Page 559 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 19 March 2014
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Of course, needs-based funding proponents are very anxious to see to what is going to occur in the May federal budget. The Australian Education Union has made a strong submission to the Senate select committee on the Gonski school funding arrangements. Along with 29 other detailed submissions, the AEU believes that the Gonski review was a watershed in Australian education and political history. It was undertaken by a panel of independent experts informed by a wealth of national and international empirical evidence, including independent research commissioned by the review. It involved extensive stakeholder and public consultation and received over 7,000 submissions. It established that as a nation we invest too little in education and that our funding arrangements are inequitable. They are also inefficient and failing too many children.
Driven largely by political accommodations rather than the needs of students and schools, this has resulted in achievement and educational attainment gaps between students from disadvantaged backgrounds and those from more advantaged backgrounds which are greater than any comparable nation. The review found that those most affected by the inadequacies in our funding system are the most vulnerable and disadvantaged students, including those with disabilities and special needs, and the schools that serve them, predominantly schools in the public sector, using the OECD definition of equity in education that every child should be able to achieve their potential regardless of social, cultural or economic background or their relationship to property, power or possession.
As its starting point, the review made a series of recommendations for long overdue major reform of our school funding arrangements. At the heart of these recommendations was the call for a national commitment to substantially increase investment in education and a fair and more equitable funding system. These two measures would help lift Australia’s education achievement by ensuring that all schools have the resources they need to educate every student to a high standard, no matter what their background. The review finished the preliminary part by saying:
Australia needs to make a serious and systematic effort to reduce the disparities that exist at present between the educational performance of students from high and low socioeconomic backgrounds. All students should be able to access a high standard of education regardless of their background and where they live, and funding arrangements should provide them with the resources, support and opportunity for them to reach their full potential.
I urge all members to support this important motion.
MR DOSZPOT (Molonglo) (5.18): I welcome the opportunity to speak this afternoon on this motion moved by Mr Gentleman. As a precursor to other things that I want to say, I think it is instructive to hear the first 15 minutes of the debate on this motion. Most of the issues seem to reflect on the problems in education as being somebody else’s problems, somebody else’s fault. It is high time that this ACT government recognised the fact that they have had something like four ministers for education over the last 11 years. It is not exactly a very good start to have people who do not understand the portfolios they work in. These are four different people of different persuasions in many ways. How can education take this government seriously in respect of their dedication to education? I think this is something that we need to reflect on and this government needs to reflect on.
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