Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to provide my contribution to the debate on the Schools Assistance Bill 2008. Picking up from where Senator Milne finished, since last year, we have been seeing rolled out across this country a revolution in education. All of the things that Senator Milne talked about as needing to happen—but she doubted would happen—are in fact occurring, as you will see if you look very carefully at the transcripts that are issued almost daily from the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Education in this country. In fact, only yesterday the Deputy Prime Minister had this to say:

This nation has failed kids from poorer families by leaving them in underperforming schools for too long.

What she was talking about is the fact that schools need to be transparent, schools need to actually be accountable, schools need to have consistent quality no matter where those schools are, no matter how they are funded, no matter what jurisdiction they come under. In fact, the Deputy Prime Minister was very explicit in saying that we want to know how schools are going on objective measures like national testing results and year 12 retention. We want to know how the resources are being brought to bear. We want to know how you are able to compare similar schools. So we want to be able to know exactly what is happening in our school system right across the board.

This government is committed to ensuring that there is a high quality of education no matter where you live in this country, no matter how much you personally contribute to your education, and to ensure that kids from poorer families, kids from low SES backgrounds, are guaranteed of being in a school that performs well. So this is anything but a blame game; this is ensuring that, whether you are at a government or non-government schools, whether you come from a very affluent suburb or not, you can be guaranteed that your child gets the same education as everybody else right around this country. Under the Deputy Prime Minister, it is anything else other than labelling and blaming.

We talk about the contribution from Senator Mason and criticism from my colleagues opposite about the computers in schools program. I ask each and every one of those senators, what would you rather us do? Would you rather we went back to the old days of the slate, the chalkboard, the piece of chalk and the little duster that everyone once had in front of them in a primary school? Or do you actually want kids in this nation to be skilled up? Computers are not only the notebooks of the future, they are absolutely the notebooks of today. They are in classrooms today, though probably not enough of them. Information comes to people in cyberspace these days, and you have to know how to respond and you have to know how to critically analyse the information that you are receiving through the wire as to what is good and bad from that information. You need that skill and you also need to know how to operate the machine that is in front of you. That is going to be a critical tool not for the future but I would say to you a critical tool for today. There would not be too many people out there applying for jobs who would not be asked if they know how to operate computers and different programs on computers.

What this government is doing, unlike the government we experienced for the last 11 long years, is tooling students for today and for the future and ensuring that teachers are valued, with injections of funds into teacher development programs, ensuring that good people out there are put into the school system. There was an announcement last week that there would be lawyers and scientists offered placements in schools for a period of time, ensuring that the best people in this society pass on the knowledge that they have to our kids in their classrooms.

The Schools Assistance Bill implements the government’s commitment to provide stability of funding for non-government schools for 2009-12. It does maintain the SES model as the basis for funding. The evolution in education will roll out under this government as we review that SES model funding, as the Deputy Prime Minister has committed to, in the coming years. No school will be disadvantaged by this, so no school will receive less funding than it would have been entitled to in 2008. This is despite claims from my Northern Territory colleague on the other side who on local radio in the Northern Territory some weeks ago set out to deliberately distort the facts and scaremonger to listeners in the Territory. Unfortunately in mid-October Senator Scullion cut loose on local radio and tried to resurrect the old government versus non-government school funding arguments, casting doubts on the future funding levels of some non-government schools in the Northern Territory. But I was able to get on the radio on the same station and rebut these claims. The Schools Assistance Bill is evidence of the fact that future funding of non-government schools in the Northern Territory is absolutely guaranteed: $20 billion for recurrent capital and targeted assistance for non-government schools, including a single streamlined supplementary assistance package for Indigenous students. Four Indigenous programs have been streamlined into one. The supplementary recurrent assistance, funding for homework centres, funding for ITAS and funding for English as a second language for Indigenous language speaking students have been streamlined into one funding program. This is another indicator and another signpost of the education revolution that is occurring by making the funding more streamlined and more accessible. This bill also includes a remoteness loading to take into account the higher costs of providing education in remote areas—something we have never seen before in this country.

