Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Schools Assistance Bill 2008 provides the legislative authority for the funding of non-government primary and secondary education for the years 2009 to 2012 and seeks to appropriate $28 billion for this purpose.

The Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 is complementary legislation that seeks to simplify the legislative arrangements for Commonwealth funding of schools with a high proportion of Indigenous students. To streamline Commonwealth funding, six Indigenous education programs will be consolidated into one per capita payment. The bill provides for a total of $742.6 million through the appropriation of $640.5 million for non-Abstudy payments and an estimated $102.1 million for Abstudy Away from Base payments.

A couple of concerns have been raised concerning the Education Legislation Amendment Bill. Firstly, with the mainstreaming of targeted assistance to Indigenous education and the increasingly diverse sources of reporting, care must be taken by government to elicit a concise and consistent understanding of targeted assistance and its outcomes. As accountability is critical in this context, the opposition will continue to monitor outcomes in Indigenous education.

Secondly, concern was expressed by the Queensland Catholic Education Commission, particularly on behalf of the Townsville diocese, to the Senate Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations in their inquiry into the provisions of both bills that the new funding arrangements may have a detrimental effect on some Indigenous students attending boarding schools. In short, funding will be allocated according to the location of the school, not where the students come from. The bill, it was argued, does not adequately recognise the higher needs of Indigenous students from remote areas who attend boarding schools in regional or indeed metropolitan areas. While the government has reiterated that funding will not decrease across the non-government sector, that is no guarantee that most disadvantaged Indigenous students will continue to receive the same funding. Given that the Townsville diocese is home to a greater number of remote Indigenous students than anywhere else in the nation, the opposition will continue to monitor the impact of the funding changes. Notwithstanding these concerns, the opposition supports the Education Legislation Amendment Bill, noting that the aim of the bill is to simplify funding arrangements and improve educational outcomes for Indigenous Australians.

I will now move on to the Schools Assistance Bill. There has been much debate, both within the parliament and, indeed, within the broader community, about the reform of education in our country. Most of us can, perhaps, agree on one issue: the focus of our concern should be the educational attainments of our children. They must be our central focus; our central concern. Evidence that, despite substantial increases in per-child spending, literacy and numeracy rates are no better now than they were back in the 1960s and 1970s supports the conclusion that reform of education in this country is absolutely essential.

I note that the chief executive of the News Corporation, Mr Rupert Murdoch, expressed these sentiments just last week in his ABC Boyer lecture. He said:

The unvarnished truth is that in countries such as Australia, Britain, and particularly the United States … our children seem to be learning less and less—especially for those who are most vulnerable in our society.

While Mr Murdoch addressed his comments at public education, his prescriptions for reform apply equally to both government and non-government schools. Fundamentally, he argues, bad schools do not pay a price for their failings; it is their students who ultimately pay the price for their failure. What we must do, concludes Mr Murdoch, is to hold schools more accountable and to ensure that they put students on the right track.

I would be delighted if the minister, Ms Gillard, and the government were to move in this direction. If the old Labor prejudices of class envy and its offspring, a sometimes seething prejudice against non-government schools, are gone, then progress is definitely possible. If the minister and the government are seeking to put the welfare of students before the interests of teacher unions, then the opposition will certainly not stand in their way. There are, however, some indications that this might not be the case. While there is a lot to agree with in both of these bills—and, indeed, much to support in the broader spirit of the minister’s recent public announcements on education reform—the bill before the Senate does contain provisions which are objectionable. With that in mind, I foreshadow that, at the committee stage, I will move some amendments on behalf of the opposition.

There are essentially four problems we see with this bill. Firstly, there are changes to the grounds upon which the minister can refuse or delay payment to a non-government school. Clause 15(c) of the bill provides for new reasons upon which the minister may refuse to authorise or delay a payment to a non-government school—namely, if an audit authorised by a Commonwealth or state law ‘is expressed to be qualified’. What concerns the opposition and the non-government schools sector is that there may be grounds for an auditor to qualify an audit that do not go to financial viability but instead to hesitation about a school model, whether a financial hesitation or otherwise. The recent inquiry of the Senate committee into the provisions of this bill heard testimony to that effect—for example, from Geelong College and the Association of Independent Schools of Victoria.

Secondly, there is the new requirement that schools comply with a national curriculum. Clause 22 of the bill mandates that under a funding agreement a school ‘implements the national curriculum prescribed by’ regulations made under the future act for primary education, secondary education or perhaps both. At this stage, we have little idea what the national curriculum in maths, science, history and English will actually look like. One of the issues that arises is how prescriptive the curriculum content in these particular discipline areas will be. Will it be prescriptive of content and materials or, alternatively, will it be a framework within which schools can determine content? This question is yet to be determined definitively. As the Chief Executive of the Association of Independent Schools of Victoria, Ms Michelle Green, said in her testimony before the Senate committee:

I had a principal from a school phone me the other day and say, ‘We tell our students not to sign up to mobile phone plans unless they absolutely know what they are signing up to, and here we are with something that is far more important to us and we’re expected just to sign without knowing.’ I think that people are extremely concerned about signing to deliver something when they do not know what it is.

