Education Funding

Ms WORTLEY (Torrens) (14:40): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. What has the state government's ongoing commitment to the Gonski agreement meant for South Australian public school students?

Members interjecting:

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Higher Education and Skills) (14:40): It is a good question, as the interjections on my side say, because without Gonski we wouldn't be able to put in the enormous effort that is being put in at the moment to make our public education system strong and fit-for-purpose in a modern environment, where we have students of today who need to have the skills for the jobs of the future, where they need to have strong literacy and numeracy basics, and where they need to be prepared for working in a world that requires a vast range of both skills and knowledge that weren't as important in past years and we need to keep up to date.

What was good enough a few years ago will not be good enough in a few years' time. To be able to be responsive to those needs we need to spend money on our public education system. That money was hard fought for by this state government and by other state governments many years ago in a six-year funding agreement. I understand that the opposition at the time of the last election felt comfortable that it would only be a four-year agreement, that the Tony Abbott view that the Gonski agreement was only four years was fine with them. Well, it was not fine with us because it was a six-year agreement.

The importance of the six-year agreement is that the funding in the last two years was where 75 per cent of the additional money came in. What did we do, despite losing our funding partners when the Abbott government came in saying, 'There will be no difference between us and the Labor government'? They cut those last two years, but we stuck by it and because we stuck by our last two years we are now able to spend money on the public sector system. To do that we are able to fund intervention in the early years. We are able to fund literacy and numeracy programs to make sure—

The Hon. T.R. Kenyon interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Newland.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: —that the basics are being supported. We are able to prepare students for the jobs of tomorrow. We are able to have individualised attention for students so, whether they are gifted, whether they have disabilities or whether they just need a little bit more time to learn the basics of literacy and numeracy, they will get that level of attention. To do all of that we need to support our teachers to be the best that they can be.

In the recent week, many people will have noticed the amount of money that we have been able to allocate to these very important priorities: $67 million for literacy and numeracy announced back in August, $66 million announced some time ago for the funding of utilities bills centrally so that the schools can use that money on education in the schools, $30 million for lifting the income level of families who have students at school so that they don't have to pay the fees to go to public schools, $16 million for helping public schools deal with students with complex behaviours, $27 million for supporting vulnerable students and their families and making sure that their wellbeing is a priority for schools and $16 million on professional development through a leadership and teacher excellence academy.

None of this would have been possible without this government's commitment to Gonski. The one thing that is at peril for this state for public education is if a government should come in that doesn't care about funding public education, that doesn't have an adherence to funding to need and funding for Gonski.