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Education, Employment and Workplace Relations portfolio

The Hon Julia Gillard MP

Minister for Education. Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations

Minister for Social Inclusion. Deputy Prime Minister

18 March, 2008

Transcript

Interview Lateline (ABC), Monday, 18 March 2008

Socioeconomic Status of public schools

TONY JONES:

 Now to our interview with the Education Minister and Deputy PM Julia Gillard. She was in our Parliament House interview when I spoke to her just a short time ago. Julia Gillard, thanks for being there.

JULIA GILLARD: Thank you, Tony.

TONY JONES: Now will your new plan to extend the socioeconomic status funding system to public schools and specifically that plan, require additional funds for public schools?

JULIA GILLARD: We want to have a conversation with our States and Territories colleagues about additional resources for disadvantaged schools. We recognise that we need to do more. It's something we want to talk to them about in the lead up to the schools funding agreement at the end of the year. And I'm sure every Australian would say that they don't want to see kids left behind, and we know from the international testing data, from lots of other information available to us in this country that there are too many kids and too many schools who are left behind.

TONY JONES: So specifically, will you be freeing up new funds to deal with that, or will you be just redistributing the current pool of funding?

JULIA GILLARD: Tony, we're going to have a conversation about additional resources. The States and Territories want to combat disadvantage in education, as well. We've made it very clear that we've got a set of guarantees for the next school funding agreement. We've guaranteed to non Government schools to the Independent and Catholic school sectors that the SES model will be used, that the funding maintained and funding guaranteed status will continue, that the indexation arrangements will continue and we will make sure that we deliver on each of those election promises. But beyond that, we want to have a conversation with the States and Territories about what else we can be doing to look at disadvantage.

TONY JONES: Are you talking about additional funding from the Federal Government?

JULIA GILLARD: Yes, Tony, we're talking about a conversation with the States and Territories in the lead up to the schools agreement at the end of the year which would be about additional resources to help combat disadvantage in education.

TONY JONES: So beyond the pool of roughly $30 billion that goes to education funding now, public and private, you're talking about extra billions of dollars from the Federal Government, are you?

JULIA GILLARD: Well, Tony you're putting the word billions in there. What I'm talking about is working in partnership with our States and Territories colleagues to do more and we recognise that will require additional resources. But we also say money spent on the education of children and making sure every child, including children from disadvantaged communities get the best possible start in life, is money well spent. And all of the research from around the world would confirm that, that if you spend a dollar investing in education, then you will save dollars later on in welfare and other costs.

TONY JONES: Will we be seeing additional Federal funding before the next Budget, or during the next Budget, in the next Budget, or is this a long term project over years that you're talking about?

JULIA GILLARD: This is part of the conversation we are having through the Council of Australian Governments process. You'd recall the Prime Minister had COAG at the end of last year. It set in train a series of working groups. I've been chairing one of them; the Productivity Group.

I've also been talking regularly to my State and Territory Ministerial colleagues. These conversations will inform the funding agreements that we need to enter into at the end of this year.

TONY JONES: At the end of this year, so this won't be touching the current Budget, but it will very likely be in the following Budget?

JULIA GILLARD: That's right. The schools funding agreement that is currently in place is in place until the end of this year. Then we need to enter a new schools funding agreement for the next four years. We've given a set of guarantees about the treatment of non government schools in that funding round. We want to explore with our State and Territory colleagues in the course of making those agreements, what extra can be done to assist disadvantaged schools.

TONY JONES: Do you have any idea at all prior to that conversation how much hundreds of millions or billions of dollars will be needed to help the disadvantaged schools in the public system that you're talking about?

JULIA GILLARD: Well, we need to work through that in the conversation Tony, and the reason that you have a Federal Government, the Rudd Labor Government that's prepared to work with State and Territory colleagues to end the blame game is precisely because those conversations are valuable. You actually can't make a difference for kids around the country unless you work in cooperation with the State and Territory levels of government. So that's what we’re going to do. I'm not going to rule in or out what could be the contents of that conversation. But the aim is clear, there is more that should be done in this country to assist kids from disadvantaged backgrounds who come to school, maybe never even having opened a book, and they need a world class education, an education that makes sure they hit all of the benchmarks and they leave school ready for the world of work, or ready for the world of further study.

