senate official committee hansard - aph.gov.au · pdf filethursday, 24 october 1996...

COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA

PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES

SENATE

Official Committee Hansard

EMMPLOYMENT, EDUCATION AND TRAININGLEGISLATION COMMITTEE

Reference: States Grants (Primary and SecondaryEducation Assistancee) Bill 1996

THURSDAY, 24 OCTOBER 1996

BY AUTHORITY OF THE SENATECANBERRA 1996

Thursday, 24 October 1996 SENATE—Legislation EE&T 47

SENATE

Thursday, 24 October 1996

EMPLOYMENT, EDUCATION AND TRAINING LEGISLATION COMMITTEE

Portfolio: Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs

Members: Senator Tierney(Chair), Senator Carr(Deputy Chair), Senators Crowley, Ferris,Stott Despoja and Troeth

Substitute members:Senator Evans to substitute for Senator Crowley on 23 October 1996.Senator Allison to substitute for Senator Stott Despoja for the committee’s inquiry into theStates Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Bill 1996

Participating members: Senators Abetz, Allison, Bolkus, Brown, Bob Collins, Cooney, Evans,Forshaw, Harradine, Hogg, Mackay, Margetts and O’BrienSenator Faulkner for the consideration of the 1996-97 Budget estimates

The committee met at 9.12 a.m.Matter referred by the Senate:States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Bill 1996

BROWN, Ms Joan, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Centre for Equity throughEducation, Level 3, 4 Yurong Street, Darlinghurst, New South Wales 2010ELDRIDGE, Captain David John, Secretary, Employment, Training and CommunityYouth Programs, Australia Southern Territory, Salvation Army, and Board Member,Australian Centre for Equity through Education, 256 Albert Street, Brunswick, Victoria3056

CHAIR —I call the committee to order and welcome, by teleconference, our witnesses,Captain Eldridge and Ms Brown.

The committee prefers evidence to be given in public, but if you wish at any stage to giveany evidence, part of your evidence or answers to questions in camera you may make sucha request and the committee will consider the request. Such evidence, however, can be madepublic subsequently by order of the Senate. The committee has before it a document from MsBrown, which it has numbered 25. You are welcome to make some brief introductory remarksand then we will proceed to questions.

Ms Brown—I would like to make some comments that provide additions to the fairlyhurried submission that I forwarded last evening. I want to say that the concerns that I haveexpressed about the bill on behalf of my organisation relate to questions of equity around thefunding of public schools and around the provision of targeted equity funds. In addition tomy submission, it might help at the beginning if I say that there are a number of points thatwe would wish to see in terms of amendments to the bill, and they would form the basis forthe discussions we might have. I will go through those, because they are not written into mysubmission, but I have got an updated version that I can send you.

EMPLOYMENT, EDUCATION AND TRAINING

EE&T 48 SENATE—Legislation Thursday, 24 October 1996

The per capita amounts scheduled for government schools ought to be firm amounts andnot subject to the discretion of the minister. We are asking for the reinstatement of state basedplanning committees to ensure that new non-government schools are required to meet agreedcriteria for the planned provision of schooling, and only those schools should be eligible forpublic funding.

We are asking that states and territories be required to identify and to publicly declare theschools to be eligible to receive funding under the country areas program, that thesocioeconomic circumstances of the local community should be the basis for the identificationof schools to participate in the new literacy programs, and that states and territories ought tobe required to publicly declare the school and the criteria used for their identification. Oursubmission canvasses some of the reasons why we put forward those suggestions.

Capt. Eldridge—We are supporting the ACEE submission. Could I say that the concernof the Salvation Army around schooling and around the education system generally is that overthe last few years we have seen it becoming increasingly difficult for young people—particularly young people using Salvation Army services—to maintain their involvement inthe education system. The pressure on many of the public schools to provide coherentpathways, particularly for young people who are not particularly academic and who come fromdifficult family backgrounds, has deteriorated considerably. So we are concerned in ensuringthat public schools have the resources necessary to provide pathways other than thetraditionally academic pathways for young people and particularly young people fromdisadvantaged backgrounds. That is the basis of our interest. The short time lines have thrownus a little bit. We will be preparing a submission primarily focused on ensuring the pathwaysfor young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Senator CARR—Would I be correct in assuming that your concerns with the broadbandingof the targeted programs are with accountability mechanisms that are contained within theproposed new arrangements?

Ms Brown—Yes. Both the targeting and accountability. We are unclear, given the termsof the act, what educational disadvantage means, but it is clear to us—as Captain Eldridgehas just said—that those people in the most socioeconomically disadvantaged areas are thosethat most need targeted funds for the supportive programs. So we are concerned both aboutthe lack of any requirement for public targeting and the requirement for the accountability ofthe states on the use of the funds.

Senator CARR—And what is, in your view, the effect of these proposed changes in regardto the transfer of funds between the public to the private sector?

Ms Brown—In special programs, or are you talking about the general resources?Senator CARR—In terms of the broadbanding of targeted assistance programs?Ms Brown—In terms of the broadbanding, it seems to us that if the Commonwealth has

a commitment to ensure that funds are available, whether it is for special education or for themost educationally disadvantaged in regards to the literacy outcomes, then the Commonwealthhas the responsibility to direct those funds appropriately. We are not clear now what is goingto be available to the public system, or to the private sector—and when I say private sector,of course, there is no area more complex than the special education area. I think that theeffects of the next step to broadbanding which is going on with this field is that schools willnot have the funds that will enable them to deal with the problems they face as schoolcommunities.



We are very clear that the inequalities across our system which still exist despite lots ofimprovements over the last year need to be dealt with on the basis of what those communitiessee as their most difficult areas to be addressed. I think that the spreading of this money thinlyacross systems in some kinds of literacy programs is certainly going to disadvantage schools,both in terms of the actual dollars that disadvantaged schools receive, and in terms of theircapacity to make decisions for themselves.

Senator CARR—This is a question to Ms Brown and Captain Eldridge. Are you familiarwith the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs discussion paper,Delivery of Commonwealth Targeted and Quality Schools Programsfrom 1997?

Ms Brown—No, I am not.Capt. Eldridge—No, I am not either.Senator CARR—Part of this bill involves an issue of the way in which monies are actually

allocated. There is a new allocative mechanism being proposed as a result of these changeson broadbanding and I am concerned to know whether you believe that these changes in theallocative mechanism will, in fact, further disadvantage students already suffering disadvantage.

I note, for instance, in the documentation that I have seen that in my state of Victoriatargeted programs for disadvantaged schools will, in fact, drop by 11 per cent. There will bea 11.8 per cent difference in targeted programs for Victoria. Are you concerned that thedisadvantaged schools program being incorporated within the literacy program will, in fact,put at risk some programs eligible for funding under the DSP programs, and that they maynot be eligible under the so-called illiteracy program?

Ms Brown—I am familiar with the general recommendations in relation to the allocativemechanisms, and I just make two points. It seems to us that there is a probability, rather thana possibility, that schools currently receiving funds under the disadvantaged schools programswill not receive similar funds from the literacy program. Any broadbanded program is goingto have priorities determined at the centre, whereas, DSP schools were able to access fundsto develop programs that were relevant to their local area. In terms of the shifts in fundingacross states and systems that are indicated by the change in allocative mechanisms, I thinkthere are two things there. One is that the allocative mechanisms have not been changed forquite some years and there are anomalies there in terms of the allocation of the funds betweenthe states and the systems.

It seems to us that having determined the criteria on which you would want to distributethe funds, you are bound to have the funds follow the consequences of that. However, I thinkwhat has been clear is that it is necessary to either phase in or provide some buffers for thosestates or systems that are going to lose funds as a consequence of that. I think that there havebeen no significant increases to funds for the disadvantaged schools program for many yearsand it has been quite clear that the level of poverty in the community has been increasing, soit is an appropriate time, rather than to reduce or to further spread the money that is available,to actually increase and better target the money so that we are sure that those schools andcommunities that need it have the funds necessary to develop the programs they need.

Senator CARR—Captain Eldridge, did you have anything to say on the disadvantagedschools program?

Capt. Eldridge—The situation in Victoria that we have seen is that in an attempt to focuson school retention levels, the young people who are never going to make it into tertiaryinstitutions are dropping out of school at a younger age. Schools do not seem to have the



resources to be able to develop alternative programs for these young people. Even with theintroduction of TAFE programs into the higher forms of secondary education, it is still gearedtowards those young people who may have got into TAFE anyway, not those young peoplewho were dropping out of education. Any shift, even in the current arrangements, we arefearful will further exacerbate this problem.

It is increasingly difficult for us to find schools that will take difficult young people. It isincreasingly difficult to maintain those young people in any educational system. As schoolsbecome more and more focused on year 12 places in tertiary institutions, it seems that we aregoing to need to develop a national strategy with appropriate funds attached to ensure that thedisadvantaged young people have any skills that are going to be marketable in a labour marketsense. Any shift that does not take into consideration these factors and any change in fundingarrangements for schools which were already struggling to preserve alternative programs wefeel will further disadvantage the young people that we work with.