The bill makes the performance and accountability requirements on non-government schools consistent with those for all schools under the National Education Agreement being negotiated under COAG. And why shouldn’t that occur, I ask people in this chamber? These bills need to be passed before the end of 2008 in order for new funding agreements to be finalised for 2009 payments and to be made to non-government schools. This bill is yet a further part of this Labor government’s quality schooling agenda. We are working with COAG, as you would have seen announced last Saturday, to further develop a framework for investment and reform in schools. This will result in the new National Education Agreement. This reform will mean that for the first time all governments in Australia will agree to a single set of objectives, a single set of outcomes and outputs for our education system. There is a massive amount of work to be done across the states and territories with this Commonwealth government and I would have thought that it is the first time that this is going to be achieved in this country. That is a revolution.

This bill is one of the bigger building blocks in that national agenda. It gives the many non-government schools certainty of funding and applies transparency and accountability requirements that are consistent with government schools. We need an education system that delivers excellence and equity, and we can only achieve this if Australians are confident that government is applying the same principles to all of our schools—something that has never been done and certainly something not done under the previous government. As pointed out in the other place by the Deputy Prime Minister, under the previous government schools were held accountable not for quality but for whether they had a functioning flagpole or whether they displayed posters about Australian values. We believe in Australian values, and equity is certainly one of them, but we also use values when framing policy; we do not just tack them on as an afterthought.

The national education agreement and this bill are complementary. Commonwealth funding for government schools is being negotiated under that agreement and does not need specific legislation. Together, this bill and the agreement will show the full commitment of this government. It will deliver the full $47 billion, as promised in the 2007 election. This bill establishes the funding for non-government schools for the next four years as well as the principles of quality, accountability, excellence and equity that we are applying to the education revolution agenda right across the nation. Under previous agreements, Commonwealth funding came with a multitude of conditions spanning a range of policy areas, requiring a high degree of regulation and reporting by schools and systems. Our new framework reduces the number of funding agreements and removes many of the input controls and forms of compliance previously imposed. Achievement of agreed educational outcome targets is what is important. So this government’s framework is about outcomes and outputs, not inputs.

This bill will also require as a condition of funding the implementation of the national curriculum, which will be developed by the National Curriculum Board by 2012. This will apply of course to all schools. I want to say here that this should not be a matter of concern for non-government schools, despite what I have heard in the media this morning from some senators in this place. As the Deputy Prime Minister said yesterday, the National Curriculum Board is writing the national curriculum. The board comprises representatives from all states and territories and all school systems. It is independent of government. It will drive up results and quality in this country. So what we are actually looking at is whether or not those who provide curricula will still do it in different ways—and there is no doubt about this—to ensure not only that there are world-class curricula being taught but that the teaching methods that those schools use can continue. If you are, for example, teaching the International Baccalaureate, as is the case at Kormilda College in the Northern Territory, that will continue. If you have a particular teaching style, as is the case at Montessori and Steiner schools, that will continue. What the national curriculum will do is ensure that there is consistency about the level of each child’s development at a year level, what outputs are needed at each year level and the content of that curriculum. How you deliver that curriculum and the circumstances in which you deliver it will not be interfered with by this government.

Coming from a base in the Northern Territory, in Darwin and Palmerston, represented by the seat of Solomon, time and time again I hear from defence people in particular that what they are looking for as they move their families around this country, sometimes every two or three years, is a national curriculum. They want to know that what their child in year 3 learns in Victoria is comparable to what their child in year 3 will learn in the Northern Territory. In fact, they go a step further when they talk to me and say that they would actually like to see nationally consistent handwriting taught right around this country—not just print or cursive but a nationally consistent curriculum that imposes the style of writing that children will be taught.

