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ANGE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ange McCormack. This is 7am.

While some private schools in Australia fret over the construction of their new waterpolo centres or drama theatres, public schools face more pressing challenges: like whether there’s a hole in the roof, or if there’s enough books for every student.

School funding arrangements across the country are now the concern of Jason Clare, the Federal Education Minister who went to public schools himself.

So, how did inequities between public and private get so bad? And could a review commissioned by Jason Clare fix it?

Today, public education advocate and contributor to The Saturday Paper, Jane Caro on how Australia needs to fund public schools… and why we’re still not doing it.

It’s Wednesday, February 14.

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ANGE:

Jane, we know the issue of school funding has been the subject to debate for a really long time, but let's talk about the person whose job it is to effectively lead this conversation. Which is the Federal Education Minister, Jason Clare. Who is Jason Clare and what’s his background?

JANE:

Well, he's a he's a working class boy made good, a bit like Anthony Albanese. He comes from Cabramatta and he went to public schools all his life, and he's, he's been very good, actually, and I have appreciated it. So I'm not putting it down. He's been he's been very good at creating a kind of mythology around his roots. And, you know, how important public education was to him.

Audio excerpt – Jason Clare:

“I grew up around the corner from where Gough and Margaret lived in Albert Street, Cabramatta. The year I started kindergarten at Cabramatta Public School. Gough opened the extensions that his government had funded.”

JANE:

Gough Whitlam and Margaret Whitlam feature in this, mythologising that he's doing.

Audio excerpt – Jason Clare:

“The same man who poured sand into the hands of Vincent Lingiari helped to pour the concrete that built Cabramatta Public School.”

JANE:

So he's very much embedded public education in Labor mythology, which I think is really good. And it's kind of the first time it's been done.

Audio excerpt – Jason Clare:

“I'm the first person in my family to finish school, and the first to go on to the university.”

JANE:

I've always actually associated the Australian Labor Party with the Catholic school system because so many of them, like Albanese, went to Catholic schools themselves. So this is refreshing to see a minister for education speak so warmly and affectionately and pointedly about his own background in public education and why that matters.

Audio excerpt – News Reporter:

“Jason Clare being sworn in as minister for education he had previously been focused on housing.”

JANE:

He appears to understand, that there are huge problems with the funding, given that not a single public school in Australia, bar a handful in the ACT, is funded to its minimum school resource standard, while all the private schools, bar a handful in the Northern Territory are funded above it, some of them way above it. So he seems to understand that this is actually an issue and a problem, and that we need to do something about it.

And his rhetoric and he, you know, he went to public schools, you know, in the early days you saw him in public schools. That's quite unusual. We don't often see political leaders in public schools, which is shameful of them, really.

ANGE:

And Jane, when Jason Clare became Education Minister. What kind of state was the public school system in? What did he inherit as minister?

JANE:

He inherited a debacle. I mean, we've got, we've got a system that is so differentiated along class lines. So we have the second worst concentration of disadvantaged kids in disadvantaged schools. The OECD says that 41% of government schools in Australia can be classified as disadvantaged. That's nearly half of them, compared to 3% of Catholic schools and 1% of independent schools. So you can see what we've done.

We've basically put all the kids with the highest needs in the schools, with the least amount of funding, and all the kids with the lowest needs in the schools with, you know, much higher amounts of funding because they are overfunded according to the minimum price standard. Public schools are all underfunded according to their minimum resource standards.

So we're actually cutting off our own nose to spite our face by not more equitably distributing our education funding according to needs. We've seen things like huge amounts of money, 10 billion I think, given to private schools during Covid. Well, public schools I think are underfunded by about $6.5 billion every year. It's hard not to see public education as almost despised by the Coalition and those on the right.

ANGE:

And so one of the first things Jason Clare did in his education ministership was commission a review into our school system to basically help figure out what needs to be done here, before we get into its findings, just to think about its announcement, how big of a deal was this review?

JANE:

It's hard to get excited about reviews. There’s been a lot of them.

So, yeah, very early in Jason Clare’s ministership, he announced that he was going to do this review.

Audio excerpt – Jason Clare:

“We live in a world where almost every single job that's being created, requires you to finish school and then go on to TAFE or university. And that means we need more people to do that, not less. Rich, poor, city, bush, black and white. If you want to know what drives me, this is it.”

JANE:

Which then produced this report which has come out, just in the last few months or so, improving outcomes for all.

Audio excerpt – Jason Clare:

“And that brings me to the work that Dr O’brien is leading.”

JANE:

And as far as it goes this review is very good. I mean, most of its recommendations are commonsensical and useful.

Well, if they were put into place, but really almost straight away I thought how well this review will be about as useful as all the others, because there on page eight it says, no consideration of funding issues was undertaken because it was outside the terms of reference of the review.

