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Speech
Making Schools Better
A speech spoken to by Dr Brendan Nelson at the Making Schools Better conference at The University of Melbourne
26 August 2004 MIN 901/04
What passes for the debate on schooling in Australia almost exclusively focuses on one thing: funding. Adequately funding our schools is of course important and needs to be a part of any discussion about how to improve our schools. But to do so to the exclusion of all other issues ignores the fact that resources alone are not the panacea to every school problem.
To prove this point, one only needs to consider the fact that some schools are highly sought-after by parents, consistently winning awards and delivering exceptionally good educational outcomes while operating on exactly the same resources as schools that are struggling. Moreover, all the growth in the non-government sector is in the low fee schools where the total resources per student is generally lower than in state schools. There is clearly more at play than just funding.
In November last year I spoke at the Pursuing Opportunity and Prosperity conference, also sponsored by the Melbourne Institute and The Australian newspaper, where I outlined the Australian Government’s position of what needs to be done to improve the performance of schools. I outlined an ambitious reform agenda that was informed by educational research, the views of parents, and the philosophy of the government favouring higher standards, values and reporting to parents.
This agenda has not changed, but nearly twelve months down the track there have been some significant developments. I will take the opportunity today to recap on our national priorities for schools, explain their rationale and outline what we are doing to progress them over the next four years and beyond. Schools funding is part of the agenda and I will also outline our commitments in regards to this.
Before going into the details of what needs to be done to improve our schools, it is worth remembering that the schooling system in Australia is already world class: we perform exceptionally well in international tests, we have strong school retention rates and we have teachers who are highly valued internationally. There is more to be done – which is why we are having this conference – but we are building off a very strong base.
WHAT MATTERS MOST IS QUALITY TEACHING
There is considerable dogma around what makes schools more effective or what delivers better educational outcomes for our children. As I mentioned earlier, the view that funding is the panacea to all school issues is one example of this dogma.
The other view that has traditionally been dominant is that educational outcomes are largely determined by the socio-economic background of the student and/or the ownership of the school. This view is also largely incorrect. Researchers from the Australian Council of Education Research, for example, suggest that at most, 15 percent of educational achievement is related to the socio-economic status of the family (Beavis and Marks, 2003). Ken Rowe, the Research Director of ACER is emphatic on this point stating that the traditional view that socio-economic background is predominant on education outcomes is “now understood to be products of methodological and statistical artefact, and amount to little more than ‘religious’ adherence to the moribund ideologies of biological and social determinism.” (Rowe, 2003)
In regards to school sector, extensive research from ACER shows that there are greater differences between schools within each sector than between sectors, and the impact of school sector is becoming less marked as the non-government sector grows and becomes more diverse.
While the views outlined above may have traditionally been dominant, there is now growing consensus – at least amongst evidence-based researchers – about what really counts in impacting student outcomes, and that is the ability of students and the quality of teachers. In short, students who do well have good teachers and those with ability have their ability recognised. In fact, the quality of teachers is the single most important factor on students’ outcomes – explaining up to 60% in the variation in learning outcomes. Professor Darling-Hammond (2000, as cited in Rowe 2004) summarizes the research evidence as such:
“The effect of poor teaching on student outcomes is debilitating and cumulative...The effects of quality teaching on educational outcomes are greater than those that arise from students’ backgrounds...The quality of teacher education and teaching appear to be more strongly related to student achievement than class sizes, overall spending levels or teacher salaries.”
These findings are of critical importance to policy makers. It suggests that the number one goal for all governments and educational authorities in school policy is to raise the quality, professionalism and status of teachers. From the Australian Government’s perspective, this is the highest priority across my entire portfolio. I made this statement at the Pursuing Prosperity conference last November and it remains so.
There are a number of things that need to be done to support this goal. Firstly, Australia’s teachers need to formally recognise what most already do. They need a body of nationally consistent professional development standards developed by them for them. They need to proudly promote evidence of participation by teachers in them. Teachers need to actively and consistently participate in ongoing professional learning activities and be financially supported to do so by serious dollars by governments.
