some knowledge of. Of the 24 schools on the Gonski bus two of them were Queensland high schools. Let's talk about those two principles: Upper Coomera having a conversation with Loganlea.

Loganlea principal: 'Hi, how are you going, Upper Coomera?'

Upper Coomera: 'Pretty well. We had a NAPLAN sit rate of 93 per cent.'

Loganlea: 'What was the state average?'

Upper Coomera: '96. The Gonski money did not help us much with that.'

Loganlea: 'How was your OP success rate?'

Upper Coomera: 'Well, we had 60 out of 225 kids get an OP. That is 27 per cent of the school.

Loganlea: 'What is the state average for a school of your wealth?'

Upper Coomera: '35 per cent.'

So Upper Coomera is a 75 per cent producer of OPs compared to an equivalent-wealth school in Queensland—hardly the paragon of virtue who should be down here lecturing us on funding, because Upper Coomera's funding went up very slightly from $11,000 per student to $12,000, but they could not up there OP rate or their NAPLAN attendance rate.

Let's go to Loganlea, which came in at 379th out of 406 state high schools in Queensland. This is not a school to be listened to. What they should have done at Loganlea is jump on a bus and go to Bray Park, to Woodridge or to Beenleigh, right next door, and talk to a genuinely over-performing high school. No, Loganlea, you get an E. You are too busy with your principal down here in Canberra jumping on a bus instead of looking at your own game scores, and they are not good. They are a sea of blood. If you look at their NAPLAN 8 to 10 bands they should have 12 per cent of their kids hitting NAPLAN bands 8 to 10. They are on 10 per cent at the moment. They have 80 per cent of their kids sitting NAPLAN. An equivalent-wealth school is getting 87 and the gold standard should be 92. This is a school so busy fighting about Gonski that they cannot even get their kids to sit down and do a NAPLAN test. Let's look at their OPs. How many OP 1 to 5s? Zero! You could just go up to Shailer Park and ask how they get decent scores in a similar demographic. This is a school with only 17 students out of 80 doing a university OP score, when the average for a school of identical wealth is 27 per cent, not 21 per cent. They proudly report that 59 per cent of their kids get an OP of over 1 to 15, but they are so busy stopping kids getting an OP that the reality is that that figure is actually 47 per cent. We need quality schools way before we need to be debating more about Gonski funding. When you see the sign on the side of a bus or on the side of the school that is a school to be very frightened of in school outcomes. (Time expired)

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