Page 561 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 19 March 2014
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(e) give a guarantee that indexation is included in any forward estimates, so that no school in the ACT, government or non-government, will lose a dollar in real terms as a result of these reforms; and
(f) ensure that the ACT is not disadvantaged, comparative to other States.
The government did not want to debate any of that. It moved, with the support of their Greens ministerial colleague, to delete all of those clauses. In fact, we sought information frequently through the estimates and the annual reports processes and in the Assembly on what was included in years five and six of the agreement that the government had signed up to, but nothing was forthcoming.
We thought our motion contained logical questions and issues that we wanted to put to the government to make them accountable. They obviously did not want to be accountable. So we think it somewhat strange that they now want to highlight how important a six-year agreement is. Federally, Labor knew it had no ability and no intention of ever needing to honour any of their funding deals. They knew they would not be in office to do so. All of Australia knew they would not be around and, of course, so did the ACT government.
When the coalition came to government the federal Minister for Education met with all the state and territory education ministers. We know of course what our own esteemed minister for education thought of that meeting. She tweeted her feelings so eloquently, demonstrating a truly cultural appreciation of the English language.
In any event, the result of that and other meetings was that we now do have a genuinely national education agreement, one that is based on four years of known financial modelling, Ms Burch. It is one of known financial modelling. The ACT has a four-year funding agreement and it is one that I note groups such as the Association of Independent Schools have welcomed. As the Executive Director Andrew Wrigley said at the time:
The new funding model for independent schools rolls all the government funding directly to the individual schools. The commitment will allow the association … to support member schools in the implementation of the national education reform.
What they sought was certainty, and now they have that. Signing up to a six-year agreement with a government that was in its last dying days was no certainty, and ACT Labor knew it at the time. ACT schools and, indeed, schools around Australia can now plan with some confidence. This is something worth celebrating, not criticising.
If we move to another section of Mr Gentleman’s motion, he refers to the five areas of reform under the national education reform agenda. They are: quality teaching, quality learning, meeting student need, empowering school leadership, and transparency and accountability. I think discussion around quality teaching and quality learning is far more significant and relevant to educational outcomes than how much money is thrown at a school.
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