Page 1831 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 2 May 2012
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(2) calls on the ACT government to:
(a) acknowledge the significant contribution, in both financial investment and educational outcomes, that ACT schools make to the education of ACT children;
(b) apologise to ACT families for the unnecessary delays and additional costs that failure to progress the construction of John Paul College has caused;
(c) explain the variation between ACT public school funding which is higher than any jurisdiction in Australia and funding to ACT Catholic and independent schools which is among the lowest of all States; and
(d) provide assurances that no ACT school will be disadvantaged if the recommendations of the Gonski Review are implemented.
This week, Catholic schools around the ACT and New South Wales are celebrating Catholic Schools Week. As usual, there is a theme, and this year’s theme is faith in every student. I was privileged to join the staff and the students at St Michael’s, Kaleen, this morning, for breakfast to celebrate this important event in the Catholic schools calendar. I am happy to point out that my colleagues Mr Seselja and Mr Coe were also there, as was Ms Hunter and the minister for education, Dr Bourke. I think that faith in every student is a very apt sentiment and one that could easily be translated across the entire ACT education sector, because it is indeed important that the government has faith in every student and for the ACT students in every school to have faith that the education system in this territory delivers the very best education that it can for them.
According to the latest school census statistics, there are 13,378 students in Catholic systemic primary, high schools and colleges, and 4,170 students in independent, congregational, Catholic schools. Collectively, that means approximately 29 per cent, moving close to one-third, of all students in the ACT are educated at a Catholic school. And their numbers are growing. With a new primary school starting in Harrison and the eventual construction of John Paul college at Nicholls, together with strong growth in the schools at Amaroo, Aranda and west Belconnen and kindergarten enrolments the strongest they have been for several years, the proportion of total ACT students will continue to expand above the current 29 per cent. By comparison, the national average for Catholic school students is 20 per cent.
So it is fair to say that on any measure, the Catholic education sector is a significant contributor to the education of ACT students. It is also fair to say that there is a transparent lack of fairness in how successive Labor governments have treated ACT Catholic schools. ACT Catholic schools have twice the resource gap between government and Catholic schools compared to the national average. If you look at the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, ACARA, financial data from My School 3, it shows that ACT Catholic schools receive $1,812 per capita funding from the ACT government. If you combine both federal and state funding, ACT Catholic schools receive a total of $7,364 per capita funding, compared to $12,479 per capita funding to ACT public schools. So we have 29 per cent of children
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