Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment Bill 2006. This bill provides an additional $43.6 million over the period 2006-08, primarily to extend tutorial assistance support for school students in year 9 and for students at TAFE and for other providers of vocational education and training. However, the bill fails to deal with some of the serious flaws in the government’s policies and programs, and there is little mention of the bad news for Indigenous students in Australia today, either in the legislation or in the minister’s second reading speech.

I indicate that the opposition will support the bill in order that urgently needed additional funding will be available. But our underlying concerns regarding the issues endemic in Indigenous education remain. For that reason, I move the second reading amendment standing in my name, which has been circulated in the chamber:

At the end of the motion, add:

        “but the Senate:

        (a)    Condemns the Government for:

              (i)    failing to deliver urgently needed funding for Indigenous students by insisting on complex and bureaucratic administrative arrangements that prevent many schools and communities from benefiting from education programs;

             (ii)    causing a $126 million underspend in Indigenous Education Strategic Initiatives expenditure in 2004-05 through bureaucratic bungling;

            (iii)    imposing impenetrable red tape that has led to a decline in the involvement of Indigenous communities in the parent-school partnership initiative;

            (iv)    failing to provide sufficient resources for early intervention programs in schools to raise Indigenous children’s literacy standards;

             (v)    reducing the number of Indigenous school children who access tutorial assistance by making eligibility requirements more restrictive and short-term;

            (vi)    presiding for ten long years over continuing gaps in educational and training participation and performance between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students.

        (b)    Calls on the Government to reform its funding criteria and guidelines so as to the address the above concerns and provide all Indigenous students with the opportunity to achieve quality schooling results”.

I will outline briefly why the opposition believe the parliament should support the concerns outlined in Labor’s second reading amendment. Whilst there have been some improvements in the last decade in relation to the performance of Indigenous students, there are a number of issues that we need to be mindful of. It is true, we acknowledge, that there are more Indigenous students completing secondary school now, for example, than there were in 1998 and that in 2005 the retention rate for Indigenous students increased to 39.5 per cent, which is an improvement. However, there remains a substantial gap between the apparent retention rates of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in 2005.

Nevertheless, there is some evidence of improvement in the literacy and numeracy standards of Indigenous primary students over recent years. But the gap in these standards, compared with non-Indigenous students, remains considerable. For example, around 60 per cent of year 7 Indigenous students achieved the national reading benchmark in 2001, compared with just under 90 per cent for all students. By 2004 the achievement rate for Indigenous students increased to 71 per cent, which is still unacceptably below the level for all year 7 students, which is 91 per cent. There has been very little improvement in the percentage of year 7 Indigenous students who have achieved national benchmarks for numeracy. The rate for year 7 Indigenous students has hovered at around 50 per cent over the period 2001 to 2004. That is compared with 80 per cent of all students who have achieved the benchmark.

The results for Indigenous students in some states and territories are particularly troubling. For example, the percentage of year 7 students achieving the 2004 national reading benchmark in the Northern Territory was just 39 per cent, compared with the national result for Indigenous students of 71 per cent and the national total for all students of 91 per cent. In Western Australia, the rate of Indigenous year 7 students in 2004 who achieved the reading benchmark was 58 per cent. It was 69 per cent in New South Wales and in South Australia. The rate in Queensland, on the other hand, was significantly better, at over 85 per cent. The numeracy rates for year 7 Indigenous students are even more worrying. Only around half of Indigenous students achieved the national numeracy benchmark in 2004. The rate for year 7 students in the Northern Territory in that year was a disturbing 27 per cent.

Clearly, from those figures, literacy and numeracy performance continues to be a fundamental concern in Indigenous education. Compounding these concerns is the high absentee rate of Indigenous students, which is about twice the rate of non-Indigenous students, and suspension rates that are six to nine times those of non-Indigenous students. The government’s key strategy for dealing with Indigenous literacy in primary schools has been its tutorial assistance scheme, known as ITAS. The guidelines for the scheme state that funding is available for Indigenous students in years 4, 6 and 8 after they fail to meet the national benchmarks in the previous year. The guidelines provide some flexibility to principals to allocate the funding for students who are at risk of not meeting the relevant literacy and/or numeracy curriculum outcome levels for their age.

What is needed are guidelines that encourage early intervention strategies at the school level—to provide principals and teachers with the resources they need to identify and prevent or minimise failure. There are problems other than the failure to adequately encourage early intervention which Labor believes are associated with the administration of the Howard government’s tutorial assistance program, which will now be extended to year 9 students. For example, this funding is not available for students who are in metropolitan areas that enrol fewer than 20 Indigenous students. That means that many students will miss out on the urgent assistance they need. The guidelines for funding also state that funding is limited, and those students in remote localities will be given priority. We all know that Indigenous children in remote areas deserve our support, but that does not mean that Indigenous students in regional and metropolitan areas do not have educational needs.

Funding should be available to all students who need help, not based on a competition for scarce resources between Indigenous students and similar families in metropolitan and non-metropolitan locations. There are many principals and schools which are frustrated and disillusioned by the federal government’s processes in this area. These frustrations are also matched by concerns about the operation of the Parent School Partnership Initiative. The increased bureaucracy in this program has had the effect of excluding many parents and many community members. Many parents have little understanding of the processes and feel remote from them. These are concerns which opposition members have raised a number of times, particularly last year. As a result, the department has made some changes, but schools are complaining that funding arrangements still require them to undertake considerable work to access very modest funding, if any.

Schools are also complaining that they are spending more time in submission writing and paperwork than in designing and implementing the best educational programs for their students. Chronic underspending on Indigenous education programs is compounding these problems. The Minister for Education, Science and Training’s department has admitted at Senate estimates that there was a $126 million underexpense in 2004-05. The Department of Education, Science and Training officers were reported as saying that the underspending was due to agreements with state and Catholic authorities not being finalised. It simply confirms that the Howard government has no real strategy for effectively delivering support for Indigenous students. It seems extraordinary, given the need in the community, that we could have a $126 million underexpense in 2004-05. Clearly, the administrative processes in place need urgent attention, but the underlying problems and policies need fundamental reform.

The bill before the chamber provides access to tutorial assistance for Indigenous students in TAFE and in other forms of vocational training. This is a welcome initiative. Many Indigenous people rely heavily on TAFE for the training and for the second chance opportunities TAFE provides. Indigenous enrolments in vocational education and training in 2005 were just over 62,500 students, which is around 3.8 per cent of total enrolments. But, regrettably, completion rates for Indigenous students remain low, and the bill does not cover any funding for Indigenous students in higher education. They will continue to be eligible for Commonwealth funding, including tutorial assistance under current guidelines, but it is disturbing to note that education department data indicates that Indigenous students starting a higher education course—

Debate interrupted.