Ms Brown—Could I just add that the broad banding that exists there in the general elementof ESL and DSP which becomes part of the new literacy program is of serious concern as well.There are large unmet needs in terms of the general need for English as a second language.Many of our disadvantaged schools require and have received funds under both those programsand they need funds under both those programs. Any notion of competition between those twoneeds—those of socioeconomic disadvantages and those of students with ESL needs—isinappropriate at a time like this when we are more concerned about literacy than ever before.It does not seem a good start for a new literacy program.

Senator CARR—The Commonwealth government asserts that the abolition of Labor’s newschool policy will cost $150 million over the forward estimates. It said that $128 million ofthis will be clawed back from the state schools as a result of the enrolment benchmarkadjustment mechanism. Are you familiar with this mechanism?

Ms Brown—I am.Senator CARR—Captain Eldridge, are you familiar with it?Capt. Eldridge—No, I am not familiar with that.Senator CARR—Ms Brown, what do you believe the effect of this mechanism will be?Ms Brown—The effect of the mechanism quite probably is to say that the Commonwealth

intends to facilitate the growth of new schools in the non-government sector and that it willdo that at the expense of students in public schools. That is just incomprehensible, as we saidin our submission. No doubt you will hear evidence from others as well about the fallaciesin the calculation of the supposed savings to the states, but the abolition of the new schoolspolicy has more implications than the immediate financial ones in relation to governmentassistance, and I think they are bad enough.

As we recount in our submission, the new schools policy had a number of objectives, oneof them and not least of all was to ensure that new schools could not be established withoutthe financial viability to maintain the schools over a number of years. It was felt it wasimproper for the Commonwealth to provide funds that encouraged groups who were unableto maintain those schools to establish them and to damage the pupils in the schools whoseeducation would be disrupted and because of the disruption caused to the areas in which theschools were established. So the new schools policy was about planned provision. I think whatit did do was create some fairly fragile settlement between government and non-government



schools on the grounds that state committees would look at the educational implications ofthe establishment of a new school in an area.

What was also important was that it separated the arguments about people’s rights toestablish a school, however you want to argue that, from the issue of public funding. That wasa really important separation, the question of whether people have a right to establish a schoolis one issue, but whether or not they have a right to funding, given that they may inestablishing the school and receiving public funding, damage the educational opportunitiesfor others is a public issue that ought to be debated in a public way in the way they were inthe new schools committee.

The removal of that is going to do serious damage to both the public schools and particularlythe non-government schools that serve disadvantaged communities. The question used to beasked prior to the new schools policy, ‘How many schools in every suburb can the communitysupport?’ When I say community support I mean support in terms of public and privatefunding. There has to be an answer to that question and an open go so that anyone canestablish a school wherever they like and have a guarantee of public funding seems to me tobe appropriate in general in terms of the cost to the community, but when the public schoolstudents are going to be asked to pay for that, it is just immoral.

Senator CARR—Captain Eldridge, do you believe that the Commonwealth government hasa role to play in the planning of educational provision?

Capt. Eldridge—Yes, we have a fairly strong view about the Commonwealth’s role acrossa range of areas, education being one of them. We really believe that given our experienceas a national organisation, the variableness of education and welfare and other provisionsacross states has really disadvantaged significant numbers of families that we work with. Webelieve it is a Commonwealth responsibility to ensure that minimum standards are maintainedand that there is a coherent national network of education, welfare and human services.

We are particularly concerned about a shift of resources from the public school sectorbecause obviously for people who use our services, any fee paying school is really not goingto be an option for them. It is increasingly difficult. We are trying to draw together somefigures at the moment from our material aid services, emergency relief services, to look at therise of requests in January-February from families who are trying to meet the costs even ofpublic schooling, let alone having to subsidise private schools of any form.

So, yes, we do believe that there is a Commonwealth responsibility in the maintaining ofminimum standards in the distribution of education funds equitably across states and we areconcerned about a shift of resources from the government schools sector.

Ms Brown—Could I just add to that in agreeing with David? The Commonwealth reallyhas a role in the structure of our economy, and the connections between socio-economic statusand outcomes from schooling are demonstrated by the sort of work David has just referredto, by work done by the Smith Family and from research that this centre has produced. Thereis no question about those connections, and therefore the Commonwealth must have aresponsibility to ensure that those young people who are disadvantaged by their socio-economic state are provided with the resources to enable outcomes to be improved.

It just seems to me that if that is not a national responsibility, if that is not a responsibilitythat we undertake—if not out of our concern as a nation for our citizens—then our signatureon international treaties such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child requires that theCommonwealth must ensure that young people have access to a free compulsory system ofprimary education. That is quite clear and, as David says, and as the Smith Family has shown,



the cost to families of primary education in the public school system is increasing to the extentthat many families cannot afford the resources necessary to ensure that their childrenparticipate in what is available in public schools. I think a country as rich as ours has to beashamed of that.

Senator ALLISON—Ms Brown, perhaps you can tell us a bit about your students at riskprogram comments. Could you indicate how many students are currently benefiting from thisprogram and give us a view of the effectiveness of the program and what, in your view, willbe the impact of ending it?

Ms Brown—I can’t tell you how many students benefit because it has been very difficultto get public information, although we do know what schools are participating in the programand what sort of programs they are developing. But one of the most important things aboutthe students at risk program is that it has been able to come in to provide support for youngpeople who are considered to be in jeopardy for all the reasons that the program faces, butmore than anything to try and make connections between the schools and other agencies thatcan support not just the students’ education but families in a way that students can continueto participate.

We know that there are a whole range of circumstances that make it difficult for these youngpeople: homelessness is just one of them. This has been a program not built in to the generalresources of schools but providing those additional dollars that has enabled schools to makeconnections with other agencies, to support those young people to stay at school. It is quitedifferent to most of the other programs of the Commonwealth, and it has been a critical onein building those links.

It is arguable as to whether or not a program such as that should be a permanent programor whether you should see some bridging so that the links and the new programs that havebeen developed in it could be taken over in other ways. But we are not at that point yet; weare just at the point of exploring those sorts of links and connections and providing supportfor more and more young people. Its loss will be extraordinary, not just in metropolitan areasbut in country areas where whole towns have coalesced, where a series of towns havecoalesced around this program to make connections with other support services for familiesand students.

Senator ALLISON—Can I ask you to expand on the comment you made a little earlierabout particularly primary school parents not being able to afford fees and levies and the like?Have you come across any instances where students have been denied basic educationalfacilities or programs through their parents being unable to pay those fees?

Ms Brown—In the reportAustralia’s literacy challenge, produced by the Smith Family acouple of years ago, and the report that is about to go to press, which is the beginning of aseries of surveys that the Smith Family is doing, it is shown that there are a range of aspectsof schooling that young people are not getting access to. Some of those have been in the pastconsidered to be peripheral, such as the importance, particularly in the low socioeconomicareas, of young people being able to experience things through excursions and such like.

Another thing that is happening in schools is that, increasingly, things that are consideredextracurricular but for most people would be considered central—things like music, drama andart—are things which, even in primary school, young people are asked to pay fees for. If theycannot pay the fees, then they cannot participate. In some states there is evidence that hascome through, in inquiries about school fees, of schools having collection agencies try tocollect fees from families.



Most states have looked at whether or not the requirement not to charge fees for tuition inpublic schools—which is honoured more in the breach than anything else, I think, these days—ought to be removed. Those are examples of what is actually happening at the primary schoollevel. At secondary it is even more difficult. But I would refer you toAustralia’s literacychallenge, by the Smith Family.

Senator O’BRIEN—Ms Brown, were you involved with a parents group at the time of theso-called state aid debate some years ago?

Ms Brown—Yes, I was.Senator O’BRIEN—Would you describe that debate as a divisive one?Ms Brown—I think it was the fact that it was divisive that had people on both sides of the

argument looking for some way to reach some settlement. I was a member of the SchoolsCommission during times when those issues were being grappled with. On most occasions,all sides were able to reach some form of consensus, on the understanding that the argumentsin the communities themselves were divisive.

The organisation I am a part of now is concerned with socioeconomic disadvantage, inparticular, and not specifically with either side of that argument. But we would agree, as Davidsays, that the majority of young people from the sorts of backgrounds that we are concernedabout are educated either in public schools or in Catholic parochial schools. The last thing Ithink anyone wants to see is the revival of that very divisive debate, but I think that is exactlywhat is going to happen as a consequence of this current policy, particularly in the area ofnew schools.

Most state systems have been amalgamating and closing small schools and some states, likeNew South Wales, are struggling to keep open rural schools with low numbers. Manycommunities not only have been distressed but have had their community centres removedwith the loss of those schools. To introduce once again the possibility that non-governmentschools can open with smaller numbers than those we are prepared to support in the publicsector and receive public funds does have the distinct possibility of reactivating that verydivisive debate in our communities. I do not see how it can do otherwise.

