Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The coalition government is committed to supporting the delivery of quality schooling and providing funding and regulatory certainty for all Australian schools.

The Australian Education Act 2013 is the principal legislation by which the Australian government provides financial assistance to approved authorities for government and non-government schools. It enables expenditure of Australian government funding for schools and related payments, and secures the reform and accountability objectives to improve the quality of education in Australia.

The act commenced on 1 January 2014. Australian government funding for schools is provided to state and territory governments that are then required to distribute these funds in line with the requirements of the act. In 2014, around $14 billion will be paid to government and non-government school authorities under the act.

This bill will create a mechanism to enable payments to be made under the government's Indigenous boarding initiative, an initiative designed to provide additional recurrent funding in 2014 to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander boarding students at non-government schools. I thank the member for Solomon for her role in bringing this about. The additional recurrent funding will be used by schools to deliver improved services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander boarding students and provide additional support to boost school attendance and engagement.

The bill will also provide funding certainty for certain independent special schools and special assistance schools that would otherwise see their funding reduced to the schooling resource standard from 2015. Instead, these schools will now transition towards the standard consistent with other schools.

Since the act was passed by the 43rd Parliament, a number of errors and oversights made during the original drafting have been identified which affect the proper administration of the legislation. This bill will correct these and provide greater certainty for schools about their funding entitlements for the current funding quadrennium.

Turning to the specifics of the bill: schedule 1 and schedule 2 separate the measures that will come into effect at different times. Schedule 1 contains those amendments that will commence on royal assent, and schedule 2 contains those amendments that need to be backdated to operate from the start of the Australian Education Acton 1 January 2014. The need for amendments in schedule 2 to apply retrospectively from 1 January 2014 is to ensure that funding calculations and payments made for 2014 are correct, so that all schools are funded as intended.

The bill will create a new mechanism to make payments to schools in prescribed circumstances. The regulations will contain the type of information the minister must have regard to in exercising this new mechanism, both in terms of eligibility and calculation of funding, and be subject to review and disallowance by the parliament.

In the first instance, this new mechanism will enable payment of the Australian government's Indigenous boarding initiative. The initiative was announced in the 2014-15 budget and will provide interim support for non-government schools with more than 50 Indigenous boarding students from remote or very remote areas, or where 50 per cent or more of their boarding students are Indigenous and from remote or very remote areas. This additional funding will assist non-government boarding schools to provide these students with a high-quality education and support educational opportunities for Indigenous students.

The bill allows for the correction of errors and oversights that have become apparent since the act became operative on 1 January 2014. The bill will ensure that certain special schools or special assistance schools will not have their funding reduced in 2015. Currently, the safety net in place will disappear and these schools will have their funding immediately reduced to the schooling resource standard from 1 January next year because the current work with the states and territories to develop nationally consistent data has not yet been completed. The amendment will provide funding certainty by spending $2.4 million for next year and ensuring these schools transition to the schooling resource standard in a manner consistent with other schools until the revised student-with-disability loadings are available.

The bill will address a gap in the current act dealing with the transitional arrangements to ensure that schools moving between approved authorities will be neither financially advantaged nor disadvantaged. A school moving to another approved authority will have, as a starting point for its Commonwealth funding entitlement under that approved authority, the amount that would have applied had the school not moved.

The bill will correct the Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA) index values for locations of schools so that schools in inner regional locations are properly identified as such.

The bill will correct a significant error that would see, for some school authorities, the Commonwealth liable to pay the entire amount (both Commonwealth and notional state share) calculated for an authority, rather than the Commonwealth's share of that calculated amount.

The bill will insert the final 2014 amount for capital funding paid to Block Grant Authorities. This amount will be the basis for future capital funding amounts for Block Grant Authorities.

The bill will address a minor technical error and correct a cross-reference regarding the pro-rating of recurrent funding.

The bill will provide greater flexibility and options for managing any non-compliance that occurred under the previous legislation, the Schools Assistance Act 2008, should compliance action be taken.

The bill clarifies the operation of reviewable decisions and will correct errors relating to who can apply for a review of a decision under the act.

Finally, the bill will amend the Australian Education (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Act 2013 to extend to 1 January 2016, or a later date determined by the minister, and the commencement of school improvement planning requirements under the act to provide regulatory certainty to schools while consultations with stakeholders occur in relation to possible adjustments to this requirement.

This bill supports all Australian schools by correcting errors and omissions in the existing act to ensure effective and efficient administration. Taking action to fix these problems will strengthen the legislative framework that underpins the Australian government's significant investment in schools and contribute to improving the quality of school education in Australia.

Debate adjourned.

Ordered that the second reading be made an order of the day for the next sitting day.