Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A proposal has been received from Senator McKim:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion:

Labor must listen to parents, carers, teachers, unions and 2.6 million stude nts, and deliver 100% funding to all public schools at the start of the next National School Reform Agreement.

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

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

ALLMAN-PAYNE () (): Last year, about 130,000 public-school kids finished up their final year of high school. That's 130,000 kids who never experienced a public school that wasn't underfunded. For the entirety of their schooling life, it was always about stretching money, cuts and layoffs. This year, another 100,000 or so public-school kids will graduate, also never having gone to a school that wasn't underfunded. It will be the same the year after that and likely the year after that. This is a national crisis that is affecting kids today and of the future.

Public schools are now underfunded by $6.6 billion a year. Yet, since the original Gonski review, government funding to private schools has increased at double the rate of that to public schools. The major parties have withheld $26.9 billion from public schools and plugged that money into the private system. Public school investment in Australia is below the OECD average.

This funding shortfall is more than just numbers. Underfunding means classrooms built in the 1970s that are filled with asbestos or mildew and mould. Underfunding means teachers working 12-hour days and covering the work of counsellors, administrators, social workers and educators all at once. Underfunding means these teachers are not paid for the hours they pour into marking and preparation, school events and excursions over nights and weekends. Underfunding means one teacher for dozens of kids. It means broken laptops, out-of-date textbooks and parents footing the bills. Above all, underfunding means kids slipping through the cracks, it means failing, it means not setting them up for success and it means widening inequality in this country.

Underfunding means that when NAPLAN results come out it's not surprising to see that so many of our young people are struggling. When teachers and schools don't have the resources they need to support our most educationally disadvantaged students results go down. Every time this happens Labor and the coalition start the distraction game—'It must be our poorly trained teachers,' 'Maybe it's the way we teach reading,' or, 'Maybe it's naughty kids or bad parenting.' They do anything to distract the public's attention from the nub of the problem, which is chronic underfunding.

Underfunding means a kick in the teeth for Australian egalitarianism. We are desperately running out of time. I hear time and again from teachers who are overworked and at the brink, from comrades who are plugging holes and buying classroom resources and even food for their students, and from parents who can't fathom what has happened to their local public schools. Australia and our kids are suffering for it.

At every opportunity to fix this Labor have folded. They backed off from Gonski, their crowning education achievement. They backed off what it actually called for, which is clawing back money from the private sector and putting it into the public one. Ten years later the gap remains. Money is pouring into the private sector. Now we have one of the most segregated school systems in the world. Right now nearly every private school in this country is overfunded. Not only are they filled over and above the SRS with government money but they also charge huge fees on top of that. The public are literally paying for private schools to succeed. We are footing the bill for plunge pools and orchestra pits. We are footing the bill for these schools to charge exorbitant fees—fees that are locking out kids and locking in inequality.

Right now there is no pathway back. Labor needs to own up to its neoliberal mistakes and take responsibility for its role in Australia's surging inequality. That starts with rebuilding public education. This is the last chance we have to save our public schools and to truly deliver an equitable school system that gives every child a chance at a great life. The Labor government must fund all public schools to 100 per cent at the start of the next National School Reform Agreement or they will consign our public schools to collapse.

Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know Senator Allman-Payne is very dedicated to making sure that the best outcomes are happening in our schools. She is a very important contributor to a number of the Senate committees that I'm on.

The Minister for Education has said that Australia has a good education system but it needs to be a lot better and a lot fairer. I agree that the funding is important—it's critical. The government is committed to working with state and territory governments to get every school to 100 per cent of its fair funding level. Funding is critical; it is important. The current National School Reform Agreement was signed off in 2018 by the member for Cook. Of course, that speaks of a wasted decade and missed opportunities in school education. The Productivity Commission, which I'll go to a bit later in my allotted time, was damning in its assessment of the former government's plan for school education, finding a series of deep-seated problems with the way the system was operating.

Last month, the Australian Education Research Organisation released research revealing that, under the current agreement, very few students who start behind or fall behind are able to catch up. Only about one in five students who are below the minimum standard in year 3 are above it in year 9. The coalition's school agreement has not worked. This is a critical, fundamental problem that we're facing right at this moment. That's why the Minister for Education has said multiple times that funding is important but what it does is also critical.

