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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
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Education Funding

Ms WORTLEY (Torrens) (14:35): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. Can the minister advise the house as to the implications of the federal government's education funding announcement for South Australian schools?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Higher Education and Skills) (14:36): Thank you to the member for Torrens for asking this question. Naturally, this has been of enormous interest to everyone involved in the school system, which means a huge proportion of South Australia.

We had, as members will recall, a six-year agreement that involved most of the money coming in the last two years in order to bring us up to the level of funding and resourcing for schools that we know is necessary for a high-quality education to prepare our kids for the future. Some 77 per cent of that was sitting in the final two years of the six-year agreement, so it was devastating when the original budget, under treasurer Hockey at the time, simply pulled out those last two years. While we maintained our commitment to our final two years, we were missing some $335 million in those final two years.

What we had as an announcement last week looks like—and I say that because we are yet to have all the detail to be confident of exactly what quantum we are talking about—something like $70 million out of what had been $335 million. So, that still leaves us significantly short on what we had all agreed and all understood, both sides of parliament all across the country, was an appropriate amount to spend on schooling.

What we have been told is that we now have the idea of having as much funding for our schools as has been agreed and is across the country in 10 years' time—instead of two years' time, in 10 years' time. What we are being told is that students of today have got to wait. Of course, kids don't wait. They go through one year, they go through the next year, and in 10 years we will have lost an enormous number of kids through our system who will not have had the benefit of the funding that we all agreed four years ago was necessary.

We have done some analysis to try to understand how this will affect each of our schools so that we can get a sense of what the level of damage is. You can see the difference per capita. If you took all schools and all students, regardless of sector, and did an even cut, it's something like $280 per head for the students over the next two years that they will now get. It would have been over a thousand dollars per head. Of course, we don't fund evenly like that because what this is about is funding to need.

I was pleased to hear minister Birmingham and the Prime Minister acknowledge that funding to need was the correct model. There had been a lot of doubt about whether they appreciated that that was the case and I am pleased that they are now saying that. The problem is that, if you have a small amount of money and you have a perfect model for dividing it up, it is not going to make much difference. If you have the reasonable quantum that we had agreed was necessary and you divide it according to need, you will then start to get a significant change in the quality of education that students are experiencing.

I have been to many schools, and I am sure that every member of this chamber has been to many schools, where they are able to tell you what they have done with the small amount of Gonski additionality that they have received to date—the way that they have been able to bring in extra people to work with students who need additional help, and those interventions are essential; the way we have been able to provide more resources for kids with disabilities; and the way that we have been able to provide resources to support children, regardless of their family background, if they need some more assistance in order to catch up in order to be able to perform well at school.

I have a couple of examples of where we have started to analyse what the figures look like. In the electorate of Black, public schools will miss out on something like $3.4 million just in the electorate of Black over those years. In the electorate of King, their share of cuts is worse. They will miss out on something like $4.2 million, which is something like the equivalent of 39 teachers over just two years. So, we will see across this state a recognition in every school community—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Alas, the minister's time has expired.

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