Senator TIERNEY—Captain Eldridge, I was curious about one of your statements, thatyou thought that the public schools were subsidising the private schools. Given that parentspay substantial fees in private schools, to the effect of saving the budget $1½ billion a year,and that if all the private schools collapsed and the public system had to pick it up thegovernment would have to spend another $1½ billion a year, or $1½ billion would not beavailable to the public sector for a greater number of students, I am curious as to how youcan say that the public system is subsidising the private system. I would have thought it wasthe other way around.

Capt. Eldridge—I do not know that I said that the public system is ‘subsidising’; I did notintend to say that. What I do mean is that the public system is the venue for difficult youngpeople. I will give you an example from Victoria. There are fewer and fewer options availablefor young people who have either family or personal difficulties to remain in school. Evensome of our state schools in Victoria are becoming more exclusive about which students theywill maintain. I can give you the example of a school in the north-western suburbs ofMelbourne which gave lectures to young people commencing year 11 and their parentssuggesting that if they did not feel they were up to it, if they were not prepared to committhemselves to years 11 and 12, then they should shift to a school that they named, up the road.



More and more, some schools are trying to meet these performance criteria based onacademic standards and other schools are, in a sense, picking up the bill with difficult youngpeople both for other public schools and for the community. Young people with particulardisadvantages were not going to be in the private school system be they small christianschools, or obvious private schools. Sometimes the Catholic school system does pick updifficult young people and continues to work with them on a local basis, but I think thatschools that take on that responsibility will need additional resources. If we do not put thoseresources into the education system, they will later be shifted into the juvenile justice system,or the prison or welfare system. You would all know that significantly high numbers of peoplein prison have very low literacy levels and that part of their falling out with their falling outwith the community commenced with their inability to maintain an educational standard thatis commensurate with their obtaining employment.

If we do not have a public education system that can absorb families with economic andsocial difficulties, as well as those who can cope, it is just cost shifting. I am not sure thatthere is any grading in our performance criteria for schools of the type that seems to beemerging in Victoria, allowing schools, in a sense, to pick up a community responsibility forpeople with significant difficulties. There are particular schools in the education system thathandle disadvantaged young people and, in fact, they provide a significant community servicethat private schools will not pick up.

CHAIR —But if you wound down private schools and, say, they disappeared, that wouldmean that there is $1½ billion less in the system for the total pool of students. Surely, movingback in that direction, which is what the new school policy is about, actually accelerates theproblem.

Capt. Eldridge—I am not suggesting that you wind down private schools, but on the otherhand, I would not suggest either that if you created more, you would find opportunities forthe people that the Salvation Army looks after.

CHAIR —I am glad that you raised that point. Let us turn to the figures of what this changeof policy is going to mean. The projections are that to the year 2000 the number of studentswho will shift from public to private schools will be between one to two per cent in total,cumulative over those three or four years. This means to a school of, say, 600 pupils that itmight lose three. Therefore, it might lose about $12,000 in resources, but it is losing threestudents, as well. I think that we have to get the scale of what we are talking about here intoproportion, would you not agree? We are talking about a minor shift at the margin of thosefigures, are we not?

Ms Brown—With respect, I think that we have to look at the issue of where places mightbe, and who is providing in the area of high cost. We are not going to see the establishmentof new non-government schools, even if we are going to be providing them with 80 per centof their funding from the public purse. In the high-cost remote areas of Australia where publicsystems provide schools, or in areas such as the outer western suburbs of Sydney andMelbourne, we are not going to see the new private schools being established. These aredifficult areas where parents cannot afford to pay. We are talking about a reduction in numbersof students, the cost of which will be spread across systems that are required to support thoseschools, whether they are in low socioeconomic areas, or in remote areas, or are simply ruralareas.

These are the areas where system costs are high in providing support, not just in the wayin which the per capita costs might or might not be added or subtracted to schools but in the



way we can provide support—curriculum support and counselling support—and other servicesthat students and families need. I think these arguments about what the saving to publicsystems might be by a few less pupils are really fallacious. I think that the whole questionof the relative numbers and costs has to be examined much more carefully than we arepretending it can be demonstrated at the moment.

CHAIR —To pick up your central point, surely if there are not going to be these schoolscreated in areas like the western suburbs and remote areas, what you seem to be arguing isthat the change of policy is not going to have any effect on the number of students going tothose schools in western Sydney or rural areas anyway. So what is the problem?

Ms Brown—We are not talking about identifying problems in particular areas, are we? Weare talking about identifying the dollars supposedly saved by a particular state and reducingthe amount of money that state receives for its students in public schools. I thought that iswhat we were talking about.

CHAIR —Yes. You have also got the case across the whole system if students are movinginto private schools. Because parents are picking up a good bit of the tab, that is actually acost saving to the government overall. So it is a matter of balancing your savings across thesystem. It might be the case that states opt to spend less on education. That is a differentargument altogether. But there should be more resources for education, surely, if people areputting their hands in their pockets and paying for a fair part of their children’s education,would you not agree?

Ms Brown—I suppose it depends on whether the schools that are established are in thelower categories where they are receiving 80 per cent of their funds from public sources andwhether or not you want to compare that 80 per cent of public provision with the real costof educating children in state schools, which includes all the services and support networksthat are necessary. I do not think we can argue in those sorts of growth terms. Before the newschools policy, we know that schools were being established in what we regarded as desirableareas, on the north shore of Sydney and the eastern suburbs of Sydney, where there wasalready adequate public and private provision of places and where new schools seriouslyaffected schools in that community and what they could offer their students.

I always had strong doubts about some of the provisions of the new schools policy, but itmeant that schools should not be establishing in areas where there was adequate provision,so that schools would have to establish more in outer areas of the capital city and thereforethe effect on individual schools was lessened. This change in policy will enable that to happenagain. There is no question that providing schools in the more isolated or difficult areas, otherthan in the Catholic system, has not been a thing that non-government schools have wantedto do.

CHAIR —Of course, the Catholic system is a fair part of the private system. I have not seenany reluctance from them to establish schools in poorer areas. Also, your view that the otherschools establish in rich areas is quite simplistic. In the cities of Wollongong and Newcastle,there has been the establishment of new private schools. My city is Newcastle. I am well awareof the ones that have established there. They are not suburban schools. They are regionalschools. They draw across the region, and the government does not have to build as manyschools because of that; therefore, saving the public purse. So would you not agree that whatyou just put is fairly simplistic in terms of the very complex picture of the development ofprivate education?



Ms Brown—I would want to argue that the effects of a decade of the new schools policyhas been to push schools out rather than into the advantaged areas, but I also do not want toargue about these costs on individual schools. We are talking about the marginal dollars savedin a public system that educates the vast majority of Australian children.

CHAIR —But there are broader issues here, surely. Do you not believe that parents reallyshould have choice in where they send their children to school, and did the so-called newschools policy not actually inhibit that choice?

Ms Brown—I think there are two issues there. One of them is whether parents have the rightto establish schools and the second is whether they have the right to public funding. I thinkthose are two questions. I think the settlement that was reached in the early 1970s, as I saidbefore, is a fairly fragile one.

CHAIR —Are you seriously suggesting that parents who pay taxes and also pay fees arethen not entitled to any public funding? Is that what you are suggesting?

Ms Brown—I am not suggesting that.CHAIR —That is good. You seemed to be implying that.Ms Brown—I was saying that that is an argument. But what I am saying is that there is

a question about an individual decision not to use the public resources that are made available,just as I would choose not to use the train to travel to work but you are not subsidising meto drive my car. I think there is an issue about how we pay for our choice. Without going backto that in terms of a fundamental question, I would want to say that choice, wherever it is,has to be tempered by its effect on the good of the majority.

I think that we are saying that individual choices have to be tempered by our capacity toprovide adequately for all young people. Our concern in this organisation is how we providefor those in socioeconomically disadvantaged circumstances and for young people who havephysical and intellectual disabilities. I think that is a public responsibility. A publicresponsibility does not necessarily extend to funding choice at the expense of the other childrenthat I am talking about.

CHAIR —I am sorry, I did not hear that last sentence because another senator interrupted.Would you just repeat the last point?

Ms Brown—I said I think that our responsibility is to provide adequately for all childrenand to provide systems in which young people can be educated whether they are socioeconomi-cally disadvantaged or physically or intellectually disadvantaged. I think the question ofwhether we pay for the right of an individual to choose other than the public system that isprovided is a secondary question.