This is a particular concern for schools, such as Steiner or Montessori schools, offering alternative educational philosophies and for schools that currently can teach curricula that are broadly equivalent to state determined curriculum standards. The avenue for innovation is now seemingly closed by this bill.

The final documents will not be presented until sometime next year, yet this bill seeks to tie school funding to that curriculum’s acceptance. The parliament and the schools are asked to take the government on trust. In addition, proper parliamentary scrutiny of the national curriculum will not be possible until it is detailed in regulations to be made in the future by the minister. Why this urgency? Why not separate the issues of funding and curriculum and deal with the latter more appropriately at some future date? Even if there were no controversy about the framers of the curriculum—and Mr Pyne has spoken about that in the other place—the manner in which this process has been carried out would still cause concern, as it is doing to the non-government schools sector.

Thirdly, there are additional reporting requirements for schools, particularly relating to funding sources. Clause 24(1)(b) of the bill requires a school, as a condition of funding, to provide the minister with a report in relation to, among other things, its financial operations, including financial viability and funding sources. Contrary to the government’s arguments that this clause simply follows the form set out in the previous legislation, ‘funding sources’ is a new concept in this context and might specifically include details of scholarship requests, funds and other sources of funding such as profit-generating activities or community fundraising undertaken by parents and friends associations. This section gives the minister substantial new powers to demand information about the internal financial affairs of a school community, and it also allows the minister to require schools to make this information public. Such detailed financial information is not relevant to calculations under the SES system, and, on questioning during Senate estimates in October, departmental officials were unable to give any reasons not only why their minister would require this information but also, much more importantly, why this information might need to be made public.

This has created great consternation among non-government schools. In their evidence before the Senate inquiry into the bill, various peak bodies of non-governmental schools expressed their concern that such financial information, when made public, would invariably receive tabloid treatment from the media and be used by the opponents of the independent education sector to create a politics of envy style campaign against non-government schools. Given previous statements by the minister and her colleagues, one can only draw the conclusion that clause exists in order to, if necessary, lay the groundwork to build up a public case and whip up public sentiment to radically alter the SES funding system in the next funding period, 2013 to 2016, to one where the so-called ‘rich schools’—those whose school communities are successful at fundraising—are to be penalised through reduced or abolished Commonwealth support.

It is also very ironic that not so long ago in this chamber we had another debate about accountability and transparency. It was in the context of universities and governance protocols. I recall the government arguing then that we should not micromanage, that it was illiberal to do so, that we should instead trust the universities more to manage themselves and administer all the billions of dollars they receive from the Commonwealth. We should trust universities to do the right thing, we were told, but obviously what is good enough for universities is not good enough for non-government schools.

Fourthly, there is the removal of the new non-government schools establishment grants. I note the opposition’s disappointment that the government did not see fit to renew the new non-government schools establishment grants. In phasing out these grants immediately, Labor appears to be returning to the ideological position taken in their previous new schools policy, making it increasingly difficult to set up new non-government schools.

As always with this government, while the initial ideas sometimes sound good—mostly because they have been stolen from the coalition—one has to be constantly vigilant. With Labor, the devil is always in the detail and, more so, in the implementation of the policy itself. We have seen it time and time again this year, most notably in the case of the computers in schools fiasco, underbudgeted by at least, on the government’s estimates, $800 million. No matter how good the government’s intentions, we will not be taking the government on faith. We will be watching very carefully to see how this issue unfolds and will take any action necessary to ensure that the best interests of Australian students are served. When it comes to implementation, this government has a very poor record, whether it is computers in schools, broadband or the cluster of other absolute fiascos. Although on the face of it this may be an appealing policy proposal, the coalition are very concerned that these seemingly worthwhile policies are implemented appropriately and securely.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to 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.

…         …         …

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

…         …         …

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

…         …         …

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

…         …         …

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.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to provide my contribution to the debate on the Schools Assistance Bill 2008. Picking up from where Senator Milne finished, since last year, we have been seeing rolled out across this country a revolution in education. All of the things that Senator Milne talked about as needing to happen—but she doubted would happen—are in fact occurring, as you will see if you look very carefully at the transcripts that are issued almost daily from the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Education in this country. In fact, only yesterday the Deputy Prime Minister had this to say:

This nation has failed kids from poorer families by leaving them in underperforming schools for too long.

What she was talking about is the fact that schools need to be transparent, schools need to actually be accountable, schools need to have consistent quality no matter where those schools are, no matter how they are funded, no matter what jurisdiction they come under. In fact, the Deputy Prime Minister was very explicit in saying that we want to know how schools are going on objective measures like national testing results and year 12 retention. We want to know how the resources are being brought to bear. We want to know how you are able to compare similar schools. So we want to be able to know exactly what is happening in our school system right across the board.

