Page 3310 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 22 August 2012
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Over the last few decades, we have seen inequity injected into our funding system. There is now a staggering five and a half year gap in performance between the most advantaged and disadvantaged children in year nine.
This is something we are also aware of here in the ACT. The ACT Greens called for the inquiry into the educational achievement gap in the ACT in 2009, which highlighted the growing disadvantage some students face in the territory and made 24 recommendations to improve equity of outcomes. This work is still as pertinent today as it was then, and we cannot afford to forget that there are still gaps and issues here in Canberra.
Senator Wright in that same speech went on to note that Australia now ranks 24th out of 30 OECD countries in school spending, that we are sliding down the school ranking and that we are seeing greater inequality in educational levels between students. At one of the richest times in this country’s history, in the middle of a mining boom, our governments spent three per cent of our GDP on schools—that is below the OECD average—whilst we should be looking at the gold standards of Iceland, Norway, Denmark and Finland as our models.
We also recognise that it is not just school funding that needs reform. The intent of the Gonski review recommendations is not just about throwing more money around. We have an opportunity to move beyond historical, near hysterical political biases and fund not just schools but students’ educational outcomes. We have a once-in-a-generation chance to finally base student resourcing on need, and I and my colleagues applaud any move that will see our children and young people be seen as the key stakeholders in schools, not the just various lobby groups and their vested interests.
That is why the Greens were the first party to back Gonski’s recommendation that at least $5 billion a year is needed to reduce disadvantage on education outcomes in both government and non-government schools, and that is why we are arguing to use the mining tax to help pay for this. Investment in education is an investment in our children and in the future of the nation.
Returning to the bill before us, the Greens will be proposing amendments to the government bill to make improvements that we think will strengthen this reform being made today, and I will touch briefly on those now. Mr Seselja has already spoken to the first one, and I will make some more extensive comments on that, but we are concerned about the limitation to just primary schooling. Secondly, the right should include the right to choose for the child schooling other than schooling provided by the government that conforms to the minimum educational standards required under law and to ensure the religious and moral education of the child in conformity with the convictions of the parent or guardian. This is in line with the government’s bill.
We would omit the proposed new section that limits the bill to its immediately realisable aspects. The background to this amendment is that this bill primarily operates to include the right to education into the act through an incremental approach. This means the first two of the ACT human rights framework elements will apply but not the third. This means it will require government bills to pass pre-legislative
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