Page 1595 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 June 2007
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Education was savagely attacked last year, but this year it gets new buildings and information technology in return. The new college was expected, and it is welcome. The ICT expenditure certainly helps to ensure that our schools can provide contemporary programs, and there is no doubt that a lot of old buildings need some upgrading. Indeed, many of our schools could be retrofitted, improving our children’s health and having a positive effect on the environment and their learning.
I think we need to remind ourselves, however, that the budget last year not only shut schools unnecessarily, and with long-lasting negative consequences, but also cut staff in the department and in classrooms. This budget confirms for me that those cuts are going to impact on student outcomes—new paint or new equipment notwithstanding.
We need to look at education in a national context. In the ACT, as all around Australia, we have high quality school education that serves most children well. However, the system is not equitable. It works best for children who are already advantaged and worst for children who are disadvantaged and who stand the most to gain from a well-resourced public education system.
These are the children who consistently have lower levels of educational achievement than others, and they are almost always children, and especially boys, from low income households, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, some children who are learning English as a second language and children with disabilities and learning difficulties. Overwhelmingly, these children go to public schools. The federal government, however, has significantly increased funding to non-government schools which are, by their nature, exclusive.
In the context of a sustained and unfounded attack on the literacy and numeracy standards of education, particularly public education, in Australia and in an increasingly intense and complex society which has given rise to anxiety about the social environment of young people, we are seeing a shift away from government schools. The ACT, due to its affluence, is, predictably, near the top of that shift.
That means the interplay between government and non-government schools is happening on an uneven playing field. And that is why, if we are serious about making education more equitable and lifting levels of educational achievement for all students, strengthening our public education system must be a priority. And new schools and equipment alone are not a thoughtful enough approach.
The ACT government does not have the recent history of supporting a teaching practice and a school environment which provide rich and innovative educational experiences. The school communities and individual teachers, have been doing that work themselves, partly because of the inheritance of a framework of innovation that was set up years ago, and partly because there was enough wiggle room in the system for them to do it. Now, in a much tighter and more structured environment, we risk throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
There is not time in this speech to list all the investment in teaching and counselling and support that ought to be going into our schools. Suffice to say that dropping our
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