Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As the member for Lalor I rise tonight to speak on what I consider to be the most important piece of legislation to come before this parliament: the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017. I say so with no hyperbole. I say so because it is my life's experience of working in the state education system in Victoria as a school teacher, as a principal class officer and as a principal. I stand here tonight as someone who absolutely understands school budgets and who absolutely understands, after 27 years in the state sector, what the Gillard reforms and the Gillard funding model meant for schools across this nation. I stand here to defend that model. I will rise as often as I can to defend that model because this is a once-in-100-years opportunity to deliver the equity that is required to bring the standards up in our schools.

This funding model is about equity. It is about quality. It is about Australia aspiring once again to be in the top five countries by 2025. The Gillard Labor government commissioned a review, and we know that that review determined that there was a Schooling Resource Standard for primary and secondary schools that needed to be reached for that equity to be assured. That was just the platform. That is the base that was determined that each school needed for each student to ensure that they got the support they needed. On top of that come the layers around disadvantage and the increased funding around disadvantage.

I stand here as the member for Lalor, the youngest electorate in the country, with 56 schools across the sectors. Some of those schools are as large as 2,000 or 1,500 students. We have some of the largest primary schools in the state. I know what this government's failure to deliver, reflected in this legislation this evening, means on the ground. I know that in my electorate, where we are educating the children of 70,000 families, if this legislation is passed and the opportunity to put in place needs based sector blind funding is missed, so will those children's futures be missed.

This review of school funding was commissioned to look at schools across the country and determine what was needed—and what was needed was for all schools to meet a student resource standard. We needed all schools to reach that student resource standard, with assistance from the federal government. We needed 27 agreements, because we have eight states. That is eight state sectors. That is eight state Catholic sectors. That is every other grouping of independent schools across this country. There were 27 agreements because there were 27 different sectors that needed come to an agreement with the federal government to ensure that their sectors could reach this student resource standard. That is what we are talking about here. Just to give some insight: when I left education in Victoria to become the member for Lalor, primary schools in Victoria were funded around $6,000 per student and secondary schools around $8,000 per student. The student resource standard that we were talking about in 2014 was $9,271 per primary school student and $12,193 per secondary school student. That was set to go up using the indexation model. We know on this side of the House how we planned to do that. We knew that, in delivering a large amount of funds to bring schools up to that student resource standard, years 5 and 6 were critical. This piece of legislation walks away from sector blind and needs based funding. It will reinstate the Howard model of funding for schools across this country—the Howard model that had the funding wars going on election after election, with sector against sector and school against school. That model did not deliver the equity required in our system for excellence.

These resources are critical for schools to have the aspirations that we need them to have to bring up the standard for children, and this legislation is a real cut. Speaker after speaker has talked about the promise that those opposite made at the 2013 election. The member for Boothby was in here today speaking on this legislation. She may not have known that at the 2013 election corflutes were at the schools in Boothby with that promise written on them—and that promise was seen by every family. What is really important for people here to understand is that this is not just a debate for today; this goes back decades. Under the former Labor government the breakthrough occurred, and we got consensus on what was needed to lift our schools. We got consensus around the fact that the problem in our schools' performance against those international standards was equity. We set in place not just funding reforms but reforms around what we expected of our schools. We know that what is being proposed here is a cut. We have heard speaker after speaker say that it is a cut. The government acknowledges it is a cut in its own paperwork when it says that it is a '$22.3 billion save'. It is not a 'save' if the children of the 70,000 families in my electorate have the transformative power of education taken away from them—and that is what we are debating in this chamber tonight.