Capt. Eldridge—Could I make a comment here, Senator?CHAIR —Sure.Capt. Eldridge—It is related to some personal knowledge. Two of my children in fact went

to a small Christian school, a Uniting Church school, in their primary education and to a statesecondary school. It was for a range of reasons. We made the choice; we paid the additionalcost. Educational choice like that is often made by families from a more secure background.My concern is—and if you exclude some of the Catholic parish schools from my comments—that many of the schools that might be created will be about parents who are making aneducational choice. They are looking for a particular secure and, in some cases, cloisterededucational environment for their children. There will be a net dollar loss to the public school



system and disadvantaged young people will not be picked up in too many of these schools,except with the exception of the parish schools, as I said.

The high-cost students will remain in a public system—students who need particularassistance, more assistance, who, in all honesty, are more expensive to a school—and therewill be a net dollar loss to the schools that are going to be dealing with those young people.If I thought that there was going to be a rise in the number of schools that are going toparticularly focus on families from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds then I wouldfeel there might be some options here. But I do not in any way believe that, with the exceptionof some Catholic parish schools, there is going to be a rise in schools that are going to becreated in the private system to deal with difficult young people.

So how do we, as a community, balance our ongoing social costs? I think the public fundingshould be connected to socially responsible planning, and that you do have to have some biastowards schools that are taking a social responsibility for disadvantaged young people.

CHAIR —I think you are creating a bit of a myth there, and the point has been made severaltimes. My personal experience with Catholic parish schools, with private Christian schoolsand with expensive fee paying schools—and I have had children go to all of them—is thatthey all make that provision. They all make provision for disadvantaged children and childrenwho have difficulty. As a matter of fact, I have found they have done it a lot better than thepublic system. So I think we are involved in a bit of myth making here. I have no furtherquestions.

Senator CARR—Are you familiar with McKinnon’s report,Review of the new schoolspolicy?

Ms Brown—Yes, not as familiar as I might be, but I am aware of it.Capt. Eldridge—No, I am not, Senator.Senator CARR—I will ask you to comment on this proposition from the McKinnon report.

It says:Choice is easier to use as a rhetorical term than it is to operationalise, at least for the funding of schools.Generalised support for the concept of everyone having maximum choice does not translate into a systemwhich can realistically fund all conceivable options. Nor is choice an unambiguous good. Increased choicefor some may result in decreased choice for others.

Could either of the witnesses comment on the notion that choice has to be measured againstthe effects on other people’s liberty?

Ms Brown—I would like to agree with Dr McKinnon’s statement. In a democracy, we doagree that we have to give away some freedom in order to ensure greater freedom for allpeople. I agree with the statement: it is a very good statement.

Capt. Eldridge—I would agree with the statement, too. But I would like also to hit homethe notion that there are implications in other parts of society for the inability of those whoare restricted in their choice. Creating an under-class of educationally disadvantaged youngpeople, whilst there might be some cost savings in education, will mean there will beadditional costs to other areas of human services. You cannot avoid putting resources into thedevelopment of children and young people.

Senator CARR—Yes. Dr McKinnon also noted:Submissions to the Review—

that he undertook into the new schools policy—



claimed that, as the combined Commonwealth and State cost of non-government enrolments to the publicpurse is less than for students enrolled in government schools, there can be no substantive issues ofeconomic resource use. This is a false belief. If, to use an extreme example, three schools are each onlyable to have classes a third full because there are too many schools in an area, the diseconomies for thenational education budget should be obvious. Moreover, there are opportunity costs to be taken intoaccount, especially if school services are becoming fragmented or if students have to be transported atsignificant additional expense.

Does either of the witnesses believe that the question of costs has to be measured in broaderterms than just on the basis of the direct government subsidy to a particular student?

Ms Brown—I, for one, certainly do think so. It was suggested that I was being simplisticearlier; but I think it is simplistic, as Dr McKinnon points out, to simply tally up the cost ofplaces in one sector and debit them or credit them to the other sector. That is where a lot ofthe fallacies and the simplistic notions about savings to the public sector have come from. Weare talking about marginal dollars here, and I think that that sort of economic argument, interms of cost to the public for fostering growth in the non-government sector, is just anonsense. There are much broader costs involved, as he points out.

Senator CARR—Does either of the witnesses believe that the Commonwealth governmentshould consider the issue of economic viability of small schools, when it considers theallocation of public moneys?

Ms Brown—I can recall a time prior to the new schools policy when that was a seriousissue, when schools were established and did close within a short period of time; and the issuewas not just one of the waste of the recurrent dollars that were provided and the disruptionto children’s schooling but also, in some cases, public equity in capital funds provided. Theywere all really serious issues and were grappled with by successive Commonwealthgovernments. We do have to look at viability. These schools, whether they are non-profit ornot, are small businesses—and we know how difficult it is to establish small business and tomake it viable. That was one of the reasons that the category 6 cap was put on schools, sothat schools did not begin with an unrealistic expectation of what it was going to be like totry to maintain their schools: they were judged after a number of years and then replaced inthe category. That also is going to create problems and unrealistic expectations.

Senator ALLISON—I wonder whether you can tell us how the Australian system compareswith other countries in terms of the percentage of students in the private system, and what arethe implications in terms of equity of that answer.

Ms Brown—I think we are the only country that provides the sort of funding to privateschools that we do. Other countries have systems where local community schools or localneighbourhood schools act in a range of ways. If we look at England and the Netherlands, theirsystems are quite different. But many places in the United States are now grappling with theissue of providing funding to private schools and what the consequences of that will be onwhat has been a very strong and vigorous public school system. I do not have figures on thepercentage in other countries, but Australia is unique, and overseas visitors are alwayssurprised that we provide such heavy subsidies for wealthy schools.

CHAIR —Thank you for appearing today.[10.04 a.m.]LEE, Mr Patrick John, Acting General Secretary, New South Wales Branch, IndependentEducation Union of Australia, 120 Clarendon Street, South Melbourne, Victoria 3205



ROLLEY, Ms Lynne Margaret, Federal Secretary, Independent Education Union ofAustralia, 120 Clarendon Street, South Melbourne, Victoria 3205

CHAIR —The committee prefers evidence to be given in public, but if at any time you wishto give any evidence, part of your evidence or answers to questions in camera you may makethe request and the committee will consider the request. However, such evidence cansubsequently be made public by order of the Senate.

You are welcome to make some brief introductory remarks and then we will go to questions.Ms Rolley—Thank you, Senator. We have a submission that we would like to table to you

for today. I might just take you through it, because you have not had a chance to read it, andpoint out to you that the Independent Education Union of Australia is the federally registeredorganisation which represents the industrial and professional interests of education workersin all non-government education institutions across Australia. We currently have a membershipof about 42,000.

Over a number of years, the IEU has made a number of submissions to various inquiries,including ones before this committee. This particular submission that you have before you goesto two main issues that have come in through the budget policy decisions. One is the abolitionof the new schools policy legislation as it was, and the second is the implementation of aninitiative referred to as the enrolment benchmark adjustment.

In relation to some previous submissions, I might just turn to those. They are in attachmentsto this particular submission, the one first being the accountability in Commonwealth-statefunding arrangements to education. It is behind the blue sheet within this document. It setsout on page 1, in an executive summary there, the kinds of key positions that the union hashad in relation to funding of education within the country—both government and non-government schools.

I just draw to your attention a principal priority that we think is important, which is thestability of funding and the need to have some kind of four-year or quadrennial fundingarrangements in legislation. A view that we have is that, in the assessment and allocation offunding for recurrent and capital purposes, all of the stakeholders, including teacherorganisations and parents, state and non-government authorities, should be involved in theprocesses around the operation of grants in the country.

The principle of need ought to be there and ought to govern the distribution of funds andaccountability mechanisms of Commonwealth, state and block grant authorities. There oughtto be proper collaborative planning arrangements undertaken by the Commonwealth, state andnon-government authorities and data should be available to all of the interested keystakeholders in the education community.

In relation to that particular submission and the inquiries held by this Senate committee, MrLee appeared before this committee two years ago, and the transcript of that particular hearingis attached as attachment 2 behind the green sheet. I would like to just take you to some pagesto give you an idea of the kinds of things that Mr Lee—who is with us today and may wishto make some further comment—put to this committee.

Essentially it was a potted history of government funding of both private and public schoolssince the 1960s. Central to that particular overview was that it was put in the context of thequite vigorous and divisive debates in Australian history in the 1970s and early 1980s, the stateaid debate. A view was put that what has been achieved is a settlement from the various and



diverse interests and the compromises that were made by all of the interest groups ineducation.

On page 162 we put before the committee that the stable nature of salary and awardconditions which exists within the non-government sector were not gotten easily. There wasa very rigorous struggle through the 1970s to achieve that. What should be noted is that a verylarge part of the funding which goes to non-government schools has gone to ensure that thepayment of teachers who work in those schools is comparable to the payment of teachers ingovernment schools. It is our view that what that has done is contribute to high qualityeducation in the sector and has worked to the advantage of both sectors, and should be noted.It is also noted there the comparison with the United States, where there is, as one of yourformer witnesses said, a small non-government sector or private sector. The wages in thatcountry are not comparable to those in the public sector.

If you turn to page 164, Mr Lee noted that this union has supported very strongly andpublicly notions of public accountability for all moneys received by non-government schools.By and large, where there are substantial amounts of public moneys—this is on page 165—going to non-government schools, some kind of public process which deals with the openingand closing of non-government schools and tries to deal with that inside a larger publicframework is a reasonable thing and is supported by our union.

Further down that page, we put to the committee that the idea of a differential set ofcategories for schools which reflects need seems fair. While one will always quibble aboutcut-offs and the like, our union believes that public policy which lies behind it is by and largecorrect, and that is the attitude of this union. In terms of aspects of both accountability forfunds and the participation of non-government schools, teachers and systems in more generalor comprehensive educational strategies, we have constantly supported the establishment ofbodies at a state and federal level which are intersystemic.

In other words, we believe that at the state level you should have curriculum bodies whichhave both the public and the private sector represented on them rather than separate bodiesand that by and large the idea of teacher registration is best done when the state takesresponsibility and the public’s safety stance, if you like, to lay down the norms as to who canand cannot teach the citizens of the state.

We also note that there is fundamental role in educational leadership for the Commonwealthgovernment. It may well be that there are forms of partnerships between the Commonwealthgovernment, state governments and other stakeholders, be they in the government or non-government sector, and they may change over time, but in terms of practical questions, theexiting of the Commonwealth government from education is not supported by our organisationand we believe would be the wrong thing.

I will just refer you to that transcript. It is a transcript before this committee two years agofor another particular review that you were undertaking but the actual sentiments that we putthere and the policy positions that we put there are relevant to the particular matters that thiscommittee is dealing with and that the government is dealing with at this point in time.

Going back to our submission, on page 2, we note as well what we have included here inthe IEC submission to the McKinnonReview of the new schools policyand that is atattachment 3. It is a very brief submission but goes again to the principal points that we made.

We have, in our submission, drawn out two major extracts from McKinnon’s report, oneof which goes to the plural and competing views within Australian society generally but, inparticular, to the issue of schooling where there is:



. . . evidence of all these values, but no consistency or resolution on questions or relative priorities.Different levels of government have reached different answers, further complicating the scene.

He notes that:Moreover, what you see is not necessarily what you get.

It is our view that the changes that are indicated in the new legislation has the capacity tobring to the surface again the very difficult debate that occurred in the 1970s and early 1980saround state aid, that that would be a very counterproductive thing, and that certainly we donot support that. We believe that over the last 20 years, there have been compromises madeand that there is a fragility around the relationships which exist but partnerships have beendeveloped, they have been strengthened and they are worthwhile and all should be done toassist them continuing and them developing further.

I note on page 3 of our document at 3.3 that:. . . there exists a strong consensus within the community that the re-emergence of the state-aid debatewould serve the interests of very few . . .

It is not, in our view, only this union’s policy position. I do not believe that the ordinarycommunity would want to see the emergence of that kind of thing again.

What is disturbing about the legislation that has been introduced, particularly the enrolmentbenchmark adjustment, is that that was done with absolutely no consultation, with noannouncement of it as a coalition policy in its platform prior to the election and that as a resultof that, it has been divisive and is causing concern. In essence, we would say that what theMcKinnon report did was set a model of consultation. It was very inclusive; it was broad; itwas over a long period of time which allowed proper consultation. Everybody who hadanything to say about education was involved in it and it came out with a set of recommenda-tions which, while it did not meet everybody’s needs, generally represented many of them.

If we turn then to point five of the document, we go particularly to the two areas of thelegislation. With respect to the new schools policy, essentially we point out at the beginningthat we ‘support the recommendations in the final report’ of McKinnon’sReview of the newschools policyand believe that ‘they reflect an understanding and accommodation of thecontested values and philosophies’ of Australian education.

Essentially, if those points cannot be included within legislation or are unacceptable to thegovernment, we would like to propose a number of options. Those are set out on page 5 andgo to the following things. The Commonwealth legislation should include accountabilityprovisions which not only require information about student outcomes, as I understand thelegislation does, but also require the recipients of Commonwealth funding, both state and non-government schooling authorities, to be able demonstrate compliance with negotiated andagreed benchmarks.

The IEU believes that models exist in other areas of Commonwealth legislation, whererecipients of Commonwealth funds are required to comply with arrangements set out in formalagreements negotiated between the Commonwealth and state and territory authorities. In otherwords, if this is to be returned to the states and if a new school is registered under whateverprovisions exist at the state level, then there needs to be negotiated between the Common-wealth and the states some kinds of agreements around what should exist.

Alternatively, the Commonwealth should request MCEETYA to broker a common set ofguidelines or a cooperative national framework which sets out a nationally consistent approachto the planning, funding and operation of new government and non-government schools, butwhich also provides for some kind of local variation. Consistent with MCEETYA practice there



would need to be consultation with the non-government sector, because representatives of thenon-government sector are not on MCEETYA.

The third option we put is that agreement is reached with the states and territories—or thelegislation requires it—that the state registration provisions for new schools include theestablishment of joint planning committees as they currently operate in South Australia andthe Northern Territory. For example, they are chaired by the state minister and they havegovernment, Catholic and independent representatives and other key stakeholder interests asdetermined.

From this union’s point of view, a most important criterion for registration and the receiptof public funding is the employment of properly qualified staff and compliance with therelevant industrial laws. The IEU will agitate and participate in processes at the state level tosee that planning and regulatory procedures are implemented which are comparable to therequirements of the planned education provision and minimum enrolments.

We point out that, over the years, we have had to deal with circumstances where schoolshave not been able to sustain financial viability and have gone into receivership. The losersout of that are staff, who have not been paid and have lost accrued entitlements like longservice leave and superannuation. We have also got examples of small schools of differentcreeds and philosophies which operate by virtue of staff not receiving award rates of salaryand conditions. They allow those school to continue financially because they are not able tocome under award conditions or there are practices in place which are industrially exploitativeand so they are not under award conditions. It is our view that those kinds of exercisescompromise fair competition and choice, which are principles which the present governmentargues should underpin private enterprise and the free market.

In relation to the enrolment benchmark adjustment, we reiterate our view that this wasintroduced without any proper consultation or public debate and that that has been unhelpfuland divisive. We believe that the Commonwealth government should fund state governmentsat a level which guarantees high quality education. The funding should be on the basis of need,on the number of students in government schools and on the cost to provide appropriate capitaland recurrent resources. There should be a legislative regime which ensures the stability offunding, but also mechanisms in place which allow for adjustments when students leave asystem or return.

The enrolment benchmark adjustment has been justified by the government on the basis thatthere has been a substantial shift in enrolments from the government sector to the non-government sector. It is our view that the final report of the McKinnon review does notactually support that very strongly. McKinnon notes that there has been some change overthose years but he also notes that, with the possible exception of the most recent year, studentsdo not seem to be leaving government schools to go to non-government schools at the yearlevels 10, 11 and 12.

For instance, in the non-government schools in 1993, 1994 and 1995, changes in enrolmentsat those year levels were minus 622, minus 80 and minus 1,696 respectively. Nevertheless,there has been an increase in non-government enrolments because of a transfer from thegovernment sector to the non-government sector and presumably, one would think, over timeCommonwealth funding might adjust to this.

What we do not know is where that occurs, and we believe that there should be somescrutiny as to where such funding adjustments should occur and what assumptions should applyif it were to occur. Ten per cent of the funding for government schools is general recurrent



tied grants from the Commonwealth but a further 40 per cent funding is paid by theCommonwealth to the states under the financial assistance grants scheme, FAGS, based onthe number of students. The IEU is unaware of any adjustments made to FAGS over the pastdecade. Are there mechanisms in place which provide for a reduction in payment under FAGSwhen student drift has occurred? We would be interested to know that.

The proposed legislation provides for a 50 per cent drawback of the notional per capitapayment under FAGS, but the actual reduction is to be made to the 10 per cent from thegeneral recurrent grants paid to the states and territories. It is our view that this is an entirelyinappropriate mechanism and destroys what should be the straightforward integrity of a percapita program to support the education of students in government schools.

We say that the lack of transparency in the Commonwealth funds under FAGS and how theyare determined, distributed and expended is unacceptable. There are quite complex issuesinvolved, including the difference between the average and marginal per capita costs for theoperation of large government education systems.

The IEU believes that the enrolment benchmark adjustment is a crude formulaic quasi-voucher system and is inappropriate. We believe that there should be a more consideredprocess of community consultation around these issues before major changes to the fundinglegislation proceed. We should say, however, that we are very concerned about rumours thatthis legislation is likely to be held up and the implications for our sector if that were to bethe case, if at 31 December there were insufficient funding for our schools to open in 1997.That is the advice that we have had from both the Catholic and independent employers, andit is our view that that would be an untenable thing to occur. We certainly, at this point,believe that it is important that the substance of the bill guaranteeing grants to schools shouldbe passed.