This government is committed to ensuring that there is a high quality of education no matter where you live in this country, no matter how much you personally contribute to your education, and to ensure that kids from poorer families, kids from low SES backgrounds, are guaranteed of being in a school that performs well. So this is anything but a blame game; this is ensuring that, whether you are at a government or non-government schools, whether you come from a very affluent suburb or not, you can be guaranteed that your child gets the same education as everybody else right around this country. Under the Deputy Prime Minister, it is anything else other than labelling and blaming.

We talk about the contribution from Senator Mason and criticism from my colleagues opposite about the computers in schools program. I ask each and every one of those senators, what would you rather us do? Would you rather we went back to the old days of the slate, the chalkboard, the piece of chalk and the little duster that everyone once had in front of them in a primary school? Or do you actually want kids in this nation to be skilled up? Computers are not only the notebooks of the future, they are absolutely the notebooks of today. They are in classrooms today, though probably not enough of them. Information comes to people in cyberspace these days, and you have to know how to respond and you have to know how to critically analyse the information that you are receiving through the wire as to what is good and bad from that information. You need that skill and you also need to know how to operate the machine that is in front of you. That is going to be a critical tool not for the future but I would say to you a critical tool for today. There would not be too many people out there applying for jobs who would not be asked if they know how to operate computers and different programs on computers.

What this government is doing, unlike the government we experienced for the last 11 long years, is tooling students for today and for the future and ensuring that teachers are valued, with injections of funds into teacher development programs, ensuring that good people out there are put into the school system. There was an announcement last week that there would be lawyers and scientists offered placements in schools for a period of time, ensuring that the best people in this society pass on the knowledge that they have to our kids in their classrooms.

The Schools Assistance Bill implements the government’s commitment to provide stability of funding for non-government schools for 2009-12. It does maintain the SES model as the basis for funding. The evolution in education will roll out under this government as we review that SES model funding, as the Deputy Prime Minister has committed to, in the coming years. No school will be disadvantaged by this, so no school will receive less funding than it would have been entitled to in 2008. This is despite claims from my Northern Territory colleague on the other side who on local radio in the Northern Territory some weeks ago set out to deliberately distort the facts and scaremonger to listeners in the Territory. Unfortunately in mid-October Senator Scullion cut loose on local radio and tried to resurrect the old government versus non-government school funding arguments, casting doubts on the future funding levels of some non-government schools in the Northern Territory. But I was able to get on the radio on the same station and rebut these claims. The Schools Assistance Bill is evidence of the fact that future funding of non-government schools in the Northern Territory is absolutely guaranteed: $20 billion for recurrent capital and targeted assistance for non-government schools, including a single streamlined supplementary assistance package for Indigenous students. Four Indigenous programs have been streamlined into one. The supplementary recurrent assistance, funding for homework centres, funding for ITAS and funding for English as a second language for Indigenous language speaking students have been streamlined into one funding program. This is another indicator and another signpost of the education revolution that is occurring by making the funding more streamlined and more accessible. This bill also includes a remoteness loading to take into account the higher costs of providing education in remote areas—something we have never seen before in this country.

The bill makes the performance and accountability requirements on non-government schools consistent with those for all schools under the National Education Agreement being negotiated under COAG. And why shouldn’t that occur, I ask people in this chamber? These bills need to be passed before the end of 2008 in order for new funding agreements to be finalised for 2009 payments and to be made to non-government schools. This bill is yet a further part of this Labor government’s quality schooling agenda. We are working with COAG, as you would have seen announced last Saturday, to further develop a framework for investment and reform in schools. This will result in the new National Education Agreement. This reform will mean that for the first time all governments in Australia will agree to a single set of objectives, a single set of outcomes and outputs for our education system. There is a massive amount of work to be done across the states and territories with this Commonwealth government and I would have thought that it is the first time that this is going to be achieved in this country. That is a revolution.

This bill is one of the bigger building blocks in that national agenda. It gives the many non-government schools certainty of funding and applies transparency and accountability requirements that are consistent with government schools. We need an education system that delivers excellence and equity, and we can only achieve this if Australians are confident that government is applying the same principles to all of our schools—something that has never been done and certainly something not done under the previous government. As pointed out in the other place by the Deputy Prime Minister, under the previous government schools were held accountable not for quality but for whether they had a functioning flagpole or whether they displayed posters about Australian values. We believe in Australian values, and equity is certainly one of them, but we also use values when framing policy; we do not just tack them on as an afterthought.

The national education agreement and this bill are complementary. Commonwealth funding for government schools is being negotiated under that agreement and does not need specific legislation. Together, this bill and the agreement will show the full commitment of this government. It will deliver the full $47 billion, as promised in the 2007 election. This bill establishes the funding for non-government schools for the next four years as well as the principles of quality, accountability, excellence and equity that we are applying to the education revolution agenda right across the nation. Under previous agreements, Commonwealth funding came with a multitude of conditions spanning a range of policy areas, requiring a high degree of regulation and reporting by schools and systems. Our new framework reduces the number of funding agreements and removes many of the input controls and forms of compliance previously imposed. Achievement of agreed educational outcome targets is what is important. So this government’s framework is about outcomes and outputs, not inputs.

