Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (17:58): My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Education and concerns a challenging new report from Centre for Independent Studies education specialist Glenn Fahey entitled Dollars and Sense: Time for Smart Reform of Australian School Funding. The work makes an eloquent and academically rigorous case for reconsidering the assumptions behind education funding today. While the resource going into the system has never been higher, the desired outcome, educational attainment, has stalled nationally and by international comparisons it is falling. We must not dismiss this counterintuitive finding. That would permit continued wasteful government spending and would fail to achieve the better educational standards which improve children’s life chances individually and maintain Australia’s competitiveness internationally.

The root cause is the finding that beyond a certain point there is no correlation between more resources and higher educational standards. In particular, two goals of recent years—increasing teacher salaries and reducing class sizes—have actually done little to improve standards. The report shows that teacher salaries have increased substantially and are relatively high by international standards. More challengingly, it demonstrates smaller classes do not necessarily mean better results. Instead, the laser focus must be to improve teachers themselves. A good teacher with a class of 20, it seems, is better than a poor teacher with a class of 15. So resources should be redirected. A modest increase to class sizes of just one additional student could save around $1.4 billion. This money could expand access to teaching, create more routes to training and support training within schools. In subject, skill or geographical shortage areas, demand-based salaries would improve numbers applying. Greater access and targeted reward would increase applications for the profession and create quality through competition.

Management matters too. By moving away from an obsession with uniform higher salaries and ever-smaller classes, schools could instead target their resources on performance management, financial incentives and career development. Currently the salary structure is almost flat. There is no way to reward good teaching. Conversely, there is little ability to challenge, not retain or dismiss poor teachers. The principal could inform not just teaching salaries but school funding as a whole. Funding therefore could be more closely tied to schools’ performance. The action I seek from the minister is a commitment to consider these important conclusions and provide an explanation of the innovative approaches his department will introduce to address the absurd diminishing returns from additional needs-based funding.