Further, attention needs to be given to the quality of teacher training courses. The profession itself needs to have far greater influence in this area. Other faculties also need to be more closely integrated and influential over teacher education to ensure that standards are maintained in the key subject discipline areas. More teacher practicum needs to be done as part of teacher training.
We also need to make the pursuit of a teaching career more attractive to our best and brightest students. We should be aiming to attract the best people to teaching not just at the start, but during their careers. While previous generations had one or two occupations in their lifetime, current generations are likely to have several. For the best and brightest, we want to make sure that teaching is one them.
Finally higher pay for quality teaching must be supported. At the moment the most mediocre teacher is paid the same as someone who has a life-changing impact on our children. Other countries are working on recognising teachers with advanced qualifications and on delivering performance pay to reward the best teachers. We need to follow suit in order to keep our best teachers in the classroom and in Australia.
The Australian Government has taken and is taking significant steps in support of these objectives. Perhaps the most significant of these steps is the establishment of the National Institute of Quality Teaching and School Leadership. This will be a key professional body that will provide teachers and school leaders with a national voice, and a body through which the profession can determine and articulate standards. The Institute, which is run by the profession, held its inaugural Board meeting last Friday. The Institute will have four key functions: the development of professional standards; professional learning for school leaders and classroom teachers; research and communications; and promotion of the profession. All teachers should seek to advance the standing and quality of their profession. Through the Institute, teachers and school leaders will finally have some control over their professional agenda.
The Australian Government is also investing $159 million into teacher professional development and the creation of innovative online materials to support teachers. The Higher Education reforms also provide an additional $81.4 million for teaching courses – a 9.9 per cent increase – primarily to be used for strengthening teacher practicum.
Also, part of the Higher Education reform package is a measure which quarantines teaching from any HECS increases, but allowing HECS to be lowered. The deliberate aim of this measure is to make teaching more attractive relative to other courses.
The October 2003 report of the Government’s independent Review of Teaching and Teacher Education (Australia's Teachers: Australia's Future - Advancing Innovation, Science, Technology and Mathematics) identified strategies to help attract and retain talented teachers especially in the fields of science, technology and mathematics, and to build a culture of innovation at all levels of schooling in Australia. In response to the Review, the Australian Government has announced new funding through the Boosting Innovation, Science, Technology and Mathematics Teaching Programme of $39 million to improve science, technology and mathematics education and foster innovation in Australian schools, as well as a capacity for innovation in students. This is in addition to the initial $10 million applied to establish the National Institute.
Finally, we are also taking steps to ensure that men are attracted to the teaching profession, particularly to primary teaching by offering 500 teacher scholarships for men. Last year, the proportion of male primary teachers was only 20.9%. This is a decrease of five percentage points over only a decade and the decrease will continue: there are currently only 18.8% of trainees who are male. This is a particular concern to the Government in light of the evidence that shows that boys are underachieving relative to girls and relative to their own performance from 25 years ago. Many boys have no positive male role models in their lives.
The scholarships can only be offered if a small amendment is made to the Sex Discrimination Act. This amendment has been returned to the House of Representatives having been blocked by Labor and the Democrats in the Senate. I am hoping that common sense will prevail and that the Labor Party will understand the merits of this proposal and pass the legislation.
OTHER NATIONAL PRIORITIES
While raising the quality, status and professionalism of teachers is our priority policy objective (and should be so for every government and educational authority), there are number of other national priorities that the Australian Government is pursuing in order to lift the performance of Australia’s schools.
Greater national consistency in schooling
Since Federation, we have made progress in moving towards greater consistency in key areas of national importance: transportation, corporate law, environmental regulation, university regulation etc. In schooling, however, the “rail gauge” problem remains firmly entrenched. Consider the following: there are six different starting ages for the first year of schooling across the country and the starting age varies by up to a year. In four jurisdictions, primary school finishes at year 6, in the other four it finishes at year 7.
We have eight different curricula whereby educational standards in one jurisdiction do not always match the educational standards in another. There is no agreed standard or certificate for year 10. There is no agreed certificate for year 12 or agreed means of assessment. Year 12 certificates are not always comparable or recognised in other jurisdictions. Tertiary entrance requirements are different in each state. I could go on.
