Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017. This is not needs based funding. It does not matter which way this government tries to spin it, it is not. In my contribution to this debate I am going to outline a couple of examples from my own electorate of Bendigo, a regional electorate that is not dissimilar to many other regional electorates throughout Australia.

Before I was fortunate and privileged to be elected to this place, when Labor was in government I had the great opportunity to go out to Lightning Reef Primary School. It was being opened by the then education minister. We had the state people there; we had our federal people there. It is a school in an area of extreme disadvantage. There are pockets of real disadvantage in the Bendigo electorate. These suburbs and postcodes, unfortunately, feature very highly in the low SES index at a state level and on the disadvantage index.

When I was there, wandering around and chatting to the teachers in the beautiful new classrooms that were built by Labor through contributions through the Building the Education Revolution funding, I noticed that there was a small group of about 10 children that were taking their classes in the shared learning space in the corridor. I looked at their artwork and sat with their teacher for a moment and spoke to them. They had two teacher aides—it was not enough. They were what the school had nicknamed the preprep class. These were kids who had come into the school without the skills that they needed to start prep. They struggled with language, they struggled with their colours. Their artwork was like the artwork of a three-year-old, not a five-year-old. They were from traumatised, broken homes in the electorate. All of them had significant trauma in their households. This school has a number of students that fall into that category. This school only has six households where they do not have a health care card. In this school they struggled to get someone on the school council who has a job.

This school, despite all of its challenges, is trying its very best. They prioritise teacher aides over watering their oval. They prioritise investing in numeracy and literacy over an arts or language program. This is the school of hard knocks. It needs extra funding. Under the needs based funding that Labor put forward, it would have started to receive the resources that it needs. It needs a cook to help with nutrition in the school; it needs social workers to help parents and kids who come to school who fear going home from school because of violence at home. Yet this school will not get needs based funding under this government's proposal and the bill that is before us. No, this school will only get $34,000—that is all this government will give this school: $34,000; that is it. This is the school most in need in the Bendigo electorate, and they do not even get enough money for an extra teacher's aide. They do not get enough money to water their oval. They do not get enough money to help kids who do not have lunches. This school talks about how Monday is the hardest day because they have kids who come to school who have not eaten all weekend and by Friday they send them home with food packages so that at least the older kids in the family can help feed the younger kids. This is happening today, in 2017, in the Bendigo electorate. Yet this government says all the rhetoric: 'We have delivered needs based funding.' Well, no you have not.

There are other schools in the Bendigo electorate that will miss out significantly on funding. Bendigo Senior Secondary College, under Labor's plan, would have got $1.6 million next year. This school has the largest VCE in the state of Victoria. They have the largest VCAL and VET program. They partner with the Catholic school system. They partner with other secondary schools in the area to deliver the most inclusive and comprehensive education plan. This funding would have ensured that every student had the resources, the teachers and the support that they needed. Yet this government is not giving them the $1.6 million that is needs based funding; instead, this government is only giving them $265,000. This is a school that does not turn away any student. This is a school that gives every single student an opportunity in their final two years of study—whether they are going on to TAFE, looking for an apprenticeship or going on to university—and gives them the skills and expertise that they need. I want to commend the teachers, their acting principal and their former principal, Dale Pearce, for the excellent work that they have done to prepare this school. But they deserve their needs based funding, not the joke of a needs based funding put forward by this government. They deserve that extra $1.6 million next year and the year after, to ensure that every student that goes there has the skills to go forward after their secondary school education.

They are not the only ones. Crusoe College and Weeroona College, which feed into Bendigo Senior Secondary College, will lose up to $800,000 in extra funding. They are getting nowhere near that from this government, whatsoever. Weeroona College has this brilliant program called SWT. SWT helps kids who have dropped out of schooling—kids having trouble fitting into their classroom, who have significant trauma at home and who may have had long periods where they were not in school at primary school. They pick these students up, give them hope and encourage them. It is intensive. It is a separate school within a school. They build the capacity in these young people to re-engage in education. And they are having brilliant outcomes. All of their students to date have been able to re-enter the rest of the school and the classrooms, or have been able to enter TAFE or another learning environment. This program is working. And it is being funded through the original Gonski formula. It is being funded through the extra resources that were committed. Why was this program possible under Labor but not under the Liberals? Because it is resource-intensive. They require a smaller student-to-teacher ratio. They require experienced teachers who have decades of education behind them and are able to work intensively with these young people to give them a chance. These are young people who have been broken, not by a school system but by society. They have not had the support that they needed in their junior years. They are now in secondary school, and this school has worked out how to help save these young people, give them hope and encourage their aspirations so that they can finish school with the skills they need to go on to have functioning lives. Yet this government wants to cut the funding that makes these programs possible.

