Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Schools Assistance Bill 2008. In that context I would like to make a few remarks to begin with about the education revolution. I think that an education revolution ought to have a vision. It ought to have some excitement. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, ‘I don’t want to be part of your revolution unless I can dance.’ Frankly, I do not feel like dancing as part of the Rudd government’s education revolution. A revolution suggests kicking over the traces and rethinking the way we do education. It suggests an expansive view, a dream, a vision about what education might be and might do for this country. The education revolution should start with the view that in this country human potential should know no bounds. We should have a view that no child in Australia will be denied achieving their full potential because of their poverty, race, language background, disability—whatever. We should aim for that.

I was lucky enough to be a teenager at a time when there was an education revolution, when there was a declaration that tertiary education in this country would be free. That allowed students who, up to that point, had never had a hope of going to university to change their life’s trajectory and expand their bounds. I am the first person in my family to go to a university. My mother went to a teachers’ college. In the rural community where I lived most students had no hope of going on to university, until there were Commonwealth scholarships and then, potentially, bursaries. I went to university on a teaching studentship because that was the way I could afford to go to university. That opportunity was offered to me, as was a Commonwealth scholarship, and then the Whitlam government brought in free tertiary education. What a vision that was. Half the people in this parliament secured their tertiary education and their opportunities in life by accessing free education.

I would like to think that the education revolution started from the point of view that there has been a meanness of spirit in this country. We have fallen back to the notion that all we are good at is cutting down trees, digging holes in the ground and shipping things away. We have gone back to the notion that all you have to do is rest on your natural resource base; you do not have to use your brains to get ahead in Australia. We need to get out of that mindset. We need to understand that to be a sophisticated, sustainable, zero-carbon economy we need to maximise people’s capacity. The so-called education revolution is not doing it. Why do I say that? Because it has no vision. It is not based on the notion of equity, the notion of justice, the notion of bringing education centre stage as one of the most important drivers of Australia’s future.

I heard what Rupert Murdoch had to say. Frankly, I am tired of hearing people like Rupert Murdoch talk about bad schools—that bad schools should be closed and so on. What is a bad school? I have asked this question in the Senate before. I heard the Prime Minister say the government would be closing down failing schools. What is a failing school? A failing school is failing because of the failure of governments to fund schools, to pay teachers appropriately, to lift the levels of literacy and numeracy in the community and to lead community aspirations about education.

Why is it that when you go to many countries around the world, no matter how poor, people say to you that the one thing they want is education for their children. They look up to teachers. They look up to education. In Bangladesh, as part of the Grameen Bank’s microcredit, they have halved the birthrate, because poor women can now aspire to sending their children to school. They want education for their children and they appreciate it. Those students going into schools aspire to achieve success in life through education. They see it as the window of opportunity to change their life’s trajectory. Why have we lost that in Australia? Why have we gone back to the mean-spirited business of: ‘We can choose where we will send our children, and on that basis there will be constant competition among schools; it is a question of individual, not collective, rights’?

I want to see something much bigger than that. And I would like to see a statement from the Prime Minister about what this education revolution is meant to do for Australia to make us a more just, a more generous, a more compassionate, a more innovative nation that aspires to excellence and to leadership in something other than digging holes and cutting things down. That is the sort of education revolution we should be talking about. That is why I am standing here today speaking on the Schools Assistance Bill, which is not an education revolution—in fact, in relation to that it is actually the reformation. We are going back to former Prime Minister Howard’s funding of non-government schools. That was the flawed SES model. The current education minister, when she was in opposition, said in relation to this SES funding model:

This government, for its funding for private schools, has adopted a flawed index, the so-called SES model, which does not deliver on the basis of need. We know that model is flawed, because it disproportionately delivers to category 1 schools—that is, wealthy schools.

She went on to say, in a different speech, again about the SES model:

There are the following five flaws in the SES model. Firstly, it could be argued that the model is flawed, proceeding as it does on the basis of the average government school recurrent costs figure.