The Commonwealth funding per student in government schools went up by seven per cent over the last year, from $3,829 per student in 2022 to $4,096 in 2023. Critically, to make sure that we have the right funding, this includes an increase in funding for government schools from $10.6 billion in 2023 to $11.1 billion in 2024. Commonwealth funding for government schools will continue to grow during the one-year extension of the current agreement.

Critical issues were raised in the Productivity Commission's review of the National School Reform Agreement regarding the present system's difficulties and the need for reform. For example, in finding 3.1 of their report, they said:

To date, the National Policy Initiatives are unlikely to have affected the education outcomes of Australian students.

So, a policy was put into effect to improve the outcomes, and the Productivity Commission said there's a definite problem with regard to how those outcomes are being achieved. The report went on to say:

  …   …   …

The Productivity Commission report went on to look at the question of making sure that the right thing is done. Of course, the Liberals couldn't get it right. Finding 3.2 was:

The National School Reform Agreement has gaps that undermine its effectiveness in facilitating collective, national efforts to lift student outcomes.

The shortfalls the report outlines are incredibly important. They include:

I could go on to the other issues the Productivity Commission raised, but some of those startling results I've given are important.

Also, and I think Senator Allman-Payne already touched on this, there's an issue with the incredibly long hours for teachers and how teachers' workloads have increased substantially. The workload of Australian teachers is greater than the OECD average. Australian teachers spend more time on non-teaching tasks and less time on teaching tasks than their international counterparts. Teacher workload has increased over time, and many teachers cite heavy workload as a reason for wanting to leave the profession.

There are a number of reforms that are critically important to making sure that we get this right. Part of those reforms are being raised in the discussions that are taking place with the states and territories regarding their obligations and our funding to make sure that, along with them, we get a better result for all students, all parents and all teachers across the Australian community.

Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak today on this matter of public importance and on the failure of Labor to listen to students, parents, unions and teachers regarding school funding. Firstly, I want to thank Australian teachers for the incredible work they do. I regret that this motion has not referenced the importance of evidence based teaching and learning, which are critical to turning around our declining school standards—which are now a national embarrassment. This is the most critical issue facing Australian parents, carers, teachers and students, who are being denied the opportunity to reach their best potential. Why do one in five students in year 7 have the reading ability of a grade 4 student? Why did one in three students fail the most recent NAPLAN tests? These are shocking statistics. Proven teaching methods such as explicit instruction must be mandated in every Australian classroom. Why is this critical issue receiving such scant attention from both Labor and the Greens? The biggest disadvantage is not learning to read and write.

Over the past two decades, despite a 60 per cent increase in funding, our standards have declined. Twenty years ago, Australia ranked fourth internationally in reading, eighth in science and 11th in maths. Now we have fallen to 16th in reading, 17th in science and 29th in maths. Australia has lost the equivalent of one year's worth of learning over the past two decades. We were once on par with top-performing nations such as Singapore. Now the average 15-year-old Singaporean is three years ahead of their Australian counterparts.

In its submission to Labor's review on the national school reform agreement, the Australian Education Research Organisation has reiterated the importance of reforms to ensure that proven, evidence based teaching methods are adopted in every Australian classroom, along with regular student assessment, targeted interventions and continuous database tracking of student progress. I put on the record that, under the coalition, funding doubled from $13 billion to $25.3 billion. This must not be a funding war but a war to improve student outcomes to ensure the next generation of Australians can reach for the stars.

Under the Gonski needs based funding model, the Commonwealth is meeting its current obligations, providing 20 per cent and more of the schooling resource standard to government schools but, with the exception of the ACT, the states and territories which run schools are well below 80 per cent. Victoria is only 70 per cent. Queensland is 69 per cent and the Northern Territory a dismal 59 per cent. So under Gonski, students in government schools are being short-changed by the states and the Northern Territory. All bar one of these are Labor governments.

The Albanese government was elected on a promise to deliver 100 per cent SOS funding, a pathway to full and fair funding, but Labor's pathway has become some fanciful yellow brick road to nowhere. All we have seen is review after review from education minister Mr Jason Clare, who had delayed the national school reform agreement by one year in a decision that even the Australian Education Union has called a 'betrayal of under-funded public schools and disadvantaged students'. In fact, the budget papers show the Albanese government is cutting $1.2 billion in funding to government schools over the next four years—what hypocrisy from Labor. Where is the investment in better student outcomes, or even building boarding schools for Indigenous students in East Arnhem Land and the Pilbara, which have been cruelly axed by this government? So much for listening to Indigenous voices. The big funding challenge facing Australian schools is to ensure that we are investing in the things that will help students and teachers to excel—evidence based teaching and learning, fixing the overcrowded curriculum and dramatic improvements in initial teacher education.