I mentioned Crusoe College, another school that has an incredibly innovative program called SWITCh. The school cannot quite fathom how successful this SWITCh program has been. They are actually supporting about 10 per cent of the school population. Kids with anxiety, kids who may not be able to cope in a classroom of 30 and kids that are really struggling with catching up to the rest of their classmates because they just do not have the basic numeracy and literacy skills are able to go and be part of the SWITCh program. It might be for one class a day, it might be for a whole day, it might be for six months, it might be for six weeks. But this program, rather than seeing these kids disrupt the whole class, invests heavily with them at their level, builds them back up and gives them opportunities so that they can learn and grow. It is a highly successful program that is literally saving these young people.

In this program, they invest heavily in mental health. They use a combination of state-based funding, chaplaincy funding, equity funding or original needs-based funding to ensure that they have all of the resources. They have pooled it all together from these little pockets of money. These young people, some who have quite severe mental health concerns, are rebuilding their confidence and are re-engaging. They are doing incredibly well. We should be very proud of what these schools are achieving today, which is Public Education Day.

I want to share some personal examples of students—some stories—to highlight how invaluable the SWITCh program is. I have changed this young person's name to Tracey. She shared her story but wanted to make sure that she had anonymity when I stood up to share the story. It was halfway through 2016 when Tracey's mother heard about the SWITCh program. Tracey had gone to multiple other schools, but the big factor for why she was not succeeding and could not face going to school was her anxiety. After Tracey came to Crusoe, she became aware of the opportunity to engage in the SWITCh program and be part of the classroom. She started to attend school. At first, it was for a couple of hours each day. Slowly the teachers invested in building her confidence and her resilience to the point where she felt comfortable to come to school every day. It was not long before Tracey started to attend classes—first one, then two. By the end of the year, she was in full-time schooling again. This is the success of this program. It rebuilds our youngest people, our youngest adults into engaging properly.

There is an outreach program at Eaglehawk. I actually made a donation towards this program. I said to the young people there who were quite interested in gardening: 'Come up with a plan.' Not only did they come up with a plan but they did all of the costings. They engaged a local business. The business owner came in to support them. They did the costings, they did the measurements, they did the design. Then my small $500 contribution enabled them to build this magnificent garden. The community of Eaglehawk rallied behind them. But the whole point of this was the fact that they were practising their numeracy skills, design skills and literacy skills. They also had that proud moment of achievement. These are just some of the few examples. I could spend all day talking about the amazing work our schools are doing with genuine needs-based funding.

We have a large Catholic school footprint in regional Victoria. Their Doxa program is saving young people. Equally, at the other end they are giving their talented and gifted students the opportunity to participate and engage in education programs. Bendigo South East College is giving people who have a strong interest and association with defence the opportunity to partner with our local RSL to record and preserve our war veterans' stories from the Vietnam War. This was due to funding made possible through investing in teachers through the needs-based Gonski program. For our young sporting stars, we have accelerated sports programs within our state-based education system that mimic and marry what people get in the private system.

We have a government before us that will continue to fund and invest in their version of needs base, which is the very rich schools. They are not delivering for the schools most at need, like Lighting Reef, Crusoe College and Weeroona, who are trying to break the cycle of disadvantage. Education is a fundamental pillar in trying to break intergenerational poverty, and our schools can do it if they just get the right resources. Yet this government is ignoring that plea—they are scrapping genuine needs based funding and are instead going back to that old rhetoric of giving it to the schools who already are privileged and who already have significant resources.

It is not right that this government is saying to the people of Bendigo and central Victoria that Girton Grammar School, which is a very good school—excellent teachers, fantastic resources, amazing facilities—will get an extra half a million dollars in funding next year yet Lightning Reef, who cannot afford to water their oval, will get $34,000. Girton Grammar School is a brilliant school, and I have wonderful engagements and exchanges with the teachers and students at that school, but they have the opportunity, because of their school budget and their parent's capacity to pay higher fees—plus the extra money that they get from this government—to actually hire the Melbourne Theatre Company's set for Beauty and the Beast for their school production and put it on in Ulumbarra Theatre. Yet we have schools in our electorate like Castlemaine Secondary College, who cannot afford supplies for their art program. Needs based funding means putting that half a million dollars, matching that and going further for Bendigo Senior Secondary College, for Crusoe College, for Eaglehawk Secondary College.

Just because you said is needs based does not make it so. It is a con. They are misrepresenting what needs based is. Perhaps they need to go back to school to understand language, to understand education, to understand what needs based is and to understand what fairness is, because people will work it out—and very quickly. Our catholic school system is very upset. They are upset to be to receiving lectures from this government about fairness and about needs based. They deliver needs based funding to their schools, and this government could learn from them. Whilst we have one Lightning Reef only getting $34,000 but the school up the road getting half a million dollars, that is not fair. I urge the government to rethink this plan.

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