I rise to speak on the Better and Fairer Schools (Funding and Reform) Bill 2024. At its core, this bill is about increasing Commonwealth government funding for Australian public primary and secondary schools. My electorate of Indi is home to 118 schools. The large majority, 87, are public schools. From Wodonga to Wangaratta, Corryong to Kinglake and everywhere in between, I regularly visit these schools. I’ve visited 57 since being elected and visited many students virtually, online, during COVID, and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many students here in the parliament.

I care deeply about these schools, schools full of teachers, administrators, parents and carers who want nothing more than to see their students reach their full potential. This bill is about resourcing public schools to achieve just that. The bill aims to increase public funding for schools by amending the Australian Education Act to ensure that the Commonwealth’s share of funding for government schools from 2025 onwards cannot fall below 20 per cent. I want to see more funding for public schools because it’s a well-proven fact that regional Australia has worse educational outcomes than our city cousins. In my electorate of Indi, we are less likely to complete year 12 and less likely to attend university and obtain a degree than our city counterparts.

Accessing quality education in those early schooling years is vital towards improving the outcomes in later education. But, unfortunately, we know that regional and rural school students often fall behind. According to the government’s review to inform a better and fairer education system, regional, rural and remote students were three times more likely to fall below NAPLAN’s former national minimum standards. Regional and rural students aren’t just starting behind; they fall even further behind over time. This simply isn’t good enough, and it shouldn’t be this way. Rural and regional students have the smarts; they need the resources. Properly funding schools is the most important reform to close this gap.

It’s worth pausing briefly to explain how government schools are funded. In 2011, David Gonski AC delivered a review into funding for schooling. The review identified several highly concerning trends in the educational outcomes of Australian students. In particular, the review made a clear link between low levels of educational achievement and disadvantage. Put simply, if you start out in life doing it a bit tougher than your peers, it’s almost certain that you will also be disadvantaged throughout your entire education. To help address this persistent disadvantage in our schooling system, Mr Gonski stressed the need for equitable school funding model, one that ensures the differences in educational outcomes are not linked to how wealthy you are. To determine what equitable funding is, the schooling resource standard, or SRS, was created. The SRS estimates how much total funding a school needs to meet its students’ educational needs, regardless of whether that school is public or independent.

How much the Commonwealth and the states contribute to the SRS was determined by the National School Reform Agreement, which will expire at the end of the year. Under that agreement, the Commonwealth funds schools 20 per cent and the states 75 per cent. This leaves a five per cent gap in meeting the SRS. It means that government schools have been, and will be, underfunded by between $6.2 billion and $6.5 billion every year from 2023 to 2028 under the current situation. It’s no wonder that the Productivity Commission found in 2023 that the National School Reform Agreement had done little to improve student outcomes. With the National School Reform Agreement expiring, we have an opportunity now to fix this funding gap, to finally deliver on the full SRS and get on with the job of equitably and adequately funding our public schools. It’s what our young people deserve.

The government has put on the table the new, 10-year Better and Fairer Schools Agreement. Under the new agreement the Commonwealth have agreed to increase their contribution from 20 per cent to 22.5 per cent. They are asking the states to increase their contribution by 2.5 per cent to 77.5 per cent so that we can deliver 100 per cent of the schooling resource standard. But the agreement isn’t just about funding. It also includes reforms like year 1 phonics checks and early years of schooling numeracy checks to identify students who need extra help; greater wellbeing support by providing more counsellors and mental health workers; initiatives to help attract and retain teachers; and evidence based teaching and targeted and intensive supports, like small-group or catch-up tutoring to help students who fall behind. Without a doubt, these are important reforms that will help improve the quality of our education. But I want to remind the parliament that the Gonski review emphasised that public school funding is at the heart of the problems in our education system. He wrote that while reforms like improving teacher quality and strategies for low socioeconomic school communities are ‘a good foundation’, he also said they ‘need to be supported by an effective funding framework’.

As part of the new agreement, the Albanese government are quick to say they’ve put $16 billion of additional investment for public schools on the table. But will $16 billion meet the needs of the students, the young people across our country, who this is ultimately about? In answering this question, I want to address two issues related to the bill before us. First, there is a strong case that the Commonwealth government must increase their share of the school resourcing standard beyond the 22.5 per cent currently on the table. A key concern for Victoria in not signing on to the new agreement is that the Commonwealth’s offer won’t achieve the full SRS and Australian kids will continue to fall behind. Victoria, along with the Australian Education Union, are asking the Commonwealth to increase their funding to a full 25 per cent, largely because the states already provide the large majority, 75 per cent, of public school funding. In response, the Commonwealth government says that the states could also lift funding by matching the Commonwealth’s increase of 2.5 per cent to contribute 77.5 per cent of the SRS. But this doesn’t reflect the reality of financial relations between the Commonwealth and the states. With less capacity than ever to raise additional revenue, the states have little room to manoeuvre. Frankly, only the Commonwealth has the resources and the capacity to make this additional nation-building and nation-shaping investment.