I say to this minister: What about the growing teacher shortage crisis? We have a crisis in this country. So many teachers are under pressure with the administrative burden, yet this minister has done absolutely nothing to fix the teacher shortage crisis, particularly in regional Australia. Our teachers are drowning in work. Principals cannot find teachers to teach their students. It is an absolute disgrace. In this motion today, I am calling for urgent action from the government to fix the teacher shortage crisis in Australian schools, particularly across regional Australia.

Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tasmanian public school teachers feel like they have been set up to fail. That is the message I have heard in meetings over the past few weeks. Teachers have sat in front of me with tears in their eyes and told me they just can't do it anymore. They are underfunded, under-resourced and have their backs against the wall. We have a huge shortage of teachers in Tassie and there are a few reasons why. Some students are not finishing their degrees. Many are dropping out because they can't afford to do placements. They are required to do unpaid full-time work that prevents them from working a paying job at the same time. Some teachers are getting a few years in and are then burning out. They are using their own pay cheques to fund classroom activities and to buy lunches for kids. Others are leaving the state entirely. How do we keep our best and brightest teachers in Tassie when they can make more money by leaving? I don't understand. Teachers want funding to cover the bare minimum. We're not talking about the bells and whistles, just the necessities.

The federal government has met its end of the Gonski funding bargain but the states are dragging their heels. It's not the job of the federal government to reward the states going slow on school funding. States have to cover their share of the bill. It's not up to the federal government to make sure teachers are being paid properly. That's up to the states, too. At this rate, Tasmanian schools won't be fully funded until 2027. That is teachers being asked to do more and more with less than we know they need. And while we wait for that to happen over the next four years, we'll see more teachers leave and fewer teachers starting.

How we value our teachers, the key people who shape our children's start to life, says a lot about us as a nation. But it's got to be a team effort with the states pulling their weight. I know I'm in the teachers' corner.

Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to take the opportunity to indicate how important this debate this afternoon is. I thank Senator McKim for moving this matter of public importance because it allows me to speak on a subject that is very close to my own heart, education. As a former teacher, and also a teacher of teachers at the University of Newcastle, I know about the transformative power of education in my own life and also giving that opportunity.

I want to respond to a couple of comments by Senator Henderson in her contribution. I know that she is the spokesperson for education for the government that just was—that just was for the last 10 years. She talked about cuts. Let me tell you about being in estimates here in this building and watching Senator Birmingham defend cut after cut. A former agreement that was made with my state, New South Wales, allowed that state to count the cost of bussing kids to school as part of the educational contribution. That's why we have the situation that Senator Tyrrell was just talking about, where teachers are buying lunches for kids and are going out and getting paper for them to be able to work with. That's why we're where we are. It's because terrible things were done for a point of difference in terms of funding.

I warn that the simplistic solutions that were the signature of the previous government—we must have explicit instruction; we must be mandating that that occurs for every student—let me tell you that the evidence base is that every learner learns in a slightly different way. There is no way anybody would dare come in here and say to a builder: 'I'm sorry, I'm going to mandate the tools that you can use to build a house. You must do it the way I say, even though I'm not an expert and I don't know.' Teachers are experts, and they're sick and tired of politicians playing with them and telling them what to do without the expertise or the professional knowledge and diminishing the complex work that teachers do to mandate the sort of instructions we just heard repeated here again.

Funding obviously is critical in making schools able to do the best that they can do, but what's most important is what that funding does. We heard Senator Henderson's words: 'We have to have a war to improve the education sector.' We don't need a war. We need the sort of vision that allowed Henry Parkes to establish the concept of public education in the first place. The buildings we see were aspirational. They gave hope and heart to people in schools. That's what we need. We don't need more of this 'let's play divisive different games' and politicians telling teachers what to do from this building. We should watch and observe. We should take the data. We should obviously notice when things are going wrong, and we need to respond carefully, but we shouldn't be mandating anything for the multitude of needs that exist in schools across this country.

