Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The previous speaker, the member for Hunter, mentioned that it was a really important time to be speaking about this bill, the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017, in the 43rd Parliament. As it is my first term in parliament, I consider it quite a privilege to be able to speak on such an important bill in an area that I have such a passion for and an interest in.

I mentioned in my first speech that I started my schooling in a Catholic school. I remember that day very well. I was four years old and it was my sister's first day at school. My mother had dragged me along to ensure that my sister got into school on her first day. I went there with my unruly curls and my spindly arms and legs and simply refused to leave the school. I think I chucked what they call a tantrum, although I cannot imagine myself doing that at all! The nuns, taking pity on my mother, sent her to buy me a school uniform and immediately enrolled me in the school at the age of four. So I started my schooling in a Catholic school. I ended my schooling at an Anglican school, Meriden, in Strathfield in Sydney. In between then I attended numerous public schools. So it is safe to say that I have had quite an experience across a broad spectrum of different schools. That experience left a good impression on me, because I finished school and then went on to do four different university degrees and two different TAFE degrees.

So, call me a glutton for punishment, but I like to believe that, like the member for Canberra, education has provided me with opportunities to better myself, to better my life and to provide for my family opportunities that I otherwise would not have been able to provide. That is why I am such a big believer in education and such a big supporter of the schools in my electorate. I think schools are extremely important socialising agents. They are not just about educating our children. When you think about it, school is where you learn to love, it is where you learn to hate and it is where you learn to get on with people. It is where you learn about so many aspects of life—not just education. Schools do indeed perform a very important role in our society.

In my electorate I have some wonderful schools doing those very things: Mercy College, St Anthony's, Kingsway Christian College and Alta-1, which is a care school that caters specifically to young people who have mental health issues or are dealing with drug issues at home, and it does some really amazing work. Those are some of the non-government schools in my electorate. The government schools include Ballajura Community College; Girrawheen Senior High; Kiara College; Ashdale Secondary; Madeley Primary; Carnaby Rise Primary, the newest school in my electorate; and Beechbora and Ballajura primary schools. All of these schools are providing essential services to young people, and I have met with most of them and talked to them about needs based funding and exactly what it means for them.

From having my own children go through school and talking to other parents, you hear a lot of people say things: 'If the child has the aptitude and the talent, they will flourish at any school.' I do not necessarily believe that is true, because I do think that the school itself, and particularly how well funded the school is, makes a difference to a child's education. Every child in Australia has the right to access quality education, education that means something for them. Whether or not they are talented, whether or not they have a scholarly aptitude, every child has the right to a school that looks after that child's needs in the best possible way that it can.

Those on the other side keep telling us—I was aghast to hear this—that their proposal represents an $18 billion injection into schools. Let us look at that a bit more closely. When you rip out $30 billion and then reinstate $8 billion, there is a shortfall of $22 billion. It is very simple maths. I am not a maths genius—never was. It was one of my worst subjects at school, but I can tell you that 30 minus 8 leaves you with 22. That is the difference between what Labor would have funded and what this government has funded.

Let us have a look at a few more details of this proposal. I will give just a little bit of detail before I get into some more points about education. Let us look, first of all, at some of the key changes in this. It is transitioning to a flat Commonwealth contribution of 20 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard for all government schools and 80 per cent for all non-government schools over 10 years. It is removing the ability of the minister to determine an SES score for a group of schools by legislative instrument; instead, the minister will determine the SES score for each individual non-government school. It is changing the disability loading. It is reducing the benefit afforded to non-government primary schools under the capacity-to-contribute calculations, and we still do not know what the impact of this is going to be. It is reducing accountability and Commonwealth levers over non-government schools, removing the requirement for approved authorities to have implementation plans and school improvement frameworks. All of these things do not speak to a more quality schooling and education system but speak to the removal of quality.

As I mentioned earlier, education is fundamental. It is fundamental for the socialisation of our young people. It is fundamental for the whole wellbeing, the holistic wellbeing, of our children. It is not just about learning to read and to write but about growing children into society and giving them the moral standards that they need to determine right from wrong in society. Schools play a really important role in that.

When I go and talk to all the schools in my electorate, I also talk about resilient school communities and about how a school is not just about the students and the teachers and the administrators; it is also about the parents and even the people living in the community as well, and it is about looking at our school as a school community and understanding how critical education is to ensuring that every young Australian has the opportunity to reach their full potential.