In the November conference last year, I announced that “this madness needs to end” and suggested that the Australian Government would be doing everything that we could, including the use of funding as a lever if necessary, to see greater consistency in schooling in Australia. The Schools Assistance legislation that is currently in the Parliament contains a number of important provisions to deliver on this.
To receive funding for the next four years, states and territories and school authorities will have to agree to implement, by 2010, a common school starting age. There is already notional agreement by State Ministers to achieve this, but we want to make sure that it is actually delivered.
In addition we will be introducing national tests in year 6 and year 10 in the key subject areas of English, Mathematics, Science, and Civics and Citizenship. Children should be at the same educational standard and learn similar skills regardless of the state in which they reside. These national tests will provide authoritative measures of the standard of achievement of children against national measures.
Complementing these national tests is the work occurring to ensure that there is greater national consistency in curriculum outcomes. Education systems are developing Statements of Learning in English, mathematics, science, and civics and citizenship and we are requiring that these be implemented by the end of 2007. The Statements will describe the key knowledge, understandings and capacities that all students should acquire in these subject areas, irrespective of where they attend school.
Finally we are ensuring that a national system for the transmission of student information is developed. This will ease the troubles that students have when they move from one educational jurisdiction to another.
Better reporting to parents
It is time we made a concerted effort to place parents more firmly in the centre of schooling. Critical to this is providing comprehensive information to parents about how both their child and school are performing. If parents are not kept meaningfully informed about the progress of their child, then they cannot be a full partner in their child’s education. If parents are not aware of a school’s performance, then how can they make meaningful choices about where to send their child and how can schools be held to account? Unfortunately, on both the provision of information about a child’s progress and a school’s progress, more needs to be done.
You may be aware that I have been particularly critical of the quality of school report cards in Australia’s schools, particularly primary schools. I have been astounded by how many of them fail to provide to parents a plain-language version of how well their child is performing. For example, I have seen some reports where the teacher ticks one of two boxes to indicate a child’s performance: “Achieving” and “Almost Achieving”! Some report cards contain so much educational jargon that they are almost incomprehensible to parents.
The Australian Government is determined to change this. From January of next year, it will no longer be satisfactory for schools to provide meaningless or overly complex school reports to parent. Parents want a “fair and honest” assessment, in plain language, of how their child is progressing. If their child is struggling, they want to know about it so that they can get assistance. Hence the school funding legislation includes provisions to ensure that school reports are written in plain language and that assessment of the child’s achievement is reported against national standards (where available) and is reported relative to the child’s peer group at the school. Additionally, it will be a condition of funding that national numeracy and literacy tests are reported to parents against national benchmarks. Parents demand a fair and honest assessment of how well their child is performing.
Information about a school’s performance is also frequently poor or inaccessible, more so in some states than others. Professor Cuttance from the University of Melbourne has done extensive research on this issue which included gathering the views of more than 500 parents. He finds that while parents have an active interest in acquiring information about school programs and school achievement, “there is relatively little public information available on schools.... Although many school systems across the country now routinely gather a wide range of information about individual schools, there is significant reticence in making this information available to the public.” (Cuttance & Stokes, 2000)
Cuttance notes that even when schools produce official reports, such as annual reports, they are sometimes written in a way that parents struggle to interpret or they are not accessed at all by parents. He quotes one parent who said that “I know of schools where these annual reports come out and the only person contacted is the [parent organisation] president because they know they are going to be on side.”
The Australian Government is again taking action to change this situation. Earlier in the year we secured an agreement by MCEETYA that “all schools publish performance information at the school level.” The Schools Assistance legislation will ensure that this commitment is adhered to. It requires all schools to publish school performance information in order to provide parents with objective data to assess schools and to have specific information against which to hold schools accountable. The precise requirements will be specified in regulations, but they will include the public release of the following information for each school:
- Teacher qualifications and proportion participating in ongoing professional development;
- Percentage of students achieving national benchmarks in literacy and numeracy and their improvements on the previous year;
- Average year 12 results and percentage of year 12 completions;
- School leaver destinations;
- Staff and student retention and absentee rates; and
- Aggregate measures of student improvement beyond normal expectations (ie Value-added measures of school performance).