The current National Schools Reform Agreement was signed off in 2018 by the Morrison government. This is an agreement which with every year that has passed has become an illustration of a wasted decade of missed opportunities in school education. The Productivity Commission was damning in its assessment of that agreement, pointing out last year that the former government's plan lacked real targets and was missing very practical reforms needed to help prevent students from falling behind. The results of 10 years of supposed educational leadership in this place by the Liberal-National parties was that more than 86,000 students were failing to meet either basic literacy or numeracy standards. And why are teachers leaving? Because they're being berated, deprofessionalised and discarded; they're walking away from really powerful and important work because they've been underpaid and underfunded.

As a senator for New South Wales, I want to give a voice to the thanks of my teaching colleagues across that state. They're so happy that there has been a change of government there as well. I want to acknowledge my colleagues there: Prue Carr, the Minister for Education and Early Learning, and Premier Minns, who are going to lead a revolutionary transformation of and lift in investment in our students in that state.

I'm pleased to say that this government here in Canberra is getting on with the job of dealing with the legacy of decline that was accurately documented by Senator Henderson. But it all happened on their watch. We went to the election with a commitment to work with the states and territories on funding, to get every school funded to 100 per cent of its fair funding level. Fairness in funding for every Australian student is simply what we have to do.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

r SHOEBRIDGE () (): I commend Senator McKim for bringing this motion forward, and I endorse the words of my colleague Senator Allman-Payne in relation to the basic minimum for public schools.

There has been a long discussion about what the National School Reform Agreement should have when it is renegotiated for the next five years. But let's be clear: the Greens say that the minimum standard we will accept for the next National School Reform Agreement is that there be 100 per cent funding of the SRS at the start of the next agreement—that means by January 2025. It's not at the end of the five-year agreement and not halfway through the five-year agreement, but at the start of the agreement that there needs to be 100 per cent of SRS funding.

What is SRS funding? It's the Schooling Resource Standard funding. The Schooling Resource Standard isn't some sort of Rolls-Royce funding; it's the bare minimum funding needed so that 80 per cent of kids who go to that school get across the line. It's not something that we should be looking for aspirationally; it's the bare minimum. I want to be clear, on behalf of the Greens: we say that once we get to 100 per cent of the SRS, we then want to get 100 per cent of the kids across the line and the funding needed to get 100 per cent across the line. The Schooling Resource Standard isn't a kind of aspirational goal; it's the bare minimum. What is absolutely disgusting, from a country that has, broadly, Labor state and Labor federal governments, is that, at the moment, public schools only receive, on average, 87 per cent of that minimum funding—87 per cent! And a big chunk of that of course is from a decade of underfunding from the coalition—a decade of underfunding from the coalition federally. Instead of talking about what public schools really need—which is respect for teachers, pay for teachers and proper funding for schools—we've had the better part of a decade of culture wars from the coalition, trying to rewrite the curriculum from the federal parliament rather than doing the work that the federal parliament should do for public schools, which is to fund our teachers and our schools, and to support our kids going through their education.

Public education is the glue that holds any equitable society together. A fully funded world-class public education system is what marks out equitable, open societies from the sorts of increasingly divided societies we see around the world. As Greens senators, my colleagues and I rate—our team rates—public education as one of those core indicators for the health of any society. While this government—and, let's be clear, also the coalition before them—have done everything they can to come up with every excuse possible to say that they can't meet the bare minimum funding, the rest of the country is looking at this parliament and saying: 'Hang on a minute, you're willing to legislate for stage 3 tax cuts and give a quarter of a trillion dollars largely to those people who already have more than enough. There's a quarter of a trillion to give to people on 200 grand or more, but you don't have the money for public education?' Or the coalition and Labor come together and say, 'We have half a trillion dollars to spend on nuclear submarines', which we don't need and which make us less safe, but, 'we don't have any money for public education', or, 'we can't close the gap on public education'.

Let's look at what that means. That means this parliament is perfectly comfortable with public-school teachers having to buy the basics for their lessons, with public-school teachers having to pay out of their inadequate salaries to get some of their kids some lunch money and with parents across the country increasingly paying for basic teaching tools in public schools because there's not enough money. It's not that there's not enough money; it's that the priorities are cooked. There are tax cuts for the wealthy and nuclear submarines to fund war, but where's the money for public education?

When we're looking forward over the next few months, we're looking at what the next national school reform agreement will put in place. Let's make it 100 per cent funding from day 1 of the agreement. Then the Greens will give it a tick.

Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for the discussion has expired.