This bill will also require as a condition of funding the implementation of the national curriculum, which will be developed by the National Curriculum Board by 2012. This will apply of course to all schools. I want to say here that this should not be a matter of concern for non-government schools, despite what I have heard in the media this morning from some senators in this place. As the Deputy Prime Minister said yesterday, the National Curriculum Board is writing the national curriculum. The board comprises representatives from all states and territories and all school systems. It is independent of government. It will drive up results and quality in this country. So what we are actually looking at is whether or not those who provide curricula will still do it in different ways—and there is no doubt about this—to ensure not only that there are world-class curricula being taught but that the teaching methods that those schools use can continue. If you are, for example, teaching the International Baccalaureate, as is the case at Kormilda College in the Northern Territory, that will continue. If you have a particular teaching style, as is the case at Montessori and Steiner schools, that will continue. What the national curriculum will do is ensure that there is consistency about the level of each child’s development at a year level, what outputs are needed at each year level and the content of that curriculum. How you deliver that curriculum and the circumstances in which you deliver it will not be interfered with by this government.

Coming from a base in the Northern Territory, in Darwin and Palmerston, represented by the seat of Solomon, time and time again I hear from defence people in particular that what they are looking for as they move their families around this country, sometimes every two or three years, is a national curriculum. They want to know that what their child in year 3 learns in Victoria is comparable to what their child in year 3 will learn in the Northern Territory. In fact, they go a step further when they talk to me and say that they would actually like to see nationally consistent handwriting taught right around this country—not just print or cursive but a nationally consistent curriculum that imposes the style of writing that children will be taught.

For those people in this chamber who suggest that a national curriculum would somehow restrict or confine non-government schools, I say that you must say that, not having come from an educational background. But if in fact you have a qualification in education and you have taught in a school system then you will appreciate and understand why it is so crucially important to have a national curriculum—why as a teacher you would want to know that the skills you are imparting on a 10-year-old child in your year 5 class are the same as those imparted on children in Adelaide, Perth or Alice Springs. As a teacher, I certainly would want to know that the quality of teaching I am giving to the child is nationally consistent and that the skills I am imparting to that child can be used by that child not only in any part of this country but around the world. As an educationalist, I applaud the development of the national curriculum. I think that it addresses a lot of queries and problems, particularly for people like defence families in this country.

The Senate Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, which inquired into this bill, reported:

...the committee believes such concerns are unfounded.

That is, the concerns that a national curriculum would concern or confine non-government schools. It went on to say:

The national curriculum proposes uniform standards for each of the key learning areas—

And that is what we want to see; we want to make sure that the outputs at every level are nationally consistent—

However, outside of these requirements, there will be flexibility allowing schools to implement curriculum content at school level.

All schools will be subject to national tests, easy to understand reports to parents and public reporting on the school’s performance. I want to know that if I send my child to Leanyer Primary School in the Northern Territory they will get the same standards, content and outcomes as a child at, say, Kensington government school in Melbourne, Victoria. Why shouldn’t I want to know that and why shouldn’t I be expected to know that, when in this country there is such flexibility and mobility of people in and out of states and territories at any one time? Only in this way can parents have the best information about schools and school choice.

The actual final form of reporting will be determined through the agreement at COAG. Only in this way can government identify the most disadvantaged schools in order to guide resources towards them for the greatest possible effectiveness and improvement. We want to lift the standards in schools by ensuring that those schools that are disadvantaged and under-resourced become better resourced and that the standards and the resources are there for teachers to use so that outcomes can be improved. Only in this way can government get the information to analyse on a fair, consistent and accurate basis how schools are doing and give additional help to those genuinely in need.

Under this bill, non-government schools will receive general recurrent grants totalling some $26.3 billion over four years. This bill also establishes a capped Indigenous funding guarantee as a traditional measure to ensure that non-government providers do not lose funding compared with 2008 levels. This is part of the government’s policy to close the gap. There are many non-government schools in my own constituency of the Northern Territory that will benefit from this bill—43 schools in total throughout the Territory, at places such as Nguiu, Wadeye and Daly River, whose students are nearly all Indigenous. Our Lady of the Sacred Heart at Wadeye has also recently been funded for a new trade training centre.

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of visiting one of the non-government schools in my electorate to open a new boarding house and art and craft centre. Woolaning Homeland Christian College is about two hours drive south of Darwin, out in Litchfield National Park. I specifically mention this today because I promised the kids who sat in front of me on that day that I would mention them in this speech and that I would pass on to my colleagues in the Senate how enthusiastic they were about learning and how they had a thirst for knowledge. This school was opened in 2002 after the local Indigenous community negotiated with the Northern Territory Christian Schools Association to lease the land at a nominal rent for the purpose of a secondary school boarding college.