I do not support the publishing of league tables, but I strongly believe in accountability and providing meaningful information to parents.
Greater autonomy to school principals
A further element of the National Schools Agenda that I outlined last November was to provide greater autonomy to school principals. Of particular importance is the power over staffing. The argument for this is clear: no board or head of any organisation – be it business, non-profit or government enterprise – can guarantee quality of their service without some control over who they employ and a school is no different. The educational research supports this view. It finds that school autonomy in process and personnel decisions is one of the key factors in success. (Kiel University reported by Woessmann, 2001).
A shift towards giving school principals greater power over the running of their schools has been occurring in Victoria and South Australia as a consequence of former state Coalition governments. Victoria, for example, has now devolved 94% of its funding to individual school budgets. This process needs to be accelerated nationwide.
While the Australian Government does not own schools, we are determined to ensure that principal autonomy is prioritised. Consequently we have inserted into the Schools Assistance legislation a requirement that school principals have at least a veto power over staff appointments at their school. Further, the legislation requires state governments and school authorities to commit to providing principals strengthened autonomy over, and responsibility for, education programs, budgets and other aspects of the school’s operations.
These are relatively modest measures and I hope that state governments, who own and manage state schools, will move even further in the direction of principal autonomy. As one principal mentioned in a survey by the Australian Primary Principals Association: “We know what we want to do; I would like to be able to get on with it.” (“Our Future” February 2001)
Making Values a Core Part of Schooling
The Melbourne Age recently ran with a headline “Values drive parents from state schools”. This headline was based on research conducted by the Australian Council of Educational Research (ACER) into why parents choose schools. ACER concluded, based on the views of more than 600 parents with children in secondary school, that when choosing a school “one factor stood out: the extent to which the school embraced traditional values.” The Prime Minister had made similar observations in 1996 and again earlier this year.
Shortly after becoming Education Minister, I placed the explicit teaching of values in schools firmly on the Government’s agenda. Australian society has a shared sense of values such as tolerance, trustworthiness, mutual respect, individual responsibility, honesty and doing one’s best. Every Australian child needs to have an understanding of these values as part of their schooling.
We are taking a number of important actions to push this agenda.
The commissioning of the Values Education Study has been critical. The study, which was published in November last year, showed that while many schools in all sectors are doing good work in this area, comprehensive values education is still at an early stage in Australian schools. As part of the study, 69 schools each received Australian Government grants of up to $7,000 for innovative, values education projects.
One of the more important advances reported by these schools was “an increased willingness and capacity to address values and values education in a much more explicit way or, at the very least, raised awareness of the need to do so”. This brought significant results. Alice Springs High School, for example, saw a 30% reduction in serious student behaviour problems, an increase in school attendance from 80% to 96% and students developing positive relationships with their teachers and peers.
The Values Education Study also developed a Draft National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools, which I circulated to all principals in March 2004 for discussion with their school communities. Following feedback, I will be sending a revised Framework to all State and Territory Education Ministers for their endorsement. It will be a condition of Australian Government funding for all schools over 2005-2008 that the agreed framework is displayed prominently in every school. It will also be a requirement that every school have a functioning flag-pole, and fly the Australian flag.
In addition, we will be investing $30 million to promote values education over the next four years. The funding provides for values education forums to be held in every school to develop their approach to values education. Clusters of schools will also be funded to develop and document good practice in the implementation of values education. Curriculum and support resources will be made available to all schools, including through a national website. Partnership projects will be conducted with national parent, principal, teacher and teacher educator organisations.
Creating Safer Schools
This week, one child in six will be bullied at school. The effects on all concerned can be devastating: those who are bullied are likely to have higher levels of stress, anxiety, depression and illness and have an increased tendency to suicide; while the children who do the bullying are more likely to drop out of school and use drugs and alcohol or be involved in violent behaviour in adult life.
