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

Term 4 is a special time in schools. As we come towards the end of term 4, particularly for those senior students who are finishing up their exams across the next week or so, it is a time of graduation ceremonies, valedictory dinners and the announcement of dux—it is award season. Across the last two weeks in the electorate, I visited a few schools, and it was Gonski week. So I was pleased to be there from that perspective, but I was just as pleased to be at school award ceremonies across the last week. It gave me an opportunity to catch-up with a few principal colleagues, and to have a chat to them about how things are going in their schools.

Unsurprisingly, in Victoria, the principals in Lalor, who spoke to me last week were ecstatic about what their budgets said for next year—about the opportunities they were going to be able to put on the ground for students in their school communities. They were thrilled that the needs-based funding—the Gonski funding was coming to fruition in their schools. They were full of plans for the way they were going to use that funding to improve student outcomes on the ground.

Lalor is a special place in that it is in a growth corridor in Melbourne, so many of our schools are under extraordinary pressure—pressure that I do not know that many in the chamber quite understand. I received an email last week from a parent, who has a child starting preps next year at Alamanda College. Alamanda College is a terrific school, a wonderful school—still a new school. It has only been open a few years. This mum had a child start preps at the school in its first year, and her second child is going to start next year. She was concerned. She had high praise for the school, for the teachers, for the community, for the principal class and for the leaders in the school, but she was concerned because the school will have 1,200 students next year. This is a prep to nine school—1,200 students. Let me tell you what that translates to. For this mum, that means that her first child entered a new school where there were three streams of preps on the ground, and her second child is going to enter that school next year and there will be 12 prep classes on the ground in that school. As a former principal and a principal who taught in the area, I can tell you what that means. That means recruitment pressures. That means that there is a high chance that many of those 12 prep teachers will be new graduates.

The Gonski funding helps schools like that ensure that they are giving quality in every classroom. The Gonski funding is used to support young teachers in schools where perhaps there are 12 of them teaching preps together in their first, second or third year of teaching. Gonski funding will allow that school to put support in place for those young teachers to support those prep students. They may employ a literacy coach to work with those teachers. They may put a leading teacher on the ground to support those 12 teachers. This is critical funding. This is a high-needs area. It is a school that would attract needs-based funding under the brilliant Gonski model.

I rose tonight to bring that point to the attention of the House, because when I spoke to principals across the week and when I had email contact with the mum who had emailed me about the situation, I was able to say that, for the next two years in Victoria, they are assured of that funding, but, after that, who knows? The answer lies in the hands of those opposite. They have the power to deliver this life-changing reform, this important reform—not just important because it will deliver in the short term but important because it will create opportunity for every child in this country to meet their potential. It is economically important for this country.

We have heard from those opposite that money does not do everything, money does not change everything. Well, come to my electorate, and I will take you to schools where national partnerships funding has made an extraordinary difference—a two-year learning difference—for many, many students. This is an opportunity that this new Prime Minister should grab with both hands. Do not just say Gonski; do Gonski, Prime Minister. Fulfil the promise of the sector-blind, needs-based funding that this country needs.