Page 3964 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 12 December 2006
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Essentially, the original bill was a clean-up bill and one which I would have been happy to support. However, I have been concerned that this bill amends the Education Act to legitimise the growing costs to parents of public education, including the cost of excursions, arts extension activities and so on. The bill, as it was, unamended, would have allowed for some activities, services and facilities to be paid for by a student’s parents, but the actual activities, services and facilities would have been determined by the minister through disallowable guidelines.
When a draft of the bill was first circulated, concerns about this element were raised by a number of stakeholders, including the P&C council. As I understand it, since the draft stage there have been discussions and some small changes to the language in the bill, but the bill before us, minus amendments, does not reflect the agreement reached in those discussions.
The P&C council proposed that “the activities, services and facilities for which charges will be allowed” would only be those “involved in providing optional enrichment activities that are not required for course completion”. However, it seems that there are some courses—for instance, pilots’ courses—which are delivered through one of our colleges that could not exist unless parents or kids were prepared to pay thousands of dollars. And because many kids and parents want that course and similar courses that require considerable outlay, the P&C’s original suggestion would rule that out. After some discussion, interested parties, including the P&C council and the education department, agreed to delete the legislative requirement to create the list and move instead to do so by regulation. Now, whether that becomes a disallowable instrument or not remains to be seen.
Unfortunately, the government forgot to circulate the eight pages of amendments, including the amendment to delete clause 9, which is the clause I have just been talking about; so it is hard at this stage really to be sure of what we are doing. I have been reassured that the eight pages of amendments that I have not had a chance to look at are all technical, when clearly the amendment to delete clause 9 is not just a technical amendment. That does not help.
I am not suggesting that this bill is the first step in a downhill rush away from a truly free public education. That rush had already begun. The creation of a competitive market both between government and non-government schools and between government schools themselves, with a focus on gifted and talented programs to appeal to mobile middle-class parents, has already had some destructive impacts on the government school sector. The substantial increase in government funding, particularly federal funding for non-government schools has upped the ante when it comes to extension programs and facilities.
This legislation proposed to put in place a more transparent way to delineate what should and should not be charged for. Given that the instrument is disallowable, it is a level of scrutiny that, in a minority government, might be seen as adequate. With a majority government, however, we have already seen enough to indicate that it may not be.
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