Patrick Lee may have some points to make too.CHAIR —I just remind the witnesses that we have 45 minutes in total for this session. Keep

that in mind. It allows less questioning if there is more explanation.Mr Lee—I will not add to the matter, Senator. We would love to take some questions.Senator CARR—First of all I draw your attention to the manner in which this legislation

is being dealt with by the Senate. I know it is being claimed in some circles that it is beingheld up in an attempt to prevent, I presume, the Labor Party from moving very substantialamendments to this legislation, to advance the issues that you have raised. Substantially, ouramendments go to the questions that you have raised. But it is the government that have takenan inordinate amount of time to have this legislation actually introduced into the Senate, andtheir own legislative program is now so far behind in terms of dealing with appropriations,for instance, that it is beyond belief that they could suggest that our holding a committeehearing for two days would be sufficient to hold this bill up. It is likely to be debated byDecember, but that is up to the government. They are responsible for the legislative programand they are the ones that are having trouble getting their legislative program processed inany efficient manner.

CHAIR —Just let it all through and there is no problem, Senator Carr.Senator CARR—That is exactly the point I make—the presumption that, because it is being

held up by their internal processes, we automatically should accept action, how matter howunjust it is.

CHAIR —We are happy to let any legislation through at any time.



Senator CARR—Perhaps I could get some further information from you, particularly asit concerns the regulatory regime of the private sector. As I understand it, your argument isthat there ought be high quality provision by the public sector and the private sector.

Ms Rolley—That is correct.Senator CARR—That is essentially the point you make and that, to a large measure, under

this proposal depends upon the capacity of the state governments since the national governmentis withdrawing its commitment to those issues. The minister said:This government’s policy for newly commencing schools will make a school’s entitlement toCommonwealth funding primarily dependent upon state or territory government recognition.

It was in his second reading speech that he made that point. In view of that proposition, howmany state systems require the issue of financial viability to be a criterion for registration?

Mr Lee—I cannot go around the states on that but I sit on the body in New South Waleswhich approves and accredits non-government schools.

Senator CARR—Yes.Mr Lee—The body that does it in New South Wales is a committee of the Board of Studies.

There is no independent body other than a subcommittee of the Board of Studies whichoversights non-government schools. The process set out in the Education Reform Act is verysimple. I might say that I have raised protests about this to the Board of Studies, to the currentand the previous state governments, and I have complained about it on the committee. Myremarks are quite public.

The requirements are only that the school complies with local government regulations asto drains, toilets and the like, and that they have staff. They are not even required to havequalified staff. Under the Education Reform Act in New South Wales, and this covers aboutone-third of all non-government schools that would be funded by the Commonwealth, the onlyrequirement for staff is that there be appropriately qualified or experienced staff, or staff whoare supervised by appropriately qualified or experienced staff. That is it. There is no definitionof what ‘appropriate’ is and the Board of Studies of New South Wales has never adopted asatisfactory definition of ‘appropriate’ qualifications.

The position of our union is that that is an outrageous event in the state of New SouthWales. But what happens in the legislation that the Senate is considering is that that is the onlyrequirement that the Commonwealth would take on under its legislation to part with a hugeamount of public money to the schools in which our membership work, and it is notreasonable.

Senator CARR—As I understand it, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania do not haveany financial viability as a criteria. Is that correct?

Mr Lee—That is right.Senator CARR—How many states have a minimum enrolment criteria for the private

sector? I presume you would be aware that Minister Gude from Victoria today has announceda minimum enrolment criteria for the public sector but not for the private sector. That doesnot seem to be the case in other areas in other states. Is that your understanding?

Ms Rolley—My understanding is that in Victoria there is a minimum of 20. I have to saythat I am not very focused on the precise details of each state. I understand in Victoria youneed to have a minimum of 20 in a primary school to establish such a school. In other states,I am not so certain about that.



Mr Lee—The experience of the last eight or nine years in the opening of non-governmentschools is that the Commonwealth benchmarks for enrolments have become the ones whichthe majority of school communities wanting to open a new non-government school have aimedat because that is where the substantial funding is.

Of course, there are some schools which have opened and have not received Commonwealthfunding under the existing new schools legislation that have not met those enrolments but havenonetheless opened their doors. There are a number of those and they are not funded by theCommonwealth. But, by and large, the regime of figures in the current legislation has operatedas a guide. Dr McKinnon proposed some adjustments and, as Lyn has said, we broadly supportwhat Dr McKinnon put up precisely because he spent time to consult with everybody, andhe made some judgments. Not everybody is happy with all of his judgments but at least thatprocess occurred.

It has been an experience of our union that there has been considerable instability, often inrural areas of the various states, when schools are allowed to open on minimal numbers. Theydo not have sufficient infrastructure to sustain themselves or their community groups for verylong. Quite typically, such schools, after three, four or five years, fracture into differentfactions and divisions on the parent body, the school crumbles, and parents withdraw theirchildren and either go back to some government school or perhaps a Catholic or a Christianschool that is already well established. The whole thing is a destabilising and traumaticexperience in the totality of educational provision in those regional centres.

The operation of the new schools policy has, in our view, been to minimise that. I wouldpoint to the kind of experience that we had with schools in the period 1980 to 1986. Our unionmade a number of submissions to the then schools commission that oversighted grants to non-government schools at that time and we tabled year after year—I was the federal secretaryof the union at the time and I personally tabled them twice a year—submissions about non-government schools in our sector which we did not believe should be opened.

Over time, a good number of those schools floundered and the community disquiet aboutall of that is what led to the inquiry that ended up with the new schools policy, which ourunion supported. We do not see the operation of some form of new schools policy as inimicalto our sector. We do not see that.

We see it as supportive of the sector because it provides community certainty and stabilityand because it is also reflective of a public policy position that government schools aresubstantial and important institutions in our nation that we all have a stake in and that mustbe protected. We all lose if non-government school systems are seen to decline, seen to bedispirited, are seen to be marginalised. That is not in the interests of our sector either.

Senator CARR—As I understand it, Victoria is the only state in the Commonwealth to havea minimum requirement.

Ms Rolley—I think that is right, Senator.Senator CARR—How many states require proposed new schools to take into account the

impact on other schools?Ms Rolley—There is none as far as I am aware. In terms of what impact they will have on

the locality, whether or not there are some demographic changes, whether the number ofchildren of school age are declining or not, whether there is going to be existing governmentor non-government schools that are impacted upon by a new school there, I do not believethat sort of thing is explored or investigated by the registration authorities of any state.



Queensland at the present time has actually got some kind of discussion paper out and aboutand is reviewing all of that now. As a result of this proposed legislation, I understand that thereis a little bit more activity going on at the state level about the implications of this. WhatPatrick has said is right. In the past, state governments have relied upon the arrangements thatwere part of the new schools policy to inform them about issues around planning and aroundminimum numbers, financial viability et cetera.

Senator CARR—So in effect this proposition may well disadvantage established educationsystems operating in the private sector, just as it will disadvantage the public sector.

Mr Lee—There is no doubt about that, and in fact representatives—and I will not namethem—of some of the non-Catholic independent school groups have expressed to me thatconcern that the raw forms of competition that might be unfolded under this could well havea chaotic impact on any kind of school really and that that is not an orderly set of affairseither. That has been expressed to me.

Senator CARR—It is as much a threat to the Catholic education system in that context asit is to the public sector.

Mr Lee—My impression is that if this policy were to go through the Catholic schoolingsystem would not be as hugely threatened. I think it is fairly stable in terms of its numbersand, if you like, percentage share. It is not a system across Australia which is rapidlyincreasing its percentage share; it is quite stable. In some dioceses it is, in fact, declining, andI quote the—

Senator CARR—Which schools would be disadvantaged by this?Mr Lee—What is more likely to occur—and this is where I disagree with Joan Brown in

her earlier discussions—is that the impact in some of the western suburbs of Sydney andMelbourne might be greater than Joan believes. The opening of new systems, new low-feeAnglican systems, for example, which are proposed or other low-fee schools, are likely to drawpupils from government schools or from existing and established Christian community schools.That will lead to some kind of enrolment shift and round robining.

The position of our union is not that there, in principle, should not be an Anglican system.Our union does not say that it is all right for there to be a Catholic system and not an Anglicansystem. I do not know where we would derive such a policy position from. Our position isthat the whole of the community and whole of the educational community and all stakeholdershave a right to participate in a process which regulates that and that if there is going to be alow-fee Anglican system that services the western suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, not inhuge numbers of schools, then there should be a community scrutiny of that process. Equally,if the Catholic system wants to open up a new school then a planning process, which it hasto meet, should be gone through. I understand Catholic authorities support that view as well.

I reiterate that there should be a regime of stability for all existing schools that guidescommunity groups that want to come forward and establish a new school that their communityhitherto has not, and I instance the Islamic community. There should be a regulatory processthat involves others that they go through. Where the threshold of that community is substantialenough to give birth to a school and sustain it in relationships with other schools and systems,then it can be registered and funded by the Commonwealth.

