Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

To the minister: according to the ABS data last year, more than 65 per cent of Australian school students were enrolled in public schools. That equates to around 2.6 million young Australian students at our wonderful state schools. There were 240,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander school students enrolled last year, so that's about 83 per cent of First Nations students in public schools. We know that public schools have a higher proportion of students with a disability, receiving either extensive or substantial levels of adjustment when compared with Catholic and independent schools.

For the record, Australian public schools are educating more Australian children, overcoming disadvantage for more Australian children and achieving excellence in education. Public schools are managing to educate their students despite the coalition government failing to properly and fairly fund them. Public schools are being propped up by the blood, sweat and tears of hardworking educators and parents. The Liberals were elected in 2013 on a promise to match Labor's school funding promise dollar for dollar. I saw the corflutes. Instead in 2017 the Liberals changed the funding arrangements for public schools. They unilaterally ended five signed state and territory agreements on school funding, refusing to deliver the final two years of funding. They legislated to cap the Commonwealth contribution to school funding at 20 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard, the SRS. This change to funding was made when the Prime Minister was the Treasurer. The change will adversely impact public schools into the future: 99 per cent of public schools will be below the SRS by 2023, and half of all public schools won't even reach 95 per cent of the SRS by 2023. Total underfunding of public schools over the next four years is $19 billion. Starving our public schools from the resources needed to educate our children, including some of the most disadvantaged children in Australia, will just entrench inequality.

I know that staff in public schools do incredible work educating every child in their classroom. I know that, regardless of the funding available, teachers do their best to educate every child in front of them. But I also know that the current system is unfair. It's unfair that public schools will never be funded to the standard that was recommended by the Review of funding for schooling: final report in 2011, known as the Gonski review. This is what the review said about the Schooling Resource Standard for public schools:

In recognition of the role of the government sector as a universal provider of schooling, all government schools would be fully publicly funded to the level of the schooling resource standard plus any applicable loadings.

Gonski didn't say '80 per cent of the SRS'—that's what the Northern Territory public schools are currently getting. Gonski didn't say '95 per cent', which half of all public schools won't ever reach. Gonski recommended 100 per cent of the SRS for every child in every school and said:

Every child should have access to the best possible education, regardless of where they live, the income of their family or the school they attend.

Adam Rorris is an educational economist and policy analyst who's worked for the World Bank, UNICEF, UNESCO and DFAT. He recently wrote an article about the Liberal government's 7½ years of neglect of school funding. In the article, he described the SRS as:

… an independent technical estimate of how much total public funding a school needs to meet its students' educational needs. The SRS is not an aspirational standard of school funding, as it is so often painted …

Fair funding based on need is what I want for my children, and it's what every parent wants for their child. So this is my question to the minister: why has the Morrison government locked in inequality by capping funding for public schools at 20 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard? Please, Minister, don't just talk about the annual increase due to the fact that there are more students in Australia. Go to the heart of that question—the SRS and how it applies to Queensland and Australian schools.

My next question is: why does the Morrison government think it is fair for children attending public schools to never reach 100 per cent of the schooling resource standard as recommended by the Gonski review? Remember that was an economic review of education looking at boosting productivity. Minister, what educational resources do you suggest public schools should go without because they will never be fully funded? How do you expect to attract new teachers to public schools if they are starved of resources? We are already seeing that in electorates like mine on the edge of Brisbane; they still can't get enough teachers. I will repeat that: 'The SRS is the minimum amount of funding required to have students reach the minimum achievement benchmarks. When governments fail to reach this funding level, they fail the students of this country'. I look forward to your answers, and I know my colleague from South Australia does as well.

See this speech in context