The federal government’s support has enabled this college to expand. The college now has five family boarding houses, with 60 beds in total. Such is the support for this school from communities in the region that they have a substantial waiting list. Another boarding house is due to open next year, taking their capacity to about 80 students. The students study secondary courses and can do vocational courses as well. They travel from their communities—from as far away as Ngukurr—to come to Woolaning. They live on-site and they learn a lot about self-sufficiency. They do their own housework and cooking, and they are wonderfully supported by a fantastic group of house parents. It is a pleasant, well-maintained campus where students can study and live happily while they do so. This bill will provide ongoing support to such places as Woolaning Homeland Christian College. It is with some pride that I stand in this chamber and say that I have been part of passing legislation that, because of the resources appropriated through it, will enable this school to continue to operate over the next four years. Again, I publicly pass on my congratulations to and pride in the students that I met and talked to that day.

This is a piece of legislation that starts to add to our education revolution. It provides funding and resources for schools in a fair and equitable way. It will ensure stability and continuity for non-government schools and particularly for Indigenous education around this country. (Time expired)

Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 and the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. The Education Legislation Amendment Bill amends the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act 2000 to implement a range of appropriations. It also makes consequential and technical amendments to a range of other acts. The Schools Assistance Bill 2008 provides Australian government funding to non-government schools for the next four years—2009-12. It is the Schools Assistance Bill which I will primarily focus on this afternoon. The coalition has four principal concerns with the Schools Assistance Bill 2008. These concerns relate to the changes to the power of the minister to refuse or delay the payment of funding, the requirement for all schools to comply by 2012 with the yet-to-be-developed national curriculum, the new reporting requirements for schools relating to the disclosure of financial information and sources of funding, and the scrapping of the new non-government schools establishment grants program.

Before coming to these specific concerns, it is worth putting this bill in context. This is a government that promised an education revolution. With much fanfare, Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard toured the country in the lead-up to the last election promising a bold new era in Australian education. But, to my understanding, ‘revolution’ does not mean ‘a bit of tinkering’; it does not mean ‘the status quo’; it does not mean ‘slow, gradual change’. A revolution is a swift and dramatic shift. Labor’s education revolution was to be—as I understood and as I think most Australians understood—a complete rewriting of the prevailing paradigm of education in this country. But so far all we have seen is a record of failure, a bit of disappointment and not too much action. We have seen the abolition of the Investing in Our Schools Program, which provided $1.2 billion for vital school infrastructure and equipment. That program primarily addressed neglect by state and territory governments around the nation. We have also seen the winding back of the Australian Technical Colleges and plans to hand those Australian Technical Colleges back to state governments—the very state governments which abolished technical education in Australia in the first place. And what on earth has happened to the schools trade training centres that Labor promised?

And then there is the biggest failure of all: the computers in schools program. The Labor Party, in opposition, promised a laptop for every student in the country. We were told that the laptop was to be the toolbox of the future and that every student in the country would have a laptop. It was not too long before we found out that that promise had been divided by two—that is, only every second student would have a laptop and students would have to share.

The next instalment in the saga of computers in schools was revealed at the COAG conference last weekend where what we on this side of the chamber had been saying for months and months came to pass—that is, that the government had dramatically underfunded the computers in schools program. We had said, and schools around the country had said, ‘What is the point of giving schools computers if you do not give them the software or the capacity to put in extra cabling, the capacity to put in air conditioners to keep the computers and the classrooms cool or the capacity to secure those computers?’ And what did we find out at COAG? That the government had undercommitted by $800 million—not $100 million or $200 million but $800 million. That is a massive cost blow-out. I hope that Deputy Prime Minister Gillard, at her annual performance review with the Prime Minister, is taken to task because that is rank incompetence. But I am sure she will not be chastised by the Prime Minister for that 66 per cent cost blow-out, because we on this side of the chamber all know that Ms Gillard is performing a lot better in the public’s view and in House question time than the Prime Minister. So I think he will tread very warily and very carefully with Ms Gillard.

The Labor member for Fowler, Julia Irwin, shares a bit of the scepticism of this side of the chamber in relation to the education revolution. When she spoke on these very bills in the House on 21 October, she said that these bills:

… have been presented as delivering Labor’s promised education revolution.

She went on to say that the measures contained in the bills are ‘hardly a revolution’. Mrs Irwin, surprisingly, exposed the con and the sham of Labor’s education policy when she described the supposedly new Labor wave of education reform as the ‘so-called education revolution’. I suspect Mrs Irwin is attacking Labor’s reforms from a somewhat different ideological standpoint but, nevertheless, she has belled the cat—it is not a revolution of any sort.

The widespread concern in the non-government schools sector over this bill should serve as a message for the government. The government say that they will consult with the non-government schools sector on the implementation of this legislation, but these discussions will be after the fact. That is not consultation; that is notification. This funding needs to be delivered. Non-government schools require certainty over the funding that they are to receive from this bill so that they can properly plan for next year and beyond.