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Secondly, this model uses only some aspects of the census—

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Thirdly, the model may lose veracity the more geographically dispersed the students of a particular school are.

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Fourthly, the model may lose veracity in highly differentiated areas where wealth and poverty live cheek by jowl.

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The last objection to the SES model is more philosophical, that the model makes no allowance for the amassed resources of any particular school. … This is a gaping flaw, one which the government would not allow to emerge in any other benefit distribution system.

So, having said all that before the election, the Labor government has come in and is about to legislate to maintain the SES model, developed by the Howard government, with all the funding guarantees in place for another four years, to take us beyond the 2010 federal election. Frankly, that is not good enough. Australia voted for change. Australia wants massive investment in education so there is a chance for every child, regardless of which school they go to, to meet the aspirations they have in life and be supported in doing so. And they need to be taught by qualified teachers, who are remunerated accordingly and respected—and, because they are remunerated accordingly, you will attract to the profession people who want to teach but who are not going into teaching at the moment because, compared with other professions for which they are qualified, the funding is so poor. And it is not just the pay; it is the support in the schools.

I can tell you, having taught in secondary schools in Tasmania for a decade, that it is not just about salary; it is about the level of support you have for the students who have disabilities in your school, for the students who have literacy or numeracy problems—special needs students, whatever their problems might be. Unless you have the resources in your classroom, in your school, then you feel like you are letting those students down; you are frustrated because other students in the class are not getting the benefit of your experience and leadership as they might if you were properly resourced. That is what we should be talking about in relation to this bill. But, no, we have the reformation. We have the Howard government SES model in its entirety in this legislation. That is why I am foreshadowing that I will be moving a second reading amendment.

The Howard government model had in it a ‘no losers’ clause. This is the ridiculousness of the SES model—it said, ‘This is the model; this is what we think you deserve in terms of your educational funding on all of these criteria but, if that means your schools gets less money than it did previously, we will guarantee to you that you do not lose any dollars; you will maintain that funding.’ As a result of that, almost half the non-government schools in Australia get more than they are entitled to under the SES model, and collectively that is $2.7 billion in overpayments to those schools over four years. Okay, that is the SES model, and that is what the government wants to apply. I am going to move as a second reading amendment that $2.7 billion is allocated to Australia’s public schools, additional to what came out of COAG and additional to whatever else might be provided, in order to say that at least there is a recognition here that, if you are going to overpay schools beyond what the formula says, you should be overpaying—so-called ‘overpaying’—or investing in public education to the same extent.

In the committee stage I will also be moving two amendments—firstly, that this funding that is going to go ahead not be for four years but for two. The reason for that is twofold: (1) to make sure the government brings forward its review of school funding in Australia so that we can go to the 2010 federal election with a very clear view and alternative for the community about how Labor intends to fund education after the 2010 election—and that means all parties in this place can take an education policy to the community in the light of that; and (2) with the global financial meltdown, it is entirely likely that the GST return to the states is going to be less, that state income is going to be less and that as a result states are going to have less to put into public education. The point here is that, while the Commonwealth funds non-government schools, state governments overwhelmingly fund public education. So what we are going to have if the states cut back on their public education is an even greater gap than we now have between the funding of non-government schools and public schools. This is part of the dysfunctional federalism we have when it comes to education funding in Australia. I think it is appropriate that we limit this funding exercise to two years. That gives non-government schools more certainty than in fact public schools have, because they have to go from budget to budget in terms of what is allocated. This would actually provide non-government schools with two years of funding, and it would provide the Australian community with the opportunity to look at what Labor is going to do in terms of an education revolution.

I am also going to be moving for a change in the title of the bill. It is currently called the Schools Assistance Bill. I will be moving to call it the Non-government Schools Assistance Bill, because that is factually correct with respect to what this bill actually does. It is the first time the government has split the funding of public education from non-government schools. I am glad that we were able to put this through the committee process so that we can now have the benefit of COAG to be able to see what the public education system is going to get, to make some comparisons. Those are matters on which I will continue my remarks after we get to the committee stages of the bill.