Well, how you can talk about a better and fairer education system without talking about how that education system is funded. We know what we need to do. Be really nice to see someone actually. Just bloody do it

ANGE:

After the break - What’s stopping the federal government from overhauling public school funding?

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ANGE:

So, Jane, we've been talking about this review into Australia's education system, and we've been talking about how it didn't actually look at the issues around school funding at all, which is kind of at the heart of the issues that we're talking about today. Has anything positive or promising come out of the review that does go to these questions about how we fund our public schools.

JANE:

​​I'm not sure we learned anything. I think they restated what we already knew that, you know, a lot of kids start out behind the 8 ball and nothing in our school system helps them to catch up, in fact we put barriers in their way.

We know we’re losing teachers hand over fist they had some useful suggestions on how we might help teachers to stay in the system and attract more teachers but none of it was particularly radical stuff. The very least, give public schools their minimum SRS.

So, you know, that's what the school resource standard does. It looks at what each student actually needs. And so the SRS for public schools would often be higher than for private schools because of this concentration of disadvantaged students in disadvantaged schools.

ANGE:

Right, so you think there wasn’t actually much substance in this report at all?

JANE:

Well, there's a small light in the darkness in that there's a deal that has been done with the Western Australian public education system, where the federal government will up its contribution to WA public schools by 2.5%, and the state government will match that.

Audio excerpt – Unknown:

“This is a landmark day for public education. Western Australia will become the first state in Australia to fully fund public schools.”

JANE:

But unfortunately. WA, I think it's the richest state in Australia, so it's sort of easier for them. The rest of Australia has basically said that deal is not good enough. We need the federal government, which has the deepest pockets, which is the most able to raise revenue to actually come to the party on public school funding.

Audio excerpt – News Reporter:

“Jason Clare says negotiations with other states and territories about their funding splits with the Commonwealth are well under way.”

Audio excerpt – Jason Clare:

“This is money that will be used to help children who need it the most. And I want to work with my state colleagues to do that, in other parts of the country as well?”

JANE:

leaving it to the states doesn’t work because poor states are poor for a reason. They don't have the money to fix it because they have high proportions of poor population, including children.

But it's even more complicated than that, because when it comes to how you assess the student resource standard, the amount of money going to each school in public schools, they will count things like depreciation. Hello. How does that help with a student? They will count things like school transport. Well how does that help with education?

But the real kicker is they don't include either of those things in the SRS for private schools. And they don't include things like any donations. They don't count any donations in the SRS for private schools, which they amount to something like. Well, I think in 2022 it was about $1.1 billion. So it's completely rorted and biased against public schools.

ANGE:

Stepping back, Jane, it sounds like Jason Clare came in wanting to make some big changes to public education when he became minister. And it's really clear what all the issues in front of us are that need addressing.

What's what's standing in the way of Jason Clare and other politicians at the state level from fixing it?

JANE:

Fear of the power of the religious lobby, not just the churches, but the entire religious lobby. Fear of the neoliberal shock jock. Let's be honest, the Murdoch press will go to town on it. You know, fear of all of that, and misinformation and the cherry pick statistics and all those sorts of things.

The manipulation of parents into thinking that you're taking their choice away from them. When all you really want to do is make sure that they have more choice. It would seem to me, it’s decreases parental choice.

And the tragedy in Australia is that we have families spending money they can ill afford on schools that actually won't give a better result than the public school down the road. But they've been kind of marketed into believing that good parents send their kids to private schools and bad parents send them to public schools. And this is appalling. It's not true.

And when you think that public education, the right of every child to access a decent, well resourced education, regardless of who their parents are, the importance of that to a democracy where every person has a vote.

The only government that can do anything about that is the federal government who's walked away from it.

So we have to change the way our funding is divided. I mean, what Jason Clare has inherited is something that is damaging, I believe, to Australia and Australia's future, as the refusal to legislate gun control in America is to that country, and we appear to be as blind to the consequences as the Americans are. And we use the same excuses, choice and freedom.

ANGE:

Jane, thanks so much for your time today.

JANE:

It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

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ANGE:

Also in the news today …

The Albanese government has released its latest closing the gap report, marking the 16th anniversary of the national apology to the stolen generations.

Tabling his government’s blueprint to address Indigenous inequality, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made several announcements, including a new national First Nations children’s commissioner, a remote jobs program, and real time reporting on deaths in custody.

AND

The ABC faced questions in Senate Estimates yesterday over how the broadcaster responded to pressure from community groups and lobbyists.

ABC editorial director, Gavin Fang, told the hearing that since October 7, 58% of complaints over coverage in the Middle East alleged the ABC had a pro-Israeli or anti-Palestinian bias, while 42% complained the ABC has been biased against Israel.

I’m Ange McCormack. Thanks for listening to 7am, we’ll be back tomorrow with an episode about how Taylor Swift’s popularity has sparked rampant right-wing conspiracy theories about the US presidential election.

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