When we talk about funding public education we must also address government funding for private, or independent, schools. Independent Schools Australia, the peak body for non-government schools, says that government funding for private schools is about enabling ‘educational choice’: parents should be able to choose whether private or public education is best for their kids, and governments should fund both of these options. I agree with this, especially when it comes to choosing a school because of a family’s religious beliefs or values. But we must interrogate the reality of how these schools are funded by governments. This is not about criticising private schools or the families who choose them; this is about fairness for each student no matter which classroom they’re sitting in.

The Commonwealth actually funds Catholic and independent schools beyond what it is required to according to the current Commonwealth funding arrangements. During the period from 2022 to 2028, the Commonwealth government will overfund private schools by up to $2.8 billion. This is compared to chronic Commonwealth underfunding of public schools, as I’ve just outlined. To bring this gap between private and public school funding into sharp relief, research conducted by the Australian Education Union shows that five elite private schools spent more money on new facilities than governments spent on half of Australia’s public schools collectively in 2021.

When choice starts to become about vast differences in infrastructure and quality of education between our public and private schools, I start to question whether right now parents truly are being offered a choice. We hear too often about public schools with unsupported teachers, run-down classrooms and sporting facilities, and minimal resources to help the students who are struggling. According to a survey conducted late last year, almost half of parents with children in private schools would consider moving them to the public system if the public system were better resourced. I firmly believe that more government funding for public schools would increase a family’s educational choices.

Back in 2010, when the Gonski reforms were initiated, the then Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, said that your postcode shouldn’t determine how well you do in life. But unfortunately it does. Now, almost a decade and a half later, the Albanese government could finally deliver equitable public school funding. They could do this by funding 25 per cent of public schools. This would be a significant investment in Australia’s young people and a significant legacy to claim.

The second issue with the bill is that the states’ contribution of 75 per cent for government schools is not a true 75 per cent. The previous National School Reform Agreement allowed the states to claim, as part of their share of funding the SRS of public schools, funding for items that are specifically excluded from how the SRS is measured. This meant the states could claim things like funding for capital depreciation and school transport for up to four per cent of the SRS of public schools. Many states could also claim things like teacher registrations. According to Save Our Schools, this means the current Victorian funding for public schools in 2024 is actually 65.82 per cent, well below the 70.43 per cent they claim and even further below the 75 per cent they originally agreed to. This could be addressed by an amendment to the Australian Education Act relating to the conditions of financial assistance to the states. That amendment would require the states’ funding contributions to be measured according to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority’s financial data reporting methodology.

In asking the Commonwealth government to increase its share of funding from 20 to 25 per cent, I’m not saying we should let the states off the hook here. They have to improve their funding too. I support this bill because ultimately I want to see more funding for public schools, but I urge the government to consider amendments to improve the bill so that schools and students get the funding they deserve.

At the beginning of this speech, I mentioned that I regularly visit schools across my electorate. I speak on this bill with these schools at the front of my mind. I think about the students, the teachers, the parents, the carers and the broader communities that they are intrinsically part of. I was fortunate recently to visit Mount Beauty Primary School, a perfect example of how public schools can operate as a hub for the broader community. This school offers a breakfast program, so that every student can start the day with a full stomach no matter what’s going on at home. They also have a wellbeing officer, who helps students access paediatrician appointments, speech therapists, occupational therapists and counselling—all vital services, for a young person to thrive—and this is in a very remote part of my electorate. The outside-school-hours program at Mount Beauty primary provides care for students after the school day ends, and the school’s multipurpose building acts as a shelter for the local community during times of emergencies—especially important in bushfire prone areas like Mount Beauty. And there are stories similar to Mount Beauty’s right across the electorate of Indi.

Schools in Indi are also especially important because they offer vocational education and training, or VET. VET courses are where our plumbers, hairdressers, electricians, childcare workers, disability and aged-care workers, builders, mechanics, hospitality workers, agricultural workers and more get their start.

I recently visited Yea High School, which includes students from neighbouring Seymour and Alexandra. Agriculture is one of the biggest employers in this town, and the school offers the agricultural certificate II program on site at the school and at a nearby working farm. They recently built an ag learning space, and I was privileged to plant the very first orange tree in their orchard. I want to thank Principal Brian D’Arcy for showing me around and for the invaluable work he and his staff do.

I could go on. I haven’t had time to mention Wangaratta High School’s expansive STEM program, Benalla college’s involvement in the Victorian School for Student Leadership program at the Snowy River campus, and many, many more success stories. Just on the weekend, I was at the Wangaratta festival of jazz, and there was the Wangaratta High School show band, playing together with their teachers, or alongside them—those teachers giving up their weekends to make sure that those students could fulfil their musical capacity and ability and have the opportunity, the confidence, to perform in public.

I love our public schools. I want them to thrive. I want to see students right across Australia, no matter their socioeconomic status, do the very best they can. I want the government to support these schools to be the best they can, and this starts and ends with funding them properly.