Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

The so-called Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2006 essentially provides funding to support capital works in Australian schools. The bill extends the funding under the general capital works program for 2009, 2010 and 2011. These advance approval arrangements have been in place for many years and allow for longer term planning and scheduling of works. The Democrats will support the bill. While the funding for capital works is inadequate and the distribution of that funding across schools is inequitable and lacking in planning, we are clearly in no position to change that with this legislation.

In our view, schools should be provided with the resources they need to deliver a quality education, and this should be a priority for all parties and levels of government. If the quality of the school environment is a measure of the value a society places on its children and its commitment to giving them the best possible start in life, then I am afraid to say that Australia is still sadly lacking. In a world that properly values education and its children, all children would be learning in modern, comfortable buildings that enhance the learning experience—and that means adequate heat in winter, adequate cooling in summer, comfortable furniture, areas to read and play, access to state-of-the-art technology, and good playing fields and sports facilities if children are to be kept physically active. Of course, that is not the current situation for a lot of Australian children.

Unfortunately, many schools are desperately in need of funding to bring the physical environment in which children are supposed to be learning up to an acceptable standard. For instance, Victoria’s public schools have accumulated $268 million in maintenance bills, with 14 schools recording repairs needing a total of more than $1 million. I visited many schools in Victoria and elsewhere and I have seen that reality for myself. I have seen portable classrooms with leaking roofs, broken windows, and floors, walls and ceilings in need of repair. There are still schools that do not have basic indoor multipurpose recreation facilities with gym equipment and the like.

Schools have been chronically underfunded, but of course we do not really know by how much. The latest formal evaluation of the capital grants program was way back in 1999. Seven years is a long time to allow this to go unassessed. But, even back in 1999, the department’s own report, Capital matters, stated that there was an urgent need for a national picture of school infrastructure. We still do not have that national picture. We desperately need an audit of capital works at schools in this country—a national audit of all school buildings and facilities which will give us the information that the government needs to properly make policy.

There are huge differences in the environments of schools across the country. There are the very wealthy private schools, the very well resourced government schools and the schools that were built in the sixties that really should be demolished. There are children in so-called portable classrooms that are not going anywhere and have not gone anywhere for 25 years.

Whether a government school gets money for building works often depends on its ability to raise its own money and the quality of the grant application which is made. There is no entitlement to a standard of facilities. There is no agreed listing of priority schools so that schools might know when their work is coming. It is entirely ad hoc—certainly in Victoria, and I know this to be the case in other states as well—and it is unsatisfactory. The federal government, for all of its involvement in schooling and all of its finger pointing at the states, is unwilling to take this action to see that we know just what the capital works funding is for and whether it is adequate.

Some government schools in Victoria are getting swimming pools, and they are to be funded by the private sector and made available to the general public after hours. I do not object to that concept, but what is the policy and how does it deliver equity? Is it just an experiment for a handful of schools to see how it goes and maybe one day all Victorian schools will have a swimming pool? I do not know. There is never any talk about that kind of approach. There is no sense of universality. Are all schools entitled to pools or not? Are all schools entitled to gym facilities or not? We do not have that conversation in this country.

The money for capital works is not granted in the knowledge of an audit of which schools need it first and of what it should be spent on. The process is not grounded in standards—there are no standards for what should be in a school—and it is not grounded in fairness. As I said, there are huge differences in the resources available to schools within and between the government and non-government sectors. While the federal government might like to try and lay the blame for inadequate facilities at the feet of state governments, Commonwealth funding as a percentage of the total capital works spending has fallen since this government came to office. It has actually gone down. Can you imagine that in this day and age we would be reducing the amount of money which is available to schools?

The Commonwealth provides around 30 per cent of the total funding for capital works in government schools, but there has been no real increase since 1996, as I said. This bill only provides $249 million for capital works in 2005 prices, and that is the same amount in real terms as the government allocated for government schools in 1996. It is about $110 for each of the 2.2 million students in government schools across Australia—and we all know what $110 buys these days. Does anyone really believe that this is an adequate amount to meet the obvious needs in so many government schools?

It is not good enough, I think, to trumpet the mantra of choice, as this government is so fond of doing, and suggest that parents pay to send their children to a better resourced school. Many parents do not have that choice, whether for reasons of distance or finances. As a result of that, we have children learning in classrooms that are either too hot or too cold, are uncomfortable and do not have adequate lighting or air quality or computing facilities.

Of course, this capital funding is not the only money the federal government provides for capital works; I acknowledge that. There are also funding opportunities through small-scale projects—the so-called Investing in Our Schools program. While any funding is welcome, this has only been available since 2005 and there is no guarantee from the government yet that it will extend past 2007. Again, only a handful of schools are really going to benefit. And, of course, there is the maximum upper limit of $150,000 for these grants, making it suitable for very small scale projects but not much else.

This government has been very eager in recent times to make its mark on state schools. It has tied extra funding to flagpoles and insisted on meaningless testing. It tediously wages campaigns against teaching methods, against report cards, against teaching standards and against teachers. It has been quick to criticise curriculum in history and geography. Now, according to Minister Bishop, the government wants to take over all of the curriculum.

While they have been quick to talk up the inadequacy of state education at any opportunity and they managed to hold a history summit and apparently had a review of the SES funding process—not that anyone was actually able to contribute to that or find out what the results of it were—the government have not been able to coordinate any sort of response to the infrastructure needs of schools. There has been no summit; there has been no review; there has been no benchmark developed to say what a minimum standard should be for any school, whether government or private; there has been no audit; and there is no understanding of which schools are up to the mark and which are not. There certainly has not been any sort of plan developed to fund schools to meet basic infrastructure standards.

This is a slapdash, mediocre approach that will continue to condemn children to dilapidated schools and substandard resources. It will stop children from having the high-quality educational spaces that should be the right of every single child. This government has lots of money; it clearly has a lot to say about our schools. We think it is time this government put its money where its mouth is and made a serious effort to upgrade the physical quality of our schools.