There are no circumstances where bullying is acceptable in schools. Yet at the moment we are not well equipped to address and deal with the issue. For example, most teachers-in-training receive little instruction on dealing with bullying, violence and child abuse; only 36 per cent of new teachers recently surveyed felt their course adequately addressed these issues. Further, not every school has well known protocols in place which teachers and parents can follow.
This situation needs to be addressed and the Australian Government is doing so. In July 2003, I took to a meeting of State and Territory Education Ministers the National Safe Schools Framework, which was then endorsed by all participants. The Framework includes a set of agreed guiding principles for schools to follow so that every school can have in place a comprehensive set of protocols for providing a safe learning environment, and for handling incidents involving bullying, violence or any form of child abuse. The Schools Assistance legislation will require all Australian education authorities to implement the National Safe Schools Framework before 1 January 2006 as a condition of Australian Government funding for schools.
The Australian Government is supporting schools to implement the Framework through the allocation of $4.5 million for a range of specific initiatives. This includes $3m for teacher professional learning, $1m in grant money for schools to select, implement and showcase effective programs, $300,000 for materials and other support to guide the implementation of the framework and $200,000 to support the Bullying No Way! Website (www.bullyingnoway.com.au) until 2008.
We should be doing everything we can to ensure that our kids are able to go to schools where they feel safe and protected. These initiatives will be an important contribution to ensure that this occurs.
Tackling childhood obesity
The commitment to physical activity and tackling childhood obesity has been added to the national priorities since the conference last November. Childhood obesity is now a major cause of preventable health problems. It is already endemic in some areas and on the rise in others. About 20-25% of Australian children are overweight or obese with the proportion increasing rapidly, particularly since the mid-1980’s.
There are a number of reasons for this situation, including poor diet and a child’s lifestyle at home. However, what occurs at school is also important. Schools play an important role in promoting physical activity and a healthy lifestyle. However, the time dedicated in the school week to physical education and sport is declining. Some primary school children participate in no health and physical classes during the week (The Sufficiency of Resources for Primary Schools, 2004). More than 40% of children play no sport or participate in any physical activity after school.
The Australian Government is committed to increasing the levels of physical activity in primary and junior secondary students leading to promote more active and healthier children. From 2005, all students in the compulsory years of schooling will be required to undertake at least 2 hours of physical education each week. This is subject to commonsense exemptions to allow for children unable to undertake any form of physical activity. This measure will complement other significant measures announced by the Government which include:
- $90 million over four years to establish an after-school physical activity programme which will provide Australian families with a convenient and practical opportunity to support the healthy development of their primary school aged children (five to 12 years).
- a $15 million grant programme to help schools, families and children put into practice messages about healthy eating; and
- $11 million for an information campaign to raise the awareness of the vital role healthy eating and physical activity play in the well being of Australia’s children and to provide practical advice for parents and children.
Better approaches to boys’ education
There is a high level of public concern about the disengagement of boys from education and their lower levels of achievement. It is imperative that nothing is done which undermines the important and necessary progress which has been made in the last twenty years in the education of girls. However, the evidence is overwhelming that boys are falling behind in our education system, not only against girls, but compared against the performance of boys 25 years ago.
The Australian Government is already investing $8 million to help some 550 schools showcase and champion effective approaches to the educational needs of boys and undertake research in boys’ education issues. It is also strengthening its commitment by providing a further $19.4 million towards a new initiative – Success for Boys. This initiative will build on the success of the Boys Education Lighthouse initiative and will provide grants of $10,000 to up to 1,600 government and non-government schools to implement proven initiatives to improve the education of boys – especially in role modelling, literacy and information and communications technology.
Accelerating Indigenous education outcomes
We can’t afford not to include Indigenous education in our national plan. Closing the educational divide between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians remains one of this Government’s highest education priorities. We have made significant progress in improving the educational outcomes of Indigenous students. Since 1996, Year 12 retention rates have increased from 29% to 39% and national numeracy and literacy tests in primary school are at their highest levels to date.
However, while these improvements are encouraging, unacceptable disadvantage remains. Whilst Year 12 retention rates have risen to record levels, they are still only half that of non-Indigenous Australians, and although numeracy and literacy results have improved, one in four Indigenous students in year 3 cannot pass a basic reading test. This disadvantage is particularly pronounced in the remote regions of Australia.
On 5 April this year, I announced the Australian Government’s funding for Indigenous education for the next four years. This Government will provide a record $2.1 billion in funding for Indigenous education over this period – an increase of 20.5% over the current quadrennium. The Australian government’s approach is to redirect resources to programs that have demonstrably improved outcomes, to provide greater weighting of resources towards Indigenous students of greatest disadvantage – those in remote areas – and to improve mainstream service provision for Indigenous students.
These measures reflect the Australian government’s commitment to accelerate progress in improving Indigenous education and training outcomes. They represent a significant step to improve mainstream service provision for Indigenous students, and to better focus Indigenous-specific resources to the most disadvantaged Indigenous students
Helping families with post school choices
The Australian Government is fully committed to supporting young people as they undertake the transition through school and beyond to post-school destinations. My portfolio alone is spending $214 million over four years to 2007 to support young people with their transitions.
Our children are growing up in an environment which is very different from the environment my generation experienced. Expectations are different, opportunities are greater. Understanding the options and making the right choices is confronting and challenging for many young Australians. Young people need to be provided with up-to-date, interesting, and accurate information about careers and pathways.
We need to be raising awareness of the diverse range of job options available in the 21st century. The Australian Government recognises the need for a culture where schools value the career opportunities available through VET and provide young people, as well as their parents, with information about the benefits of going to TAFE, doing an apprenticeship, or other forms of vocational education and training in addition to providing information about university options.
To further assist those young people who do not continue through school to university, the Australian Government is working in partnership with industry and local communities to address current and future skills needs. The National Skills Shortage Strategy has funded initiatives like the Get A Trade website, which provides parents, career advisers and young people with up to date information about a range of industries. It also encourages people to look beyond stereotypes and find out what it actually means to work in particular occupations and industries, including traditional trades, in the 21st century.
Career advisers play a key role in providing information to young people, and their families. In February 2004, I announced a professional development package for careers advisers. We are also helping career advisers in schools find out more about industry, by providing $10,000 scholarships that will give career teachers a taste of what work in is like in particular industries through helping them undertake industry placements.
The Australian Government also funds a multitude of other programmes and initiatives to support young people and their families with their transitions. Key initiatives such as the Jobs Pathway Programme and the Partnership Education Outreach Model pilots, are focused on the provision of support directly to young people, to help them to make the transitions primarily through school, and to support them to explore post school options.
Through these and many other initiatives, the Australian Government is committed to building a careers and transition system which will empower Australia’s young people with the knowledge and skills to make choices and take advantage of opportunities for successful pathways.
PROVIDING RECORD FUNDING TO EVERY SCHOOL
The priorities outlined above will shape our schooling over the next decade. Their foundation, however, is a secure funding base.
The debate in regards to the adequacy of school funding is highly emotive, frequently pits state schools against Catholic and Independent schools and is generally characterised by misinformation.
Any dispassionate analysis of the funding of schools, however, shows that the Australian Government continues to fund both state schools and non-government schools at record levels. Further, state schools continue to enjoy the public funding advantage (as they should) over non-government schools – enrolling 68% of school students but receiving 76% of the public funds for schools.
State school funding
As you are probably aware, state government schools are owned, managed and primarily funded by state and territory governments. Nevertheless the Australian Government has, for several decades, provided supplementary funding to support the funding of state schools.
In every year since 1996, the Australian Government has set a new record in the level of funding it has provided for state schools. Funding this year is 69% higher than in 1996. Over this time, enrolments have grown by only 1.5% and inflation (CPI) has been only 20%. I have recently introduced legislation into Parliament that will provide a further $9.8 billion for state schools over the next four years, allowing annual funding to continue to increase at over 6% – almost three times the inflation rate.
Further, the Australian Government provides all GST revenues to the state and territories to support the funding of critical services such as schools and hospitals. Over the next four years, this will deliver over $150 billion in untagged funding. This is almost $8 billion more revenue than if the old system was still operating.
In short, the Australian Government is delivering on its obligations to fund state schools and I call on state governments to do likewise. I challenge the state governments to commit, as the Australian Government has done, to increasing its funding over the next four years by 6% per annum. This would deliver an extra $14.5 billion to schools. Of course, this is highly unlikely to occur. After all, none of the State Education Ministers would even commit to increasing funding by CPI at the last meeting of Education Ministers (MCEETYA), let alone commit to a rate almost three times the CPI. It is worth noting that just last week, the ACT Education Minister confirmed that she had in fact reduced the indexation of funding to her schools. And what was the indexation rate that was considered too high – CPI!
The Australian Government will continue to provide record funding to state schools and continue to provide the GST revenue to state governments to fund their services. But the Australian Government will not take over the funding of state government services simply because state governments are not fulfilling their responsibilities. On this matter, Mark Latham apparently agrees with me. As he said last month, “We just can’t be funding State services that have been subject to poor decision-making [by state governments]”
The other critically important issue in relation to funding of state schools is transparency. Currently no state government reveals how much money an individual school receives and, according to a major study commissioned by the Australian Government into the funding of primary schools, this lack of transparency “makes it possible to have only limited financial accountability and almost no educational accountability for the allocation and use of resources”. (The Sufficiency of Resources for Australian Primary Schools, p98). The study also pointed out that the lack of transparency in the funding of state schools causes significant dissatisfaction at a school level:
“The fact is, principals have no way of knowing whether their school is getting a fair go relative to other schools. Dissatisfaction and ineffectualness arise from not knowing as well as not having.” (The Sufficiency of Resources for Australian Primary Schools, p98)
These are serious assertions that should be addressed immediately. The Australian Government releases detailed information outlining the funding it provides to every school or school system in the country. State and Territory Governments should do likewise.
Funding of Catholic and Independent Schools
While state schools are predominantly funded by State and Territory Governments, Catholic and Independent schools receive most of their public funding from the Australian Government. This has been the case for decades.
As with state schools, the Australian Government continues to provide record funding to Catholic and Independent schools. The Government is unashamed in its support of parental choice, strongly believing that parents should not only be able to choose a school which best suits the needs of their child, but that they also receive financial support for that choice. That financial support should be determined by the socio-economic means of the parents of the students at the school.
This Government has taken several strong decisions to support parental choice. One of the most important was in 1996 when it abolished Labor’s strict regulatory system that governed the opening of new non-government schools. This regulatory system was known as the “New Schools Policy” but was colloquially known by the non-government school sector as the “No New Schools Policy” as it severely constrained the establishment of new non-government schools. Almost 300 new non-government schools have started since 1996. Two thirds of these schools would not have started under the “No New Schools Policy” and would not be in existence today. These 300 schools serve 54,000 families, have average annual fees of less than $2,000, and their enrolments account for over a third of the growth in the non-government school sector over the last 8 years. This is the creation of real choice. The Teachers Unions are calling for the “No New Schools Policy” to be re-instated. The Australian Labor Party is silent on the issue.
A further decision taken to support choice was the introduction of a new funding formula for non-government schools in 2001. The Socio-Economic Status (SES) system replaced the former Education Resource Index (ERI) system which was found by a KPMG evaluation to be overly rigid, susceptible to manipulation and lacking transparency. The SES model uses objective data to measure the capacity of a school community to financially support a school. Schools serving the wealthiest communities receive per student from the Australian Government 13.7% of the cost of educating a child at a state school, while schools serving the neediest communities receive 70% of that cost. Every student attending a non-government school attracts less than if they attended a state school, but they all receive something.
This year, the SES system will deliver to Catholic and Independent schools about $300m more than if they were funded under the old ERI system.
The Schools Assistance legislation currently in the Parliament will continue the SES system into the 2005-08 quadrennium. Importantly, all Catholic schools will be fully integrated into the system from 2005, meaning that every non-government school in Australia, regardless of denomination, will attract funding in the same way. As a consequence of the Catholic schools fully integrating into the SES system, they will receive $362m more in additional funding. This will bring their general recurrent funding over the four year period to $12.6 billion – a 32% increase over the current four year period (excluding increases due to enrolments and related effects). The 1046 independent schools will continue to have their funding determined according to their SES scores, which have been updated. Independent schools will receive a total of $7.6 billion in recurrent funding – a 27% increase excluding enrolment growth and related effects. On the same basis, the increase to state government schools is 28%.
The Australian Government has also committed to ensuring that the method of indexing funding to state government schools – the AGSRC index – will also continue to apply to the funding of Catholic and Independent schools. This commitment will ensure that funding increases will keep pace with the costs of schooling. However, this commitment is not universally shared. The Teachers Unions are calling for the AGSRC indexation method to be abolished for non-government schools. More disturbingly is that the Australian Labor Party has expressly said in key policy documents that it would retain the AGSRC as the method of indexing funding for state schools, but has been silent on the issue in regards to Catholic and Independent schools. (ALP, Working Together for a Better Australia, p5).
Further, the Labor-dominated report from the Senate Inquiry into School Funding tabled this month left open the possibility that Labor would replace the AGSRC with a lesser form of indexation. The extent of the Report’s finding was that its replacement was “not recommended as a priority”. (Senate Inquiry into Commonwealth funding for Schools, Chapter 4)
I will take this opportunity today to also make some comments about the alternative-government’s policy in regards to non-government schools. The Australian Labor Party has been opposed to the SES model since its inception and it proposes to replace it with a yet-to-be-defined “National Resource Standard” formula that would determine a schools funding entitlement based on the fees charged by parents and the contribution of state governments:
“If Labor is elected, Australia will have a national schools resource standard for the first time, and both federal and state funding will be linked to it...This is by far the fairest way to decide which schools will receive extra funding and which schools will have their funding cut.” (Jenny Macklin, Hansard, 4/8/04)
This is an ill-considered policy. Most disturbingly it would penalise parents for contributing more of their own money towards their child’s education. Parents would put more money into the school through fees or donations and the government under this policy would take money away. It is absurd, if not contrary to the aspirations that we have for our country, to penalise parents on the basis of the depth of sacrifice they make for their children.
Further, it would create an incentive for state governments to further reduce their commitment to non-government schools. After all, if a national resource standard would be maintained by a federal government, what incentive would a state government have to maintain its own funding? It is not as if State Governments need an additional incentive to cut funding to non-government schools. After all, 5 of the 8 State Labor Governments have cut funding to non-government schools in the last 18 months alone!
The experience of the former ERI funding model also showed that any model that takes account of private income is open to abuse. As Louise Watson from Canberra University points out “private schools quickly become more sophisticated in filling in the financial questionnaire to qualify for a higher funding category.” (Watson, 2003)
Finally, the impact of Labor’s policy would mean a reduction in funding to at least 127 schools across the country which will push fees up and force thousands of families to withdraw their children from these schools. The Association of Independent Schools in South Australia estimates that if Labor’s policy was to reduce funding to the targeted schools by 50%, then an estimated 10 to 15% of students would be forced out of these schools and would enrol in state schools or lower-fee non-government schools. Applied nationally, this would cost the taxpayer an additional $290 to 440 million over the next four years to pay for the higher public subsidy that these students would be getting at a state school. What a great policy!
No funding model is perfect, but the SES model is transparent, objective, and does not penalise parents for investing in their child’s education.
CONCLUSION
There is often talk that our schools are in crisis. They are not. In fact, on many measures, they are world class. However, there are considerable opportunities to make schools more effective and deliver better outcomes for our children.
I have outlined today the Australian Government’s agenda which will shape schools over the next decade. The agenda is firmly centred on the needs of parents and their children and the educational requirements of the next generation of Australians.
The Australian Government remains committed to school choice as a fundamental democratic right. We remain committed to quality schooling for all Australian students regardless of the school they attend and we will continue to provide record funding to all Australian schools. Just as importantly, we will continue to promote quality teaching, provide national consistency in education, properly report to parents, and ensure that schools are safe, committed to teaching values, delivering educational justice of Indigenous Australians and providing seamless transition from school to career for all young people.
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