The coalition’s record on delivering support to all schools probably does not need to be defended. In government, the coalition were able to provide substantial funding to both government and non-government schools because we managed the economy well, paid down Labor debt and produced budget surpluses. That is a bonus from balanced budgets and having surpluses: you can actually afford to do good things for schools. On top of recurrent funding, the coalition also funded capital projects, particularly in government schools, which, as I said earlier, have been badly neglected by Labor state governments. Through the Investing in Our Schools Program, which Labor has now abolished, the coalition delivered nearly $1.2 billion in capital funding for schools right across Australia. Thousands of schools and hundreds of thousands of students have benefited from new computers, classroom furniture, playgrounds, sports fields and equipment.

In contrast, Labor’s attitude towards non-government schools has ranged between extremely reluctant support and outright hostility. Ms Gillard is dragging her caucus kicking and screaming to the provision of a level of support to non-government schools. And we should not forget that the Labor Party is a creature of the trade union movement. We know that the teachers unions would rather walk over hot coals than see a single dollar of funding provided to non-government schools. The Australian Education Union has for some time now been running a dishonest and misleading campaign on schools funding. It claims that government schools are not properly funded by the federal government and that non-government schools receive a highly disproportionate level of funding. The AEU conveniently neglects to mention that government schools are owned and operated by state governments, which are and have always been their main funding source. The balance of taxpayer funding for schools in Australia is not tilted towards the non-government sector; quite the opposite in fact. Non-government schools enrol 33 per cent of students but receive just 25 per cent of total Commonwealth and state government funding. Yet the clear message coming from the education union is that non-government schools get too much money.

The danger for non-government schools and their teachers, parents and students is that the union view will gain currency in the Labor caucus. On this side of the chamber we all remember Labor’s private schools hit list. It is little wonder that non-government schools are suspicious of Labor’s motives in putting forward some of the provisions in this bill. Labor has a long and established history of attacking private schools. Any psychologist will tell you that the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. Teachers, parents and students are right not to trust Labor when it comes to supporting a diverse schools sector.

The first specific concern that schools have with this legislation is the insertion of a new power for the minister to refuse or delay payment of grant money to a school on the basis that it receives a qualified audit. The purpose of this provision, contained at clause 15(c) of the bill, is to ensure that payment of public money is made only to financially viable schools. That is an appropriate aim; none of us would disagree with that. But this new clause deems that the delivery of a qualified audit could be sufficient to deny funding to a school. This shows a lack of understanding of the audit process itself. There are a whole range of reasons why an audit report may be qualified—for example, it may be that record-keeping has been deficient in some minor way. This sort of problem can be easily rectified and it does not necessarily indicate that an entity is not in a sound financial position. There is no reason why the minister should have the power to refuse or delay payments to a school merely on the basis of a minor technical qualification of an audit.

The bill also seeks to tie funding for non-government schools to compliance with the national curriculum, yet the national curriculum is not drafted. I am pleased to see that the direction the curriculum seems to be heading in is a back-to-basics approach, but the parliament can hardly be asked to agree to make funding to schools conditional on compliance with a document none of us has yet seen. Indeed, a key issue is how prescriptive the national curriculum will be. The national curriculum does have the potential, if badly framed and implemented, to destroy choice in our education system. The non-government school sector is a big part of the culture of choice and diversity. If the national curriculum is framed and implemented in such a way as to erode the flexibility and choice of curricula available to parents when they choose schools for their children, non-government schools will have no choice but to comply or lose their Commonwealth funding.

The potential for removal of flexibility for schools in developing their curriculum content is of great concern for the non-government school sector. John Marsden, the principal of Candlebark School in Victoria, told the Senate inquiry into this legislation:

The dead hand of bureaucracy already rests heavily upon Australian schools. The Parliament should be working to lift it, not to add to its weight.

If the government begins to take Australia away from a diverse schools system characterised by choice, the only destination will be a one-size-fits-all system that will require much more prescription and regulation, adding to the bureaucratic burden referred to by Mr Marsden. There is no reason why the funding delivered to non-government schools in this legislation needs to be tied to national curriculum compliance now. Let us see the national curriculum first and have a debate about it. There is also the concern that the insistence on compliance with the national curriculum will mean that schools will be unable to offer alternative curriculum choices such as the International Baccalaureate, Montessori courses and Steiner courses.

Parents and teachers are rightly anxious about another matter: why the government wants access to their funding sources. Everything from donations from parents to the proceeds of school fetes, raffles and cake drives will need to be disclosed under the new Labor regime proposed in the bill. There is no disclosure threshold, so effectively the government wants to subject schools to a stricter regime of financial disclosure than is applied to political parties and candidates. Requiring the disclosure of this sort of information is unnecessary, and we on this side are very suspicious of Labor’s motives. There is a real and legitimate fear that this information will be used against non-government schools. Our fear is that the old politics of class envy, which we saw under the leadership of Mr Latham, is lurking below the surface of this bill, and that this bill will enable the government to give effect to that politics of envy at some point in the future.