Senator CARR—Yes. Do you accept the notion that choice is an important component ofthe education provision?



Mr Lee—We do, but I come back to comments that were made in the previous hearing thatno-one can argue for an unmitigated and unrestricted choice. No-one ever does that. You donot do it with your private car. Nobody says that if I want to drive my private car from hereto there then there must be a road laid out for me irrespective of anything else. No-one everargues that. Some will try to but, of course, you cannot have that.

Senator CARR—McKinnon argues:Choice can be infinitely divisible but not for funding purpose. Few reasonable people would suggest thatall breakaway groups, however small, wanting to start their own schools in the name of choice wouldjustify a high priority for scarce government dollars. What funding compromise would strike a balancebetween choice and myriad, insubstantial schools.

Do you accept that notion?Mr Lee—Broadly, yes. The Victoria government accepts the notion too because what it says

is that even within the public system it cannot, on an infinitely divisible basis, providegovernment schools. In fact, what it is doing is shrinking the number of government schoolsacross Victoria. Every government or system authority which wants to provide an educationalservice has to think long and hard about what choice or multiplicity of institutions it canprovide, and there are compromises and restrictions which must operate.

That operates within any system, be it government or non-government. It must perforceoperate across the whole of the educational community when the state, be it the Common-wealth or state authority, with large amounts of money are involved. There has to becommunity scrutiny and fine judgment made about what can be provided.

Our union represents teachers and other staff in the non-government sector and so weobviously support the fact that there will be a variety of schools, and that does embody anotion of choice. However, we think it should be regulated and we think it should becompatible with the widest form of community acceptance of how that choice operates. Wedo not have perfect regulatory mechanisms to do that at the moment and McKinnon says thatyou will probably never get them, but what we have it better than what we might be aboutto have.

Senator CARR—And you believe that the question of choice applies to all parents and thatthe choices of some should not be at the expense of choices of others?

Mr Lee—The choices of some inevitably are at the expense of others, and I think it wouldbe naive for us to say that that cannot or should not happen, so we do not say that. Werecognise that point, but we do recognise that operating within government systems. The wholeargument about selective schools in the government system is entirely about this issue of theright to select for your child a school which specialises in music or whatever and that accessto that school is then restricted to other students who do not want to specialise there but whomight like access to it because it is their local comprehensive school. This involves exclusionsand compromises and the like. It operates that way. We are saying that there should be ahigher threshold of community assessment about how that choice should operate both withinand across systems. With all of its imperfections, the existing new schools policy, modifiedby the proposals that Dr McKinnon has put, is not a bad way to go.

I do wish to emphasise what Ms Rolley said in our submission on page 5, which is that,if the Senate does not agree with what we are putting, and that the new schools policy as itcurrently exists is removed, and that the McKinnon regime is not implemented, thennonetheless the Commonwealth should do some other things. These are fall-back positions



that we are putting, but it should do some other things to ensure that the open slather approachthat is there at the moment does not apply.

One very good reason that concerns our organisation is that, once you have this formulaicquasi-voucher system operating, what is there to stop a state government from retaliatingagainst the Commonwealth and against our sector, as has been mooted, I believe, by theMinister in New South Wales, from deducting from the pool of state grants to non-governmentschools the amount of money that is forfeited to the Commonwealth because of the transfer?

Let me go through the implications of that, because I believe that the New South Walesminister is toying with this idea. If there is a transfer after the benchmark date of, let us say,one per cent of students in New South Wales, in the non-government schools where those kidsturn up the Commonwealth pays its per capita grants to those schools. Those schools benefitbecause, if it is category 10, $2,500 turns up there if it is a secondary kid. The Commonwealththen withdraws roughly half of that amount from its grants to the government sector. The statetreasury might decide, as has been mooted, that it can calculate the amount of missing moneyto the government sector because of that transfer mechanism in this legislation, then deductthat from the pool of moneys; that is, in New South Wales it is the 25 per cent of money spenton government school systems—25 per cent of that is turned into grants and distributed. Beforethe distribution, there might be a subtraction from that pool of the amount of missing money.Then you say, ‘Where does that leave us?’ The non-government school that has attracted theextra child and therefore the extra Commonwealth government grant is probably all right, butthe cost of that is then distributed across all non-government schools and deducted from thegrants which come through the state grants mechanism.

When you sit back and look at that you wonder; this is quite an odd and bizarre way ofdoing business. What it means is that two governments have not managed to come up witha sensible way of doing business around the funding and planning of schools. I have to saythat I think the Australian community expects more of the national government and more ofstate governments. This parliament has within its powers the opportunity to have a morereasonable and measured approach in place. We say that you should do that because you arehandling large amounts of public money.

Senator CARR—Sorry, did you mean the government sector when you referred to non-government in terms of spreading the costs?

Mr Lee—No. What I am saying is that the state grants to non-government schools may bereduced by the amount of money that the state government has had forfeited from it by theCommonwealth government. If I was a state minister I might say, ‘That’s fair enough becausethe forfeited money has all turned up over in the non-government sector; it is just in a differentplace.’ There would be a credible argument by a state minister to the effect that we have nottaken any money from the non-government sector in New South Wales. All we have done isacknowledge that the Commonwealth has allowed more money to go there by grants followingstudents. The Commonwealth has penalised us as a state system, so what we have done is thatwe have laid the penalty back over to where the grants turned up in the first place. The factis that has been floated in New South Wales—with what degree of seriousness, I am not sure.Perhaps the Senate might like to ask the Minister for New South Wales if that is what he isintending.

In a mathematical sense, it would not be an unreasonable response. It makes as much senseas putting in this mechanism. What we are arguing is that neither approach makes much senseand that they are irresponsible.



CHAIR —When a student moves from the government system over to the private, $1,700also goes back to the states. They could choose to leave that $1,700 there with the schools.That is their choice. How does that calculate with what you have just said?

Mr Lee—What they will do under the scenario that I am putting is that they will simplyredistribute the lost amount which, as you say is half, not the full amount, to the sector.

CHAIR —To which sector are you referring?Mr Lee—To the non-government sector. The half which is lost to the government sector—CHAIR —That is supposedly following the pupil.Mr Lee—Yes. It is then redistributed as a loss by the state government through state grants

over to the non-government sector. I think that you are asking me, Senator, what about theremaining money, because you have not taken it all back; you have left something there. Thatgoes to the other part of our submission which is the last couple of sections 5.2, 5.25 throughto 5.210. We raise the point about the difference between average costs and marginal costs.I know that state ministers have already expressed concern and the Catholic systems do expressthe same concern in the context of the marginal cost if students leave particular schools andsystems, and you might not be able to adjust your cost at all.

CHAIR —I wonder how you would reconcile that with the minister’s statement. I will readfrom his—

Senator CARR—The minister is wrong; that is how you reconcile it.CHAIR —No, I do not think that the minister is wrong. If you listen, you might learn

something, Senator Carr. I am reading from the currentHansard, 16 October, on the statesgrants bill, Dr Kemp says:Admittedly it is not the full $3,400, but it is $1,700. Let us spread that $1,700 . . .

this is the $1,700 that remains with the state—amongst all the remaining pupils in the government school sector. That is more per capita than existedbefore the shift.

Mr Lee—I do not think that is right, with respect.CHAIR —Where is the maths wrong?Mr Lee—I think that where the maths is wrong is that there was a certain amount of money

that came from the Commonwealth to this particular government system. A student leavesand—

CHAIR —Half the money follows and half stays.Senator CARR—But the costs do not follow.Mr Lee—The money disappears. There is no reduction in costs at all, perhaps, in the system

of school that has to be provided by the government. There is $1,700 missing dollars.CHAIR —But the pupils disappeared and the $1,700 is to ameliorate those costs, as Senator

Carr has just referred to.Per capita, you have got a higher figure. That is a simple point of maths, Senator Carr.

Senator CARR—The New South Wales government has suggested that the cost to NewSouth Wales as a result of these changes will be up to $20 million to $30 million extra forNew South Wales, not a saving for the state, but a cost to the state because of the changesin the overheads and various other things which they cannot remove.



CHAIR —Which is why you have got extra per capita money here. I am not here to debateit with you, Senator Carr. You have just plucked a figure out of the air, but we are talkingabout when a pupil moves, and there is more money left in that school without that pupil tosupport. The school has more, per capita, spread across the school. That is a matter of simplemaths.

Senator CARR—That is not how schools work.Mr Lee—The total cost of providing that school is unchanged. If a student leaves it, then

the mathematics show a higher per capita cost.CHAIR —We are not talking about huge numbers of students leaving. This is the fallacy

in the whole argument so far. If you were listening to what I said in the earlier discussions,it works out on the rate of change of one to two per cent over four years, bringing it back to,in a school of 600, only about three pupils per year. There are economies that work the otherway on this. If you are only shifting slightly at the margin and you are leaving more per capitamoney, the way I figure it, it works out roughly in balance if the state leaves that money there.

