Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A few nights ago here in the parliament, I had the pleasure of attending the Australian Primary Principals Association life membership presentation ceremony. I was reminded once again that schoolteachers, the majority of whom are dedicated and passionate women, are the workers spending the time necessary to improve the future for this nation. With that in mind, I think it is tragic that this government refuses to invest in the future of our children. In my electorate of Lalor, each primary school student in a public school is underfunded by over $1,000 at the Gonski funding rates. The teachers who work with the children in the electorate of Lalor deserve our attention, and their schools and our children need investment, whether those schools be state, Catholic or private.

However, I want to focus more closely today on what schools are actually doing for students in the electorate of Lalor. With that in mind, in my-cup-of-tea-with-school-principals program, where I visit schools regularly, I talked about the impact that the needs based funding model is having at Woodville Primary School, run brilliantly by Principal Lyn Vincent. The school uses their equity funding to provide for student-centred coaching and to build the capacity of the teachers in their teams. They have a high rate of transience with many children in their fourth or fifth school—remembering this is a primary school, so you can imagine what each of those school moves does in terms of student progression and learning.

So there is a lot to catch up on at Woodville primary and, to that end, they have set really clear targets where, for every child, they want to see more than one year's growth of learning delivered in a year—an aspirational target that Lyn feels, at this point, they will have met by the end of this year, and there will be great celebration. To support the teachers and to build their capacity, the equity funding allows for two hours a week of professional learning and collaboration for every teacher in this school. Having been in schools my entire life, I understand how critical that professional learning time and the provision of it in schools are to the growth in teacher capacity.

I want to talk about one of their targets, which I know most in the room today will be impressed by. Because of the nature of the school, they found themselves with high student absence rates, with an average of 22 days a year. They set a target to get that down to 17 days a year, on average, missed by pupils in their school. I want to share with the House that they expect to better that target this year. This is real cause for celebration and it would not be possible without the equity funding going into that school to support the teachers, the principal, the parents and the children to get the culture right and get things moving.

Another interesting thing about the school when it comes to equity funding is the literacy program that it is enabling, where they have a full-time person who works across the school with teachers, assisting them to build their capacity but also doing direct intervention, targeted to where students' needs are. They do the same in numeracy at the moment with dedicated class time. They are doing enormous amounts of work in literacy and numeracy. They are doing early work with very early transition and early intervention in transition, and this is critical in an area where 30 per cent of children are not attending kindergarten. Thirty per cent are walking through the school doors not having had four-year-old kindergarten, let alone three-year-old.

They also—and this is cause for great celebration—will be joining the University of Melbourne Network of Schools in 2017. There are 20 schools a year that get to join that program. Again, it has to be self-funded by the school, and equity funding will go to support that and to support the teachers and those in the school who need to attend professional learning to be part of that very successful program. I think of the member for Gellibrand's electorate, where Footscray North Primary School have been involved in that program across the last three years. They have had some incredibly important results in improved student learning. They also, of course, have English as a second language support that they are giving in this school. This equity funding is critical.