For those people in this chamber who suggest that a national curriculum would somehow restrict or confine non-government schools, I say that you must say that, not having come from an educational background. But if in fact you have a qualification in education and you have taught in a school system then you will appreciate and understand why it is so crucially important to have a national curriculum—why as a teacher you would want to know that the skills you are imparting on a 10-year-old child in your year 5 class are the same as those imparted on children in Adelaide, Perth or Alice Springs. As a teacher, I certainly would want to know that the quality of teaching I am giving to the child is nationally consistent and that the skills I am imparting to that child can be used by that child not only in any part of this country but around the world. As an educationalist, I applaud the development of the national curriculum. I think that it addresses a lot of queries and problems, particularly for people like defence families in this country.

The Senate Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, which inquired into this bill, reported:

...the committee believes such concerns are unfounded.

That is, the concerns that a national curriculum would concern or confine non-government schools. It went on to say:

The national curriculum proposes uniform standards for each of the key learning areas—

And that is what we want to see; we want to make sure that the outputs at every level are nationally consistent—

However, outside of these requirements, there will be flexibility allowing schools to implement curriculum content at school level.

All schools will be subject to national tests, easy to understand reports to parents and public reporting on the school’s performance. I want to know that if I send my child to Leanyer Primary School in the Northern Territory they will get the same standards, content and outcomes as a child at, say, Kensington government school in Melbourne, Victoria. Why shouldn’t I want to know that and why shouldn’t I be expected to know that, when in this country there is such flexibility and mobility of people in and out of states and territories at any one time? Only in this way can parents have the best information about schools and school choice.

The actual final form of reporting will be determined through the agreement at COAG. Only in this way can government identify the most disadvantaged schools in order to guide resources towards them for the greatest possible effectiveness and improvement. We want to lift the standards in schools by ensuring that those schools that are disadvantaged and under-resourced become better resourced and that the standards and the resources are there for teachers to use so that outcomes can be improved. Only in this way can government get the information to analyse on a fair, consistent and accurate basis how schools are doing and give additional help to those genuinely in need.

Under this bill, non-government schools will receive general recurrent grants totalling some $26.3 billion over four years. This bill also establishes a capped Indigenous funding guarantee as a traditional measure to ensure that non-government providers do not lose funding compared with 2008 levels. This is part of the government’s policy to close the gap. There are many non-government schools in my own constituency of the Northern Territory that will benefit from this bill—43 schools in total throughout the Territory, at places such as Nguiu, Wadeye and Daly River, whose students are nearly all Indigenous. Our Lady of the Sacred Heart at Wadeye has also recently been funded for a new trade training centre.

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of visiting one of the non-government schools in my electorate to open a new boarding house and art and craft centre. Woolaning Homeland Christian College is about two hours drive south of Darwin, out in Litchfield National Park. I specifically mention this today because I promised the kids who sat in front of me on that day that I would mention them in this speech and that I would pass on to my colleagues in the Senate how enthusiastic they were about learning and how they had a thirst for knowledge. This school was opened in 2002 after the local Indigenous community negotiated with the Northern Territory Christian Schools Association to lease the land at a nominal rent for the purpose of a secondary school boarding college.

The federal government’s support has enabled this college to expand. The college now has five family boarding houses, with 60 beds in total. Such is the support for this school from communities in the region that they have a substantial waiting list. Another boarding house is due to open next year, taking their capacity to about 80 students. The students study secondary courses and can do vocational courses as well. They travel from their communities—from as far away as Ngukurr—to come to Woolaning. They live on-site and they learn a lot about self-sufficiency. They do their own housework and cooking, and they are wonderfully supported by a fantastic group of house parents. It is a pleasant, well-maintained campus where students can study and live happily while they do so. This bill will provide ongoing support to such places as Woolaning Homeland Christian College. It is with some pride that I stand in this chamber and say that I have been part of passing legislation that, because of the resources appropriated through it, will enable this school to continue to operate over the next four years. Again, I publicly pass on my congratulations to and pride in the students that I met and talked to that day.

This is a piece of legislation that starts to add to our education revolution. It provides funding and resources for schools in a fair and equitable way. It will ensure stability and continuity for non-government schools and particularly for Indigenous education around this country. (Time expired)