We have heard a lot of talk from those opposite about numbers. Just for the record, I think we need to make it clear that the numbers that we on this side of the House are using are the numbers for the next two years and the numbers that those opposite are using are numbers for the next decade. Just take that in for a moment when you think about the cuts that are being proposed to be delivered for the next two years. I want to preface that a little. As I said, this debate goes back for decades. Some of this work goes back a decade. I was working in schools under a Labor federal government when national partnerships agreements hit the ground and funding came through the doors of the school I was working at to look at extended hours, to look at the impact of literacy and numeracy coaching and to study and evaluate the impact that these resources could have on student outcomes in our school. I know that in my electorate where that money flowed to highly disadvantaged schools huge differences have been made in student outcomes; schools are now punching above their weight. But I also know what a long journey that has been for the teaching fraternity across Victoria, and across the country. I know the things that schools are learning because I was in schools and I learnt beside the teachers delivering in those classrooms.

We are analysing student performance and student learning at the micro level. Teachers are working every day to ensure that they know every child's learning capacity and every child's learning level. Teachers are working harder than they have ever worked in a very new way. To make the efficiencies, they need to be collaborative; because to actually be able to monitor, assess and do the diagnostics on every child in every class that you teach takes an extraordinary amount of time. So the efficiencies they are getting are through collaboration.

Years 5 and 6 of this funding model are absolutely critical—to deliver to those teachers who have honed their skills who have found new ways of working. Years 5 and 6 of this funding model are supposed to roll in and give them the resources they need to sustain and continue and refine the things that they are learning. I hate to think what is going to happen to the schools in my electorate that are aiming so high and working so hard if years 5 and 6 do not deliver the resources that they need. We have teachers working incredibly hard. The morale of the teachers across this country will sink—it will fall off a cliff—if this legislation passes this evening, if this government is allowed to implement this fake equity funding model that they are bringing into this chamber tonight.

They want to reintroduce the Howard model to our school system, to all sectors. I note our Prime Minister was on my television screen, saying that he was going to 'end the funding wars'. The funding wars ended when the reform and this funding model were delivered. The funding wars ended when that government stood at polling booths at schools across this country and said: 'Dollar for dollar, we will deliver exactly what Labor has promised.' Yet in here today they stand and read from scripts and say they are going to put in a pittance of what is required, a pittance of what the study and the review found our schools need. It is an absolute pittance.

This is a shameful day. This is an absolute opportunity that everyone agreed was required for Australia to compete. It was required for all Australian children to get the quality education that they deserve, so that we could walk in our country and say, 'Postcode will not determine your future'. That is where this debate started, and tonight those opposite want to wind that debate back.

There have been lists. There has been lots of talk about numbers. We know it is a $22.3 billion cut. I know that in Lalor that is an extraordinary amount of money being pulled out of our schools, because it is $21.5 million across the next two years. There have been lots of figures used tonight by those opposite. But I have a few figures that might shock them. The electorate of Indi is set to lose over $1,800 per student towards reaching that SRS; Mallee, $1,800; Gippsland, $1,600; Wannon, $1,600 per student. The electorate of Murray will lose $1,600 per student; Dunkley $1,344 per student across that electorate. That is the difference we are talking about, and this is for the next two years. In McMillan, the figure is nearly $1,300 per student; Corangamite, $1,200 per student; Deakin, $1,100 per student; Chisholm, $1,044 per student; and Casey, $1,000 per student.

Could those opposite for a moment stop and think about what that means? When the Catholic sector say they may have to double fees, they are the numbers that they are looking at. The Catholic sector still aspires to reach this SRS, and they know what funding is required to reach this excellence. They know how many teachers they need to put into their schools; they know at the school level what is needed. The member for Forde stood here tonight and showed fantastic insight into the schools in his electorate and what they need and the programs they are funding, and yet he is going to vote for a package that is going to rip dollars away from what is already happening in his schools.

There is no doubt in my mind that we stand right now in this chamber at a seminal moment in Australian history. I implore all senators on the crossbenches to support Labor in standing strong with a promise to deliver what we have promised our schoolchildren and their families. When you go to a low fee paying Catholic school, your fee is not covering the cost of running that school—the federal government is kicking in to do that. Catholic schools know what the SRS is, they know what they are aspiring to. This government is breaking a deal. It is breaking a promise that it made with schools across this country. It is asking all of us to accept low expectations, low aspirations and low commitment to education in this country.

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