A lot of nonsense has been spoken about what may or may not be allowed in the national curriculum. I had the benefit of speaking with a number of people who have moved from other states to Tasmania and vice versa, and there are many benefits to be had from having a national curriculum. But, as I said the other day in this place, it is not just a national curriculum that needs to be looked at; we need to standardise age entry points across Australia. You might have a national curriculum, but, if you move from one state to another, you can go from grade 7 back to grade 6, up a grade or whatever, and that does make a significant difference. It is no good standardising the curriculum unless we also standardise age entry points in education so that students are not put up or down when they move states, which can have a highly significant impact on their social development. I just wanted to reiterate that as something that needs to be considered in standardising things across Australia.

In the hearings we had, one of the concerns that was expressed, particularly from some of the non-government schools, about the national curriculum was how prohibitive or otherwise it would be in relation to certain matters. Clearly that came up in relation to intelligent design, which some schools wanted to be able to teach in the science course and feared may be prohibited in science but permitted in religion. If you want to teach it in religion, that is fine, but in terms of science it will be interesting to see just how prohibitive the system is. In my view, science is science and that is the way it should stay.

In terms of other sources of funding, I too was concerned about evidence given in the committee hearing by the Queensland Catholic Education Commission about Indigenous education funding. But, since that time, I have had an opportunity to get a better understanding of how those new arrangements are going to work for Indigenous students. I am satisfied that, even though there will be a change in the way the funding is calculated, overall there will be an increase in funding. I am pleased to see that and I will be expecting that. Because of the systemic nature of Catholic schools and their capacity to be flexible and redistribute within the system, they will be able to take account of the concerns that were raised. But it is something I will want to review in 12 months time to see how it is working and to make sure there is no disadvantage for Indigenous students.

Having said that, the new arrangements as they are mean that the non-government schools get this funding but they are also able to contest for the funding that was announced at COAG for low socioeconomic areas, where both public and private schools will be part of the cluster able to get extra money. They will be getting extra money for Indigenous students, but the problem is that, again, the state governments are not likely to make the same kind of contribution for Indigenous students in government schools, and 80 per cent of Australia’s Indigenous students are in government schools, not in non-government schools. So, once again, if you are subject to the vagaries of state governments, you get less than if you are in a non-government school, where you benefit from the Commonwealth funding.

There is something seriously wrong when an Indigenous student would get funded at one level in a non-government school and at another level in a state school. It is because of the blame game and cost shifting between federal and state governments, and it is not good enough. If we think that an Indigenous student needs the level of funding that the Commonwealth is prepared to pay, there should be some mechanism for ensuring that the states match it and, if they do not, the Commonwealth should have some capacity to influence the states to lift that funding. We have to get a better arrangement. I understand that the government is moving towards that with its education partnerships with the states and there will be more accountability, with assessment against outcomes, performance targets and so on.

My final comment in relation to the bill is that you only get an education revolution if you persuade the whole society that education is something that needs to be valued. We need to go back and capture those people who have dropped out of school during the last 10 years, who have poor literacy, who have poor numeracy and who are not achieving, because they are the parents of the next generation, and that generation will suffer because of the lack of capacity of their parents, who, for whatever reason, were not able to achieve at school. I do not want to see this turn into a blame game for teachers and schools. This is a societal question. Australians have to be asked: do you value education and, if you do, how, as a society, are we going to lift the standards right through the whole society and help one another in all sorts of ways to be better educated, more literate, more numerate, more innovative and more aspirational? That is what an education revolution should seek to do.

I move:

At the end of the motion, add:

but the Senate, in approving the funding provided to non-government schools under this bill, does so on the understanding that the Government will commit additional Commonwealth funding to public schools over the funding period, over and above the indexation measures determined at COAG, equivalent to the maintained funding and guaranteed funding provided to non-government schools under this bill, calculated to be about $2.7 billion over the next 4 years.