TONY JONES: So we should anticipate a funding revolution for public schools, not just a revolution, but a funding revolution in terms of the per capita amount that goes to students in public schools?

JULIA GILLARD: Tony, you should be looking forward to an Education Revolution, because that's what we promised to deliver, and deliver it we will. We've got our election promises which are substantial, all the way from universal preschool, right the way through to universities and everything in between. This is an additional conversation about school funding and disadvantage.

TONY JONES: Alright. I presume then that all public schools, in fact, all public school funding, including I think the 20 odd billion dollars that the States currently spend on public schools, that will be subject in your new formula in the SES system?

JULIA GILLARD: Well, what we're talking about with the SES system is we know sitting in Canberra and the socioeconomic status is of private schools. We know that because of the system of the funding that's used, so we have information about income and resources for those schools. We don't have a comparable set of data for public schools. That makes it hard to identify where disadvantage is, and we, of course, want to identify where disadvantage is because we want to act to fix that disadvantage. So it’s an information set.

TONY JONES: Sorry to interrupt you there. What I'm trying to get at here is you're not simply talking about the tranche of money that goes from the Federal Government to public schools, you're talking about all the money, both State and Federal, that goes to public schools, are you? That will all be subject to the SES funding arrangements under your new scheme?

JULIA GILLARD: I'm talking about two things Tony. I'm talking about having all of the information which would enable us to locate disadvantage, and SES information is important to that task. And then I'm talking about a conversation with the States and Territories as to how we combat that disadvantage when it's been identified.

TONY JONES: Yes, but you're talking about the two pools of funding. You're not just talking only about Federal Government funding to public schools, you're talking about the whole pool of funding?

JULIA GILLARD: I'm talking about funding which in the lexicon of the Commonwealth Government would be National Partnership funding, the funding that funds schools is called a Specific Purpose Payment, it's funding for the specific purpose of funding schools. We are obviously looking forward to a conversation about something more than that to address disadvantage. If you're going to address disadvantage you need to know where it's located. That's where instruments like SES status can come into their own. They help you work out those schools that are at particular risk. And I would say Tony, there are other measures that are useful as well, and we funded one of them. We've spent $16 million funding the Australian Early Development Index, which was formulated by Professor Fiona Stanley and is a population measure to identify kids in the early years of schooling that have particular risk of educational or development delay.

TONY JONES: OK, at the current moment with private school funding that you said, or non government school funding, the SES system works but only for half of those schools, the half that accept that system. Half of them opt out of it. Therefore, you don't actually have a level playing field in terms of funding in the non government sector. Should that change if all schools fall under an SES system and create an across the board level playing field?

JULIA GILLARD: Tony, the Rudd Government has given a set of guarantees to the non government schools; to Independents and to Catholic schools. Those guarantees are that we would maintain the SES model, we would maintain the status of funding maintained or funding guaranteed. We'd maintain the way in which the Catholic system is funded and we would maintain indexation arrangements. We're a government that keeps its promises. Not for us the terminology of non core, which was of course, the terminology of the Howard Government. When we give our word we intend to keep it. We've given our word on those matters and we will honour that in the forthcoming schools funding agreement.

TONY JONES: In the forthcoming schools funding agreement, meaning in the coming years you'll honour that, will you, and right through the course of this Government, or just for the coming year?

JULIA GILLARD: No, no, our commitment Tony was very, very clear. It is for the next schools funding quadrennium, for the next four yearly agreement.

TONY JONES: Julia Gillard, I think we've actually gotten to the bottom of that. We thank you very much for coming in to talk to us. We are out of time but it was good of you to come in tonight.

JULIA GILLARD: Thanks Tony, a pleasure.

ENDS

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