Labor’s school funding war is continuing to wreak havoc. More than half of Australia’s public schools are without additional funding, with the Prime Minister failing to secure funding agreements with New South Wales and Queensland public schools. This is a disgrace. This is an effective multibillion-dollar funding cut over 10 years. This is despite the Minister for Education, Jason Clare, setting a deadline of September last year to have these agreements signed with all states and territories. And now even the New South Wales Labor government has called out the Prime Minister for not showing the leadership needed to lock in a long-term school funding agreement. In an interview on Sky News on Sunday, Minister Prue Car said, ‘We need you to come to the table because our kids are behind the starting block to begin with.’
This lack of leadership from the Prime Minister and the education minister on school funding is an absolute disgrace, and it’s compounded by the fact that the education minister has not met with state and territory education ministers since April 2024. Ordinarily, education ministers meet every quarter, and so that goes to show that there has been a significant deterioration in relationships between state, territory and Commonwealth education ministers. It’s no wonder that state Labor education ministers came to Canberra last year to protest against the Albanese government, with the Victorian education minister Ben Carroll declaring, ‘When the coalition was in government, they did a better job funding public schools than the Albanese government.’ Now, I do acknowledge, of course, that a deal has now been concluded with Victoria, but we sought and have obtained an order for all of the draft agreements of these school funding deals, and they have not been disclosed. Why is the minister keeping these agreements, including the renegotiation of these agreements, a secret? What other secret deals are being done behind closed doors?
The Australian people deserve full transparency when it comes to what is going on not just with the dollars being spent, not just about why not why more than half of all Australian public school students have been deserted by this government—we’re talking more than 1.3 million students. What has happened to the reforms that the government promised? It is critical to get back to basics in the classroom. It is critical to focus on the fundamentals. That is the coalition’s mission: explicit instruction in every classroom, the teaching of phonics and evidence based teaching methods. It is really concerning that the draft agreements that we have seen in the heads of agreement that has been concluded—and who knows what’s going to happen now, because there’s a non-discrimination clause, so they could be further changed. But it is very concerning that the requirement on the states and territories is so light on. It’s so weak and it does reflect a real weakness of leadership by this government.
The government should be requiring explicit instruction in every classroom because the fact of the matter is that one in three children in this country is failing to meet minimum levels of proficiency in numeracy and literacy. We are going backwards, and that decline has accelerated under this government, particularly when you look at the attendance rates. Two decades ago, the average year 10 student was one year ahead in his or her learning compared to now.
So this is urgent. We do have a real crisis in classrooms across this country. Unlike the former coalition government, which nearly doubled annual school funding from $13 billion in 2013 to $25.3 billion in 2022 despite the untruths being told by the Albanese government in relation to the coalition’s record—we want to see this government get on with it. Most importantly, we demand to see the school reforms that are so critical to ensuring that every young Australian can achieve his or her best potential in the classroom no matter where they learn in this great country.