Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I was talking about the Schooling Resource Standard and the move between the state and the Commonwealth governments to move towards that over time. If the government were genuinely committed to that Schooling Resource Standard, we would still see schools moving towards it, but in my electorate the result is absolutely the opposite.

In the years 2018-19 alone—that is just two years—Arthur Phillip High School will receive $2 million less than it would have; Granville Boys High School, just over $1 million less; Granville Public School, $770,000 less; Hilltop Road Public School, $900,000 less; Parramatta Public School, $1.1 million less; Westmead Public School, $1.5 million less; and Carlingford West Public School, $998 million less. That is over just those two years alone. In fact, the result of the government's cuts will mean that, by 2027, 85 per cent of public schools still will not reach the Schooling Resource Standard—85 per cent, in 2027. Eighty per cent of the children in school now will have graduated by then, and we still will not have met the Schooling Resource Standard which was absolutely in place.

I have used figures from the public education system there, but the Catholic system is also going to be hit quite hard. The Reverend Anthony Fisher, who is the Archbishop of Sydney, said in TheAustralian Financial Review on 8 May:

What's already apparent is that the government's new "capacity to pay formula" will force fee rises of over $1000 for a very significant number—at least 78—of the Catholic primary schools in Sydney alone. For some areas of Sydney fees could more than double.

Catholic schools also say that they are set to have lower funding allocations in 2018 than they have in 2017. I know that my local Catholic Education Office was extremely concerned that there had not been consultation by the government on this. As I said earlier in my presentation, the original Gonski agreement took years—years of consultation. It was owned by the communities. It was owned by the schools. It was genuinely sector-blind and genuinely needs-based.

Where the government has really stepped back into the past is on this sector-blind issue. They are claiming that their scheme is sector-blind, yet they have made this judgement that they would fund 20 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard for state schools and 80 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard for private schools. There is no particular reason for that 20:80 split. It seems to have just been pulled out of the air. But they are going to fund 20 per cent of the state schools and 80 per cent of private schools, regardless of what other funding comes from the states. It is as if the transparency here and the entire focus is actually only about what the Commonwealth government contributes to education. It is almost policy based on the size of the input not the size of the outcome.

If all they care about is being able to tick off that they put 20 per cent into every state school, then I guess they have succeeded. I guess that is it. If policy is actually about their input, then this government has done it. But if they actually care about the results that schoolchildren get, if they actually care about the overall level of funding that our schools get and each child gets, if they actually care about building an education system where parents and their children can move from one state to another—where they can graduate in one state and move easily into a university sector in a different state—and if they actually care about a national standard for schools, then they have to be concerned about the outcome of their policy, not just the inputs.

This is incredibly poor policy. After so many years of work, and after a funding model which was owned by the education system and owned by parents, which so many people fought for and which was on its way to delivering—after all of that, and after this government, just prior to the 2014 election, committed to funding it and supporting it, to find now that our schools and our children are going to go so far backwards, and to find that even by 2027 we will not have reached the basic standard, is more than disappointing; it is actually shocking. And this government really should rethink its objectives here. The outcome matters. The outcome matters, and you are just not achieving it.

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