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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 6 Hansard (18 June) . . Page.. 2063 ..
Mr Pratt
: What you are not saying is they only had 24 hours notice to sign it.MR SPEAKER
: Order Mr Pratt! You have the right of reply.Mr Pratt
: And they will sign it.MS GALLAGHER
: You quote selectively from it, Mr Pratt. I sat here and I did listen to you in silence, so please extend me the same courtesy. The document states:The distribution of total public funding across sectors should recognise the different costs to schools and sectors of ensuring universal access to quality school education and equitable opportunity for all students
The total level of funding for government schooling is adequate to ensure access to high quality government schooling for all, and all governments' funding policies recognise this as a national priority
Public funding for schooling supports the rights of families to choose non-government schooling and supports non-government schools on the basis of need, within the context of promoting a socially and culturally cohesive society and the effective use of public funds.
Be careful when you go around quoting this, Mr Pratt, because, although your mob do not like it, we do and we think it will deliver a national framework that will provide equitable outcomes, because at the moment that is not what is happening at the Commonwealth level.
We turn to the interest subsidy scheme. For many years, as Mr Pratt says, the ACT has supported the non-government schools' capital investment through the interest subsidy scheme with an upper funding limit of about $2.8 million. In addition to this, the Commonwealth provides capital grants of around $2 million per annum and the use to which these funds are put is decided by the block grant authority comprising non-government school representatives.
The report of the inquiry into ACT education funding, or the Connors report, acknowledged that, while encouraging the creation and expansion of non-government schooling may have been sensible once, the circumstances are now different. The Connors report also records that, if you exclude the Catholic systemic schools, the main beneficiaries of the interest subsidy scheme over the next 15 years are three schools which it would be difficult to say are not well resourced.
I do not know what you do not understand about that, Mr Pratt. The table is there, the figures are there. They are data from the interest subsidy scheme and it is clear that, in the out years, the next 15 years, significant proportions of the interest subsidy scheme are going to Canberra Girls Grammar, Canberra Boys Grammar and Burgmann Anglican College, which you've also quoted there.
Ms Connors' report also shows that independent schools are in a position to devote more than twice the per capita level to capital expenditure than government schools. The report points out that the interest subsidy scheme enables well-endowed schools to use their own income for other purposes and thus assist them to compete to maintain or increase their share of the student population in a time of overall declining student numbers.
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