We also have the concern that, the moment such information is published—something which is not required at the moment—no matter what the data shows, the teachers’ unions will be out there saying that private schools are awash with money and that those schools should not receive any taxpayer support. No doubt many on the Labor side will echo these sentiments, and I fear it will be only a matter of time before Ms Gillard is forced to cave in to union and caucus pressure, just as she has done on union right of entry into workplaces. My fear is that Labor will use this legislation to justify a redistribution of public funding away from non-government schools, just as was proposed in Labor’s schools hit list under Mr Latham. This would be a devastating blow to school choice in Australia.

The coalition in government was a strong supporter of choice in education. One way that the coalition supported the development of the non-government school sector in Australia was through the new non-government schools establishment grants. But the Rudd government, through this legislation, is phasing out these grants. This is a direct attack on the development of new non-government schools. There is no other way to look at it. This legislation will make it much, much harder for new non-government schools to be established. What this government should be doing is facilitating parental choice, not making that choice harder. Instead, the removal of this assistance will make the establishment of non-government schools that much harder and that much less likely.

Parents of students at non-government schools are taxpayers. They deserve a level of public support for their children’s education. In many cases, parents who send their kids to non-government schools make enormous sacrifices to send their children to those institutions. In many, many cases the parents are not wealthy, both parents work hard and they sacrifice a lot to provide that opportunity for their children. And it is the responsibility of government to help facilitate that sort of choice and to help support parents in making that sacrifice.

It is a deliberately dishonest stereotype promoted by Labor’s class warriors to try to imply that all parents of private school students are rich. Students at non-government schools receive a lesser share of public funding than students at government schools. That means that the non-government schools sector is making an enormous contribution to the wellbeing of the government school sector in Australia. The more students that are enrolled at non-government schools, the more funding is freed up to improve the government sector. To put it more simply: every student who attends a non-government school saves the taxpayer money and frees that money up for the government sector.

The coalition supports choice in education. We are the champions of choice in education. We are the champions of a parent’s right to choose the best school environment for their kids. It is essential that this funding be delivered to non-government schools. On this side of the chamber we hope that the government does not hold students at non-government schools hostage to ideology and that it does split the funding of the non-government schools from those areas in this legislation which we have concerns about. Some of the onerous and unnecessary requirements imposed by this legislation ought to be discarded. I urge all senators to support the opposition’s amendments to this bill. We should be giving schools our support, not new red tape to strangle them with. (Time expired)

Helen Kroger (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Senate for the opportunity to speak on the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 and the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. I support the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 without reservations. The bill is to amend the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act 2000 to provide additional funding for non-government schools teaching a significant number of Indigenous students. Minister for Education Julia Gillard has estimated that $5.4 million additional funding will be granted for this purpose, with special emphasis on non-government schools in remote and very remote areas. Whilst I support this bill, I have strong concerns about four sections of the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 as proposed by the Rudd Labor government.

The Schools Assistance Bill 2008 is the primary funding instrument for non-government education in Australia. Between 2009 and 2012, primary and secondary schools will receive $28 billion to provide non-government education. I am delighted that the Rudd Labor government has not reduced this figure and has followed the spirit of the last funding agreement the former coalition government made available. However, the bill introduces a number of changes which will make these payments conditional on the schools agreeing to new rules—for example, following the national curriculum and disclosing all private funding sources. These proposed changes are of great concern to non-government schools in Australia.

It is disappointing that we have so little time to discuss these issues. If we do not pass the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 in the Senate this week, the threat of no funding in early 2009 will hang over the very heads of private schools. These schools are worried, and should be, that they may not be able to open their doors for the new school year. The bill provides for great controversy, as the report of the Senate Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations has highlighted. I support the coalition’s amendments to this bill. It is of great importance that we do not link all the conditions that the Rudd Labor government intends to introduce in this appropriation bill to non-government school funding.

In clause 24 of the bill, the Rudd Labor government imposes on non-government schools the need to provide reports to the minister in relation to programs of financial assistance and the financial operations of the school, including its financial viability and funding sources. Funding sources is a new concept in this context. At the moment, the minister collects relevant but not all information about school incomes as part of government surveys of schools. This information is kept confidential and is not published; it is treated as commercial-in-confidence. But with clause 24 of the bill, this is all about to change.

Firstly, the clause gives the minister substantial new powers to demand information about the internal financial affairs of a school, as it demands the disclosure of all funding sources for the school or anybody associated with the school. In other words, the minister will learn all about scholarship funds, donations and all other sources of funding, such as profit-generating activities or community fundraising achieved by parents and friend associations.

Before commencing my career in this place, I worked as a fundraiser for a leading non-government school in Melbourne. From this experience, I question the Rudd Labor government’s intention with this clause. What business is it of the government to know whether a group of committed parents organise a raffle to pay for new sporting equipment or shadecloth for the playground? By pursuing personal fundraising activities, parents can directly have a say in what is important to them and what value they can add to the education of their kids. Parents and alumni often donate for particular activities and scholarship programs on the basis of anonymity. I have experience of many instances where they have value-added to the education on offer on the very basis that this generosity is not disclosed so that it does not directly affect the children in the school.

