Page 568 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 19 March 2014
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simply wrong. It is simply wrong to say that campaigning by teachers, parents, children and community supporters for funding for education to give our children the absolute best opportunities and the best start in their lives is wrong. It is completely unacceptable to make a statement like that in this place. Reading directly from the web page:
The Gonski Review was the most comprehensive investigation of the way our schools are funded in almost 40 years.
Headed by respected businessman David Gonski, it found that too many children were being denied the education they needed due to a lack of resources.
It warned that the link between disadvantage and poor outcomes in education was stronger in Australian than in any comparable nation and the situation would worsen without urgent action.
It goes on to talk about what agreeing to a Gonski level of resources in the schools means. It means the money would be used to improve student learning through more individual attention in the classroom, extra specialist teachers in the areas such as literacy and numeracy, greater support for children with disabilities or special needs, and additional training and classroom support for teachers.
Six years of Gonski funding agreements were signed up to, and those agreements specified the level of additional resources each government would contribute and require funding to be delivered according to student need. What we got, however, was the Abbott government only agreeing to provide less than one-third of that money under those agreements and saying it would commit only to funding until the middle of 2017. In addition, it then handed funding to states and territories that did not sign up to Gonski, with no requirement to match that funding or even distribute it to schools. So far not one dollar of that money has been allocated to schools in the states that did sign up to the agreement.
Again, saying that the Gonski campaign has gone way past its use-by date is simply wrong. We should always fight for our children’s futures and our grandchildren’s futures. It is the difference between our children succeeding and our children having to struggle through life. We should never, ever stop or falter in fighting for better educational outcomes for our children, and that is what the Gonski campaign is all about.
All Australian children and young people are entitled to receive an excellent education, and that should be provided through the provision of a high-quality and well-funded school system irrespective of where they live or their circumstances. We just talked about how the Australian and ACT governments committed to fund and implement school funding reforms known as the Gonski reforms under the national education reform agreement and that the bilateral agreement between the two governments includes an ACT implementation plan for the national plan for school improvement. This is all very welcome on this side of the chamber and in general by the ACT community, and that was clearly shown yesterday at Richardson Primary School, which was referred to by Mr Gentleman and Mr Rattenbury, where teachers, students and community supporters all got together with their union calling for a greater education model for their children.
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