April 18 2019 - 30 days to go

NEWSLETTER ARTICLES

Welcome from Jacinta Collins

Hello and welcome to the first of our federal election special edition newsletters.

Each week during the election campaign, Catholic Education will keep you informed about the policies that affect our 765,000 students and their families. Everything we do is for their benefit.

We will let you know about our campaign to highlight the needs of Catholic schools and how the parties respond with their election promises.

Catholic schools are a vital part of Australia’s education landscape; from humble beginnings almost 200 years ago, Catholic schools have grown to become the nation’s largest provider of education outside government.

Today, Australia’s 1750 Catholic schools educate one in five students and employ more than 96,000 people.

The dignity of the human person is the foundation of Catholic teaching. Catholic schools always seek to create and maintain a respectful, safe and supportive learning environment. As national executive director, I am committed to ensuring Catholic Education is guided by these values in our daily work.

I look forward to keeping you up to date as we count down to polling day on Saturday 18 May.

Jacinta Collins
National Executive Director, Catholic Education

State of the parties

The 2019 federal election is being contested on revised boundaries, increasing the number of House of Representatives seats to 151, and notionally adjusting each parties’ parliamentary representation as follows:

The Coalition needs a net gain of three seats to win government in its own right. If it achieves this result, one of its MPs would become Speaker, leaving it with 75 of the remaining 150 seats on the floor of the House (the Speaker would vote with the Coalition if there was a 75-75 deadlock).

Labor requires a net gain of four seats to win government in its own right.

Marginal seats

• There are 18 federal seats that would change hands with swings of less than 2% at this election.
• The Coalition holds eight of those seats - five in Queensland and three in NSW. It holds a further 12 seats by margins of 2-5%.
• Labor is defending nine seats with margins of less than 2%.
• The 18th seat with a margin of less than 2% is Wentworth, which is held by independent MP Kerryn Phelps.
• In coming weeks, we will highlight the seats to watch in each state and territory.

Catholic Education’s election funding and policy objectives

The key issues for Catholic Education at the upcoming federal election are:

• increased capital funding
• more resources for early childhood education
• religious freedom in schools

In 2017, Catholic school communities funded almost 90 per cent of the capital works in their schools – nearly $1.3 billion – while the federal and state governments jointly provided $152.2 million across our 1746 schools. To put this in perspective, the NSW government is spending 10 times this amount - $1.5 billion each year - on capital works in its 2200 schools.

With the rising cost of land, construction and classroom technology, Catholic schools cannot continue to rely on parents and the rest of the school community to shoulder the burden of increased capital costs to the same extent into the future.

The federal government must help to ease the burden on parents if Catholic schools are to meet the needs of future students.

Catholic Education is also increasing its focus on the delivery of early childhood education, a vital component of each child’s development. Catholic schools are well placed to meet this need, with many new preschools being built next to existing and new Catholic primary schools. This will make life easier for families with young children and puts our preschoolers at the heart of our school communities.

Catholic Education will seek a significant increase in dedicated capital and recurrent funding to deliver quality early learning centres for our families.

While school funding arrangements have now largely been settled for the next decade, Catholic Education will seek to clarify details on key elements before polling day, particularly around maintaining the choice of low-fee Catholic schooling for Australian families.

Summary of known education policies

Catholic Education has sought formal responses from the major parties to several questions regarding their education policies. We will share their responses with you early next month.

For now, the parties’ known education commitments are summarised below:

• Total spend on all school sectors to 2029 - $308 billion
• $200,000 to each federal electorate to spend on local schools ($30.2m)
• New online courses and resources to teach mathematics and phonics ($9.5m)
• Extend National Partnership on Universal Access to Early Childhood Education to ensure every child can have 600 hours of quality preschool in the year before school ($449.5m)
• Improve preschool data and participation rates among disadvantaged communities ($4.9m)
• Enhance Child Care Subsidy System (CCSS) and the Inclusion Support Portal ($4m)
• Develop social and emotional support materials for students through Life Education Australia ($5m)

• Total spend on all school sectors to 2029 - $322 billion
• Ensuring public schools are funded to 100% of their SRS (included above)
• Ensuring 15 hours of preschool for every three and four year old in the two years before they start school
• Establish an Evidence Institute for Schools ($280m)
• Tax-free bursaries for high achieving teaching students ($45m)
• Restore Highly Accomplished and Lead Teacher program
• Rebuilding TAFE, waiving upfront fees for 100,000 students and other initiatives ($1.73b)

Battleground states - Queensland

Each week, we will highlight the key election battlegrounds, starting with Queensland.

Queensland is home to 306 Catholic schools, teaching 147,000 students.

“Catholic schools are an important part of the fabric of our Queensland communities and have been for more than 170 years,” said Dr Lee-Anne Perry, executive director of the Queensland Catholic Education Commission.

“At the heart of all our work is the holistic education of young people, within our Catholic faith tradition, to achieve the best possible academic outcomes and to grow to be resilient individuals, respectful of all others, able to shape their own futures, build meaningful lives and contribute to their communities, wherever they might be in Queensland.”

