Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

NAPLAN results have been another stark reminder of the destruction of our public education system. Everyone is looking for a teacher, student or pedagogy to blame to explain why student performance continues to fall. But the answer is as clear as day: by consistently underfunding them we have set up our public schools to fail. We can't force all public schools in this country to subsist on scraps, then act surprised when they struggle. There is only one thing that will fix this: money. Right now, 98 per cent of our public schools are underfunded, while almost every private school is overfunded.

Public education is the bedrock of a strong democracy. It's about laying a foundation that means all kids are afforded the same opportunities. But right now we have one of the most segregated and inequitable school systems in the OECD. It would take just $6.6 billion a year to ensure that all public schools in this country are funded to the absolute minimum requirement. Right now we have the opportunity to set right a decade of underfunding and gutting. We can plug the gap so that a kid starting school next term will get to go to a properly funded public school—a school where teachers are paid properly and have the time to attend to the needs of their students, and where parents don't have to pay out of pocket, during a cost-of-living crisis, to cover basics like pens, notebooks and laptops.

The next National School Reform Agreement must put public money back into public schools and stop the decades-long rort of subsidising elite private schools with public money.