Peter Andren (Calare, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Exactly. I am going to get onto the state government in a minute. The $137,000 for the gym was very welcome. They are ecstatic about it. It is a vital piece of infrastructure for the school, and it is to be hoped that the state government steps in to make up what is a rather modest shortfall.

Elsewhere, Manildra Public School feels cheated because it will no longer be able to find sufficient funds for a rebuilding of the computer infrastructure in the school. Mandurama Public School is another school that welcomes the funding it has received, but it had expected to be able to apply for further grants up to the original maximum of $150,000.

In introducing this scheme, the federal government quite rightly severely criticised the last decade of Labor government neglect of schools in New South Wales—and I would suggest that neglect goes back probably 20 years, as with most of our infrastructure around the country. It is one thing to hold the state government to account for its shortfall in the funding of these essential projects; it is one thing to promise this scheme to make a political point—the correct point—that there has been neglect in this area; but, having promised the scheme, it is a bit rich to wind it up by 2008 or thereabouts and cut back the maximum amount for which a school can apply when there is and has been an expectation that, properly staged, many of these projects could receive funding under this program, leaving aside the fact that such infrastructure perhaps should always have been funded by the state.

The government might say there was never an expectation that each and every school would receive $150,000. That is probably correct, but, rightly or wrongly, that was the perception created in the school communities, and there is a definite feeling that schools have been let down. They were let down in the first place by the state government, which has recklessly ignored school infrastructure needs over those many years, but they have also been let down by this federal scheme that promised and delivered plenty to some but has left others, who wanted to stage their improvements, well short of the funding they could reasonably have expected.

Right around the Calare electorate there are examples of improvements to school amenities that would not have been possible without these targeted grants from the Commonwealth. The so-called COLA, covered outside learning area, has popped up on quite a few school playgrounds, and there is hope that down the track the resources may be found by donation or otherwise to fill them in and make an enclosed gymnasium in places such as Meadow Flat, which has a pretty unforgiving winter. As welcome as that framework is, they see that they will have to look down the track for some other program that may deliver the cladding to provide a fully covered small gymnasium—a facility that these primary schools could perhaps never have dreamt of until this scheme came along. Soft-fall areas and sun shades have been improvements of choice for other school communities. The Investing in Our Schools Program has been very welcome, but most communities feel it should just be the start of a recurrent program that helps schools catch up on years of neglect by governments of all persuasions—state and federal.

Today’s Sydney Morning Herald reveals that a survey of 300 schools has uncovered a 10-year backlog of maintenance problems that the New South Wales department of education has allegedly been ‘fighting to hide’. The Public Schools Principals Forum survey has found that many schools have been forced to put up with a decade of ‘stinking, blocked toilets’, threadbare carpets, termite infestation and uneven, unsafe playgrounds. The state minister admits it is ‘a backlog we haven’t managed to get on top of’. The federal government accuses the states, especially New South Wales, of failing to use their GST revenue to upgrade schools and hospitals. The New South Wales government blames the feds and other states for taking more than a fair share of GST. Meanwhile, these schools, the children and their communities continue to suffer poor conditions while others, public and private, enjoy facilities that a Cullen Bullen Public School or a Canowindra Public School—which I have seen recently, and their lack of facilities—could only dream of.

The New South Wales government has been culpable in ignoring the needs of many schools for a decade or more, while the Commonwealth has been allocating much needed education funding, including that in this bill, on a flawed principle that guarantees a widening of the gap between the haves and have-nots of education.

Take the socioeconomic status, or SES, formula used to determine non-government school grants. It is based on postcodes, meaning, for example, that any Sydney independent school could be funded according to the socioeconomic status of a country postcode in a low socioeconomic part of the state; however, a child at that school could come from an income base far in excess of the postcode average. Yet the school is funded according to the economic status of the whole postcode area. Similarly, this could apply to students from otherwise low socioeconomic metropolitan areas. I would suggest that such a test is inherently flawed. So too is the Investing in Our Schools Program, by providing access to schools regardless of their neighbourhood or district’s relative economic status—even down to providing the wherewithal to prepare submissions. For example, a large public school in Orange might have a submission prepared by the professional parent body that those schools have—accountants and so on. A two-teacher school, with the limited facilities and expertise and time they have to prepare submissions, is more likely to stage these things and ask for smaller amounts, whereas the bigger school will go for the big bang and as much of that initial $150,000 as they can. And that is indeed what has happened in many of these areas, which further extends the discrepancies between the facilities that are provided under the program.