Seats to watch

Of the 20 most marginal Coalition-held seats, eight are in Queensland. This means the major party leaders will be visiting the Sunshine State quite regularly – and not just for the Vitamin D.

The Coalition-held seats of Capricornia (0.6%), Forde (0.6%), Flynn (1%), Petrie (1.6%) and Dickson (1.7%) would all fall with a swing of less than 2% - which would give Labor majority government, if it holds all its existing seats.

Also potentially vulnerable for the Coalition are Dawson and Bonner (both 3.4%) although Leichhardt (3.9%, held by Warren Entsch) should be safe.

Labor holds Herbert, the nation’s most marginal seat (0.02%), and is looking to defend Longman (0.8%), which it picked up in a by-election last year.

Tertiary: Education deans call for strategy to attract teachers

The peak body of the university faculties and schools that educate our future teachers is calling on all political parties to support a multi-pronged, collaborative, national strategy to improve the attractiveness of the teaching profession.

“To avoid a widening teacher shortage, we must address the continuing drop in the numbers of those applying to become teachers and also attract the best possible candidates into the profession,” the Australian Council of Deans of Education (ACDE) president, Professor Tania Aspland, said in a media release.

“Ad hoc, unconnected, short-term efforts will not progress the issue enough. We need a much more collaborative strategy, which links longer-term actions.

“These include encouraging more secondary school students and their influencers to consider teaching as a valuable career; teachers’ pay and career structures; greater support for early career teachers; ongoing professional development; lessening the administrative burden; and trusting our dedicated teachers to teach,” she said.

“With teachers, we are talking about the workforce that educates 100% of Australia’s future. No one group can make the necessary changes alone. We must be in this together.”

News: Education battleground is in skills and training

According to the Financial Review, Labor is promising to inject $1.73 billion into skills, TAFE and apprentices which includes:

• $200 million to refurbish TAFE campuses
• 150,000 apprenticeships
• 100,000 free places for TAFE students

The cost would be spread out with $1 billion in the medium term and $730 million over the forward estimates.

In the budget the Coalition promised more than half a billion dollars on skills and 80,000 new apprentices.

The $525 million skills package announced in the 2019 budget will look to reform the vocational education and training sector and double incentive payments for employers to $8000 for an apprenticeship placement, while introducing a new $2000 payment for apprentices.

The government is funding most of the package by diverting $463 million from its skilled workers fund.

News: No ‘tricks’ on school funding

According to The Australian, a Labor government would remove arrangements that allow states and territories to divert school funding towards non-education expenses, such as school bus programs, in a bid to ensure billons of dollars in additional funding goes to benefiting students.

The opposition has also promised to implement “serious reforms” to improve schools and the quality of the teaching workforce, and to hold the states to account for an extra $14 billion they are set to receive for public education should Labor win the election.

“In return for the significant extra funding from federal Labor, we will expect states and territ-ories to invest strongly too — no excuses, no accounting tricks,” education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek said. “We held state governments to account last time we were in government, we’d do the same this time, if elected.”

Her reference to accounting tricks refers to clauses in the agreements the federal government has struck with each state and territory that enable some jurisdictions to allocate up to four per cent of their own contribution to public school funding to depreciation, transport and some regulatory costs.

Review: Framework of Religious Exemptions

The federal government has commissioned the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) to undertake a comprehensive review of the framework of religious exemptions in anti-discrimination legislation across Australia.

The review is part of the government’s response to the Review of Religious Freedom, released in December 2018, conducted by the Expert Panel led by the Hon. Philip Ruddock.

“It is essential that Australia’s laws are nationally consistent and effectively protect the rights and freedoms recognised in international agreements, to which Australia is a party. This particularly applies to the right to freedom of religion and the rights of equality and non-discrimination,” the Attorney-General Christian Porter said in a media release.

The ALRC review will consider what reforms to Commonwealth, state and territory law, the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) and any other Australian laws should be made in order to:

• limit or remove altogether (if practicable) religious exemptions to prohibitions on discrimination, while also guaranteeing the right of religious institutions to conduct their affairs in a way consistent with their religious ethos, and
• remove any legal impediments to the expression of a view of marriage as it was defined in the Marriage Act 1961 (Cth) before it was amended by the Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Act 2017 (Cth), whether such impediments are imposed by a provision analogous to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) or otherwise.

The Ruddock Review and government’s response are available via the website

Have your say: AITSL Survey

The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) is interested in hearing the diverse views from across Australia’s education sector to its 2019 Stakeholder Survey.

The confidential survey is now live and is a valuable opportunity for teachers, school leaders and others to inform AITSL’s work and help empower teachers and school leaders to excel, so their impact on student learning is maximised.

https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/4792030/AITSL-Stakeholder-Survey-2019

Reflection

Lenten reflection from Evangelisation Brisbane

Next week’s edition

• Election latest
• Why governments fund non-government schools
• The contribution of Catholic school communities
• NSW seats to watch

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in the articles within this publication are those of the authors and commentators. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of the National Catholic Education Commission, its Commissioners or employees, unless expressly mentioned.

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