That is the reason why Labor undertook the landmark review into school funding. That is why we introduced the Schooling Resource Standard, which was a sector-blind model which clearly defined the funding all schools needed to deliver a great, quality education—the kind of education that our young people deserve. It was a funding model that guaranteed extra funding for kids with poorer outcomes, to give them the extra help they needed. As I said earlier, we can sit there and say it relies on the child's aptitude—that a child with aptitude will flourish no matter what the school. But that is simply not true. Children with high aptitude will flourish in a good education system; so, too, will children with less aptitude, because the role of the school is not just about teaching reading, writing and arithmetic; it is also about socialising young people and looking after them as a holistic individual.

Labor's funding model and the Australian Education Act 2013 enshrined the following objective into Australian law:

All students in all schools are entitled to an excellent education, allowing each student to reach his or her full potential so that he or she can succeed, achieve his or her aspirations, and contribute fully to his or her community, now and in the future.

I believe that that is a very noble objective and one that all sides of government should be proud to fulfil.

But you see, there is a difference between equity and equality, and it seems to be a difference that those opposite just do not understand. Equity refers to having access to education. It means that every young person can go to school—they have a school in their neighbourhood; they are able to go to that school. But equality is something different, particularly substantive equality, because equality gets to the heart of what young people are able to achieve. It gets to the heart of opportunity. Even though I have access to a school—I am able to go to school—equality means that, regardless of my socioeconomic status, regardless of my background, regardless of how much money my parents earn and regardless of whether I go to a Catholic school, a public school or a private school, I have the opportunity to achieve the best outcomes that I possibly can. That is equality—that is substantive equality—and it is very different from equity. Equality, and substantive equality in particular, is at the core of the principle of fairness.

This seems to be something that those opposite do not understand, because they have simply walked away from the targets in the act; they have walked away from the targets that deliver needs based funding to schools and they have walked away from the targets that ensure a schooling resource standard across the board that we can be proud of as Australians and that ensure we can be proud to send our kids to school. They are walking away from the objective in the current act that we ensure that the Australian schooling system provides a high quality and highly equitable education for all students by having regard to national targets. These national targets are important, and the first is for Australia to be placed, by 2025, in the top five highest performing countries based on the performance of school students in reading, mathematics and science. That is a noble target and I am sure one that all parents in Australia, all people in Australia, would be very supportive of. The second the target is for the Australian schooling system to be considered a high quality and highly equitable schooling system by international standards by 2025. The third target is to lift the year 12 or equivalent or certificate II attainment rate to 90 per cent by 2015. The fourth target is to lift the year 12 or equivalent or certificate III attainment rate to 90 per cent by 2020. The fifth target is to at least halve the gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and other students in year 12 or equivalent attainment rates by 2020 from the baseline in 2006, and the sixth target is to halve the gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and other students in reading, writing and numeracy by 2018 from the baseline in 2008.

This government has walked away from those targets—it simply does not value education for all. The changes that have been introduced in this bill represent, as I mentioned earlier, $22 billion in cuts to education. Parents and teachers know that schools will be worse off because of this $22 billion cut. To put it into perspective, it is the equivalent of cutting $2.4 million from every school in Australia over the next decade or, to put it in even more blatant terms, it is like sacking 22,000 teachers. The review of school funding recommended that all government's work together to ensure every child has the best chance to succeed in school and in life, and they said that what matters is the total resources that a school has for each and every child that walks through the school gate every morning and not whether those resources come from the Commonwealth or come from the state. That is why Labor worked with states and territories to ensure that by 2019 every underfunded school would reach their fair level of funding—in 2022 for Victoria. We went to the states and we said to them, 'We will work with you to ensure that each and every child gets the funding they need'. We offered two-thirds of the extra funding needed and locked states into increasing their funding by one-third.

Let us do a little comparison of this government and what Labor proposed. Under what Malcolm Turnbull is proposing, some 85 per cent of public schools will not have reached their fair funding level by 2027—eight years from now. Under their model, less than 50 per cent of extra funding goes to public schools. I will talk a little bit about a couple of the schools in my electorate. Ballajura Community College have a teaching staff of 109. They have nearly 1,500 students, and 37 per cent of their students are in the bottom quarter of the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage—the ICSEA—and the national average is 25 per cent. Girrawheen Senior High School, which is also in my electorate, have 37 staff and 483 students—one teaching staff member for 13 students—and 65 per cent of their students are in the bottom quarter of the ICSEA. (Time expired)

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