Mr Lee—Can I say what our position on this is? I understand the point that you are puttingto us. It would be reasonable to say—and we say it here, so we obviously think it isreasonable—that if a system over time had substantially fewer students in it, then thefunding—

CHAIR —Projections do not show that though.Mr Lee—No, but I am just saying that if it did then it makes sense for governments which

fund that system to adjust their funding to that. No-one is arguing that, let us say, a Catholicsystem, halved in its number of students, has a right to the totality of funding that appliedwhen it was twice that number. Funding must adjust to what is there—and over time thatwould happen.

But what we are saying is that the mechanism that has been put in here is an inappropriateone. It is novel. There has not been time for members of the community to assess itsimplications. All around the Australian educational community at the moment there are debateslike the one that we are having about what this will really mean. People do not know theanswer to it.

That uncertainty is what we are saying is not satisfactory. Given that this is such a touchy,historical issue in the Australian community, more time should be put into consultation on thefunding of government school systems by the Commonwealth. The majority of Commonwealthmoney that supports government systems is, of course, not through this program but throughthe general programs. There is a much larger amount over there. Lynne drew your attentionto the fact that we are unsure of how adjustments have been made in that larger amount ofmoney over the last 10 years. We do not know.

Maybe if that were known in the public, in the community, that would allow a moreconsidered set of judgments and perhaps a consensus to arise about the basis on which theCommonwealth might adjust money—upwards or downwards—for government systems. I thinkwe would all feel happier about that because there would be greater certainty. I suppose I amsaying that that is a very big part of our concern.

CHAIR —I am just curious about this lack of certainty. You have made statements thismorning like ‘raw competition’ and ‘threat to existing schools’, but if the projection is for achange of one to two per cent over four years, that looks like a very marginal shift. I cannotsee why—



Senator CARR—It is 20,000 in New South Wales alone.CHAIR —We are looking at one to two per cent over four years, which is a very minor shift,

and you have got huge state systems, you have got a huge Catholic system, a huge privatesystem, so could you explain how such a minor shift is in any way a threat? It might be athreat to some minor schools—little Christian schools that new ones are competing with whichmight be threatened if there is a shift in enrolment. But there is a demand for private schools.Public schools are also very stable. When new schools set up, the enrolments are oftenregional—they do not draw from the suburbs, they draw from a very wide area.

I will give you an example of one school that set up in the suburb of Waratah. They hadWaratah Primary School next to Waratah High School. The new school grew over a periodof five years to 500 enrolments. It was within 100 yards of those two schools and they didnot close. The reason they did not close was that four pupils came from Waratah and the restcame from right around the whole of Newcastle. Please explain to me why there is a threatto the system from this marginal and minor shift?

Mr Lee—I would say a couple of things, Senator. Firstly, when I referred to the rawcompetition I was giving an example in response to Senator Carr asking me whether there wassome potential threat to non-government schools as well as government school systems. I wassaying that in some parts of some cities the answer to that is yes, and I gave the Anglican,Christian and government school trio in some western suburb localities where there might beinstability around those groups. I was referring to that.

The first thing, senators, is that those projections are just that, they are projections. I do notthink anyone is really sure of how sound those projections are. Under this mechanism thereis no real capacity for anyone within four years to intervene or do something about anemerging community concern which might arise. That uncertainty as to whether that will onlybe the effect is an important issue because if those changes were to exceed those projectionsthen we can see quite a lot of divisiveness in the community that our organisation would prefernot to occur.

The second point is that a small amount of impact upon some regional schools might bequite significant for those schools. I am thinking of regional boarding schools which are non-government schools. I think of places like Toowoomba and Armidale that have significant non-government schools, with boarding schools which, as you say in the example that you give,their catchment area is very big indeed.

Some of those schools have very tenuous viability. I know that because of the annualindustrial processes that we go through around retrenchments in a number of those schools.They are delicate and difficult and hard things. A difference of five or 10 or 15 students ina school like the New England Girls School, or PLC in Armidale, is quite dramatic. Theemergence of a new school without any form of community consensus as to whether Armidaleand its regions can bear another school, but with 20 or 30 or 40 kids and the Commonwealthsubstantially funding it, causes us concern about the impact upon the viability of those existingschools.

If 30 kids disappear from the New England Girls School and they are day students becausethey go over there, along with some kids from the local government school, and if the entireviability of that school is called into question then the boarding facility that it provides to awider catchment area—which our union thinks is a valuable community service and anecessary one—is put at risk too.



What we are saying is that there is quite a dramatic potential outcome there that should notbe allowed to just happen without the community participating in some oversight of thatprocess. A new schools type process, whether it is this one or one which under our fall-backoption offers a different one that the Commonwealth might negotiate with different stategovernments, must be in place, we say with respect.

CHAIR —I have a final question relating to the operation of the previous policy, the so-called new schools policy, which we used to call the no new schools policy. It operated forabout 10 years. Could you just describe, from your perspective, the effect of that policy inthe difficulty it might have created in the establishment of new schools or the expansion ofexisting private schools?

Mr Lee—You asked me to comment on the difficulties. I would imagine some non-government schools and some communities that would wish to have supported new non-government schools would say that they found it harder to get started or, in established areas,found it harder to expand. I believe that there was a genuine issue here that Dr McKinnon wasasked to look at.

I will give you the example of expanding Islamic schools in the Bankstown area of Sydney.I will use it as an example but you could look at other capital cities as well. Our unionbelieves that a substantial Islamic community in Sydney has an entitlement to have an Islamicschool. It is consistent with the Irish Catholic tradition, being entitled to have quite a few, andit would be silly for us to say otherwise. The new school policy required that community togo through certain rigorous procedures before it could get such a school and allow it toexpand.

There probably are instances where, because of the number of Islamic students in publicschools in that region, schools that some in the community would have wished to support wereprevented from opening. I know that is a process of community debate that has gone on.Nonetheless, there are Islamic schools. There are two quite substantial Islamic schools nowin that region of Sydney. I think that demonstrates that, even under the current policy, thecommunity could go through those hoops and win their right to have their school and to haveit funded.

I think Dr McKinnon’s adjustments go to making it a bit easier for that to happen. I knowthat representatives of the public sector interest are probably unhappy about that. They are hereto say that, and they will say it. We accept that there is a competing set of interests there inthat the ones that we represent, I would suppose I would say that—

CHAIR —Islamic people, of course, may be very determined. There are other groups whodo not quite have the necessary resources, who claim to us that it is virtually impossible toset up. I know of several examples where it did not go ahead. Let me refer you to someHansardevidence we received on this matter in Canberra a year or two ago, and that relatedto the Steiner schools. They made an interesting comment. They said that, if the new schoolspolicy had existed 30 years ago when they were established, they would never have becomeestablished because the hurdles were too high. Is that a reasonable comment?

Mr Lee—No. I do not know that I agree with it. Some of the Steiner schools would notexist and, in my view, a couple of them should not exist. I give an example of one up atNimbin, which is everyone’s favourite part of northern New South Wales—

CHAIR —This might be an extreme example that you are giving.Ms Rolley—People do live there with kids. They do need to send their kids there.



Mr Lee—In fact, there are quite a few Steiner schools up in the central and north coastalregions of New South Wales. A couple of those Steiner schools have established goodeducational institutions. One which was allowed to be established around Nimbin has struggled.It should never have been allowed to open, and this is one that got going even under thecurrent policy.

CHAIR —They must have been very determined.Mr Lee—It collapsed. They have turned in on themselves. They have split. In fact, it was

the example that I had in mind when I went through that before. From the point of our union,it was staffed by just a couple of qualified teachers. The majority of people were other peoplepulled in from the community to allow it to operate at low costs and, therefore, in a price-competitive regime, if you like, on the basis of underqualified people having charge of theeducation of those students—admittedly because their parents agreed for that to happen fora while—until they fell in on each other. The whole thing collapsed, and the four or five yearsof regime of Commonwealth funding that went in that direction—

CHAIR —Wait a minute. They would have had to meet state registration inspectionrequirements?

Mr Lee—Senator, that is what I am saying. I sit on the body in New South Wales whicheffectively registers those schools. I am saying that I have the greatest disquiet about thatprocess, and I think the Senate should. I went through the three criteria for the accreditationof non-government schools in New South Wales, including that one. I sit on the body. Thereis no other body.

CHAIR —Yes, but it is then inspected, as the public schools are, by inspectors to ensurethat it is up to those standards. So where is that system falling down in terms of theinspections?

Mr Lee—That regime of inspection in a number of cases in New South Wales is inadequate.It was inadequate in that case. Officers of the Board of Studies do intersect with various non-government schools from time to time to assist them to improve their standards and getthrough these hurdles, and they do a good job on that as board officers. