Opposition hasn’t done its homework on school funding

Media Release

5 June 2013

Claims by the Opposition today that the amendments to the Australian Education Bill 2012 were introduced into Parliament without consultation are laughable.
The only reason the contents of these amendments have come as a surprise to Christopher Pyne is because until today he hasn’t bothered to engage in this debate. He dismissed the Gonski report within 20 minutes of it being released and has since rejected the Government’s National Plan for School Improvement before he even asked for a briefing on its contents.
The amendments introduced yesterday contain details of the new school funding system and reforms under the National Plan for School Improvement. The first details of these reforms were released by the Prime Minister in September, more than 7 months ago.
Final details on the model settings, including per student amounts, loading amounts and the extra investment on offer to schools were released in April. There is nothing in the amendments that the Opposition, and schools sectors across the country, have not been aware of.
The Gillard Government first provided state governments, the National Catholic Education Commission, and the Independent Schools Council of Australia, with a detailed school funding modelling tool in September last year. Updates were provided in December last year, February this year, and again in March or April depending on the stage of negotiations with each sector.
And since the Gonski report was released in February last year, there have been hundreds of multilateral and bilateral meetings between education ministers, and officials, from every sector. This includes 63 multilateral officials meetings, 6 meetings of all education ministers, 61 bilateral meetings with state government officials, 25 meetings with the NCEC and 19 meetings with the ISCA.
Mr Pyne only requested a briefing on 24 April – months after the NPSI was released – before cancelling the first meeting and finally meeting government officials on 30 May.
Details of the National Plan and school funding approach have been publicly available on the Better Schools website since September, with regular updates as required. Copies of the amendments were provided to all education sectors last month and feedback from stakeholders have been incorporated into the final amendments.
Further claims heard in Parliament today that the amendments contain no detail on how much funding schools will get next year are also plain wrong. The Bill makes clear that every school will get at least it’s current funding, plus 3 per cent indexation, as a bare minimum. The vast majority of schools will get even more.
If the shadow education Minister has not done his homework and acquainted himself with the facts about our plan, then he has no-one to blame but himself.
But it’s a typical attitude from an alternative education minister who has asked me one question in Parliament in the past two and half years. He has no viable plan for school education and can only resort to what he does best – wrecking, complaining, and telling constant steam of untruths.

Peter Garrett AM
Federal Member for Kingsford Smith
Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth