SCHOOLS, FUNDING

Mr PISONI (Unley) (15:10): My question is to the Minister for Education. Why did the government not tell small schools prior to the March election that their local grants could be cut, threatening their existence?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Minister for Education, Minister for Early Childhood Development) (15:11): The context for any discussion about the education savings has to be the extra $203 million that we are putting into education. An extra $203 million per annum in recurrent expenditure is going into the education budget, and that is after savings. That is net of the savings task.

What that means for some of our small schools is that they will receive additional money through that mechanism. So, once the additional funding that is going into schools—extra teachers and extra SSOs through that extra funding—is applied, I would anticipate that a number of those small schools will be no worse off at all.

Mrs Redmond interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, the Leader of the Opposition! I warn the Leader of the Opposition.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: In the next few weeks, the student-centred funding model will provide that information to schools. That is a very substantial achievement that we have been able to win as a consequence of the Industrial Relations Commission decision. That model will provide a base of funding for small schools.

Incidentally, small schools, under the formula that we are adopting, will be advantaged vis-a-vis other schools. They will have a bias in their favour and, in addition, this budget provides an extra $203 million. So, there are some offsetting factors there.

The truth is that this was an initiative that emerged out of the Sustainable Budget Commission and, of course, that occurred after the last state election, not before the state election. Just as the Minister for Health has clarified, these things are revealed in the budget for health as in the education budget.