I noticed the opposition were talking about a fairer funding formula for education, or something along those lines. How about both the government and opposition adopting something like an education needs index? Such a measurement would be like a bar code system and would include a list of the most basic of school needs, such as playground, toilets, shelter, heating and cooling, computer resources et cetera. Unless and until all boxes were ticked for all schools on this basic index of requirements—and it has to be a transparent process that every parent and every school understands—there should be no further Investing in Our Schools funding or indeed school grants available from federal or state sources until all schools catch up. If the red light glows as the bar code scanner is run across a school, its glaring need should be met as a priority before funds go to any school, public or independent, that has passed the test of need. While we are at it, why install air conditioning in schools without adding solar panels to power those units? How better to show kids we mean business on global warming—I wonder if we really do—than to offset the power we use with genuine clean, green, alternative power?

Last week, with the principal, Paul Stirling, I inspected the new Kelso High School, rebuilt after it was so tragically lost in a fire. It will have wonderful facilities. But how crazy is it that no provision has been made for harvesting stormwater from the acre or more of its rooftops to water its oval and gardens? It has apparently missed out on a submission under the federal community water grants scheme. Surely such harvesting and storage should be obligatory in all new schools and, indeed, all new public buildings funded either by the state or the federal governments. We can argue the toss: perhaps it should be the federal government, because it must be part of a national water initiative. Such programs must be part of the whole catchment management process, right down to the tank at the back of the house in Millthorpe, where I happen to live, or wherever it might be.

To date, under the Investing in Our Schools Program, 6,166 government and 1,603 non-government schools have benefited. This represents 89 per cent of government and 59 per cent of all non-government schools. The scheme was due to run until 2008, but the demand was such that funds for 2007-08 were used earlier than expected. It seems now that, despite the extra $181 million provided in this bill, the maximum amount available has been cut to $100,000 to meet, I presume, the budgeted amount over the life of the program.

I would suggest that, with a scheme that has been so successful and met such demand, any government or opposition would be very unwise to wind it up—like the dental program you brought to a halt in 1997. You cannot just shut a program down and ignore the fact that demand will continue for many years to come—indefinitely, in the case of dental services—to upgrade much of our ageing education infrastructure. Perhaps the index of need should be implemented so those schools in dire need, including those who believe they have been short-changed under this program, may at least catch up.

I note that the department will be providing support to targeted schools, including case managers for those that have not received grants to help with the application process. This is important because the grants process and submissions are a big task for smaller schools while larger, more resourced schools, some employing consultants who skim off part of the grants office fees—and that is a fairly questionable process, I would say, given the scarcity of this money—find it easier to access the program, as I illustrated earlier. While it is a given that many independent schools are as short on facilities as government schools, one must ask how some non-government schools have received Investing in Our Schools grants in excess of $1 million, notwithstanding the greater role of federal funding in the non-government schools system.

This bill also contains additional capital grants for non-government schools in line with the annual augmentation process adopted in 1996. It also provides almost $10 million for the Literacy, Numeracy and Special Learning Needs Program. I will not comment on those. I complete these remarks by asking that the expectations of schools under the Investing in Our Schools Program, announced with such fanfare and greeted with such enthusiasm by school communities, be addressed with a review of funding applications to meet the projects set in train on the expectation of funding of up to $150,000. I also suggest that the non-government school funding formula is flawed and risks the widening of the resources gap within the non-government schools sector and between the non-government and state systems. A measure of index of school needs applied to each and every school would seem the most basic of measures to achieve a fair go for all our children.

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