Page 2118 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 6 June 2018
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reflect when the devil in the detail is examined. I note that his amendment cherrypicks some numbers while failing to mention some gaps.
Let me say at the outset that education is, and must be, at the forefront of ACT policy settings, and it should not be predicated just on raw dollar costings. This year’s education budget of $1.229 billion is an increase of over $42 million on last year. As the keepers of ACT taxpayer funds, the government has an obligation to ensure that taxpayers and Canberra families receive the very best value for their investment.
If you read the drip-fed releases distributed in recent weeks by the education minister, you may well have come to the same conclusions as Mr Steel did: that this budget will deliver more schools, more school psychologists, more support for teachers and more support for parents. You would be as disappointed as many Canberra families are, and will be, to learn that it is all on the never-never and into the future.
Let me take school psychologists as an example. The background to this appropriation had its genesis in 2015, when a teacher in a government school was so under-supported and so ill-equipped to utilise any other resource that she was forced to resort to building a cage-like structure to protect a student, other students and herself from physical injury. The result was the Shaddock inquiry and report on students with challenging needs and complex behaviours. A key recommendation was the appointment of 20 psychologists to be placed in schools to assist with the ever-present and growing demands on teachers—many, if not all, of whom were under-trained and under-supported to manage an increasingly diverse range of complex student behaviours. The then education minister immediately agreed to support all 50 of the recommendations.
Slow forward three years, and the first five school psychologists have at least been appointed this calendar year. The Labor Party election commitment costed out the promise at $4 million, with $1.3 million committed in 2018-19 and all 20 not later than 30 June 2020. But we saw a mere $327,000 in last year’s budget and a mere $726,000 in this year’s budget. It seems that the high need which was so quickly agreed to by the then education minister has slipped into the category of “whenever we get to it”.
By the time in the never-never, when—or if—this government finally gets to delivering the 20 school psychologists, increases in students and schools across the territory will mean that all ACT students, schools and teachers will still be under-supported. Nowhere in this budget can I find any allocation for the additional specialist training that is also required. I hope that the minister will be able to shed some light in the upcoming estimates hearings.
The budget talks about more resources for student growth and has allocated a total of $31 million over the next four years to deliver the equivalent of 66 full-time learning professionals and support staff to ensure that the needs of Canberra’s growing school population are met. But, given that this year is enterprise agreement year for our hardworking government school teachers, how much of that $7 million will go to pay increases? How many of the additional 66 learning professionals will be employed
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