Clause 24 clearly manifests a breach of commercial-in-confidence. It could lead to a situation which scares off potential benefactors, and certainly from my direct experience it would achieve that. Education minister Gillard has tried to explain why Labor insists on the clause. In her second reading speech on the bill she said:

Only by understanding the total amount of funds at the disposal of individual schools is it possible to understand the relationship between resourcing and educational outcomes.

This argument is not convincing. Independent schools already provide the minister with enough information through their annual financial questionnaires.

Secondly, what worries me even more is the general phrasing of clause 24, which would allow for the publication of that information. This is a critical change. Independent schools fear this plan and they fear it for all the right reasons. In his submission to the inquiry into the Schools Assistance Bill 2008, Ballarat and Clarendon College Principal David Shepherd wrote:

We already provide exhaustive reports to receive appropriate funding and are concerned more detailed information may be counterproductive if misinterpreted by publicity or at worst used for purely political purposes.

This is not a minority view. This unease is shared by many other professionals, including the Deputy Chair of the Association of Independent Schools of Victoria, Heather Schnagl. She also provided evidence to the education committee and I quote her:

Independent schools have no problem with our financial accountability to the federal government … and we are very happy to publicly account for all public money. We are concerned about the potential, in publishing of all sources of moneys, for it to be distorted in the public press. I can just see the headlines on the front page of the media if they publish that: ‘So-and-so School has this amount of money to spend on each individual student.

What Ms Schnagl clearly fears is a new move by Labor to reinstate the notorious hit list that my colleague Senator Fifield has already mentioned. We all remember this attempt to target the wealthier schools. Labor’s statements are on record regarding not only the hit list but also the SES model, which does not require publication of this commercial-in-confidence information. We know that Labor still follows an ideologically driven desire to punish schools—yes, punish—which are creative, proactive and successful in raising additional funds. We know there is still a hidden agenda.

Publishing funding sources to understand the relationship between resourcing and educational outcomes is just not necessary. In 2005-06 the cost of educating a child in a government school was on average $11,243. The cost to government of educating a child in a non-government school in the same period was only $6,268. As a result, we already know where we stand today. We know that private education is costing the taxpayer less money whilst achieving outcomes equal to, and in some cases better than, public schools.

Interestingly, the government’s own survey highlighted what parents considered to be a priority. The government’s own survey showed that the disclosure of private funding sources ranked only ninth out of 13 criteria. What parents considered far more pressing and of concern and ranked up the top was literacy and numeracy—hardly a surprise. The survey also highlighted that parents were worried about the direction of the proposed national curriculum. Three out of four parents stated they would be very alarmed if they sent their children to a Steiner or Montessori school or a school offering the International Baccalaureate or the University of Cambridge International Examinations program. This was as well as the individual student programs offered by special needs schools.

Clause 22 of the Schools Assistance Bill determines that non-government schools will only receive funding under the condition that they commit themselves today to follow a national curriculum which is still in the making. At this stage we have little idea of what the national curriculum for the four proposed subjects—maths, science, history and English—will look like. Although discussion papers have been published by the Interim National Curriculum Board, there is still much room left for speculation on how the national curriculum will be defined. All we know today is that the national curriculum is to be introduced in 2011. The final documents will not be released until some time in 2009, yet the Schools Assistance Bill ties school funding to the acceptance of that curriculum. As senators heard repeatedly in the inquiry into the Schools Assistance Bill, this proposition is highly unfair. Several of those affected, such as members of the Association of Independent Schools of Victoria, have stated they should not be forced to agree to a curriculum they have never seen.

The development of a national curriculum began under the Howard government, and may I say it is a courageous and crucial venture. Australia does offer a confusing array of curriculum frameworks. At a state and territory level the authorities provide their own set of rules when it comes to determining what is taught, how it is taught and how it is assessed. As a consequence, students who move interstate struggle to keep up with their new curriculum framework and risk losing valuable study time while catching up with the different learning programs. The current system of competing curriculum frameworks also exacerbates a significant problem in the education system: that graduating students fail to reach a required standard of achievement measuring their competence when they leave school. Whilst I do support the establishment of a national curriculum, I have deep concerns about the direction the Rudd Labor government is taking to address the challenges in our education system.

There is a serious risk that this national curriculum could become substandard and flawed, yet Labor insists that non-government schools commit themselves to a curriculum that they have not only not seen but not had the opportunity to debate. Today when we discuss this bill we have no idea what direction this national curriculum will take. Will it be mandatory to follow, or will there be room for flexible teaching methodologies? The government needs to recognise the specific curriculum provided by schools such as the Christian, Montessori and Steiner schools along with the successful International Baccalaureate program. In her second reading speech on the Schools Assistance Bill, Minister Gillard stated, ‘The national curriculum once agreed and completed will be compulsory.’ Only two sentences later she said:

The national curriculum will not be a straitjacket for schools. It will provide for flexibility and scope to allow schools and teachers to implement its content and achievement standards in appropriate ways at the local and school level.

But this still leaves room for speculation on how prescriptive the national curriculum and its imposition will be.

Debate interrupted.