Page 566 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 19 March 2014
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As the Assembly is aware, needs-based funding and the Gonski reforms, now called the national education reform agreement, or NERA, and the national plan for school improvement, are core issues for the ACT Greens and, I think I can safely say, for the Labor Party. They certainly form a central plank of the parliamentary agreement.
My former colleague Meredith Hunter campaigned strongly on the need for a fairer, needs-based and more transparent funding model for all of our school systems—and that is all of them. I am proud to be here today continuing those efforts. Recent months have seen a number of attacks by the federal government on the very basics of NERA—attacks that have led to backflips and broken promises.
I can only express disappointment and concern regarding the federal coalition’s collapse on education funding reforms, and in particular the reversal of the agreement with the participating states regarding a six-year funding deal. This was a truly extraordinary double backflip with a twist for a new government to make in such a short time and represented a major breach of trust for the states and territories that had signed up to these important reforms.
Further, it was a breach of trust with the education sectors, government and non-government families and school communities that worked in a non-partisan way to take the petty politics out of the debate and focus on the actual needs of students.
The Gonski modelling, years in the making, provided Australia with a roadmap towards a fairer, more equitable funding model for all government and non-government schools. Yet Minister Pyne could not even be bothered to meet with the Gonski panel to gain an understanding of why it was so important.
The ACT government, with genuine and positive engagement from the Catholic, independent and public school systems, and in line with a key priority of the Labor-Greens parliamentary agreement, signed up in good faith to the new funding model. Now millions of dollars of funding is apparently up for grabs, signed contracts are ripped up and schools are unable to make plans for the future education of our city’s children. The arrogant unilateral decision was staggering. The federal government needs to stop playing silly with school funding and get on with delivering what was promised.
There have been far too many distractions from the real issue of funding since the coalition came to power—captain’s pick teams announced to review national curriculum, thought bubbles regarding independent public schools that are based on, at best, neutral evaluations of Western Australian schools, and most recently the creation of a teacher education ministerial advisory group, despite the current existing national plan for school improvement, for all of which alone there is surely some merit in having open discussion and genuine consultation. But at a time when the core issues of the day are so subject to change at the drop of a hat, these issues have some stakeholders wondering just what the hell the next thing will be.
We are lucky in the ACT to have a small, cohesive education sector, and the advantages of this cannot be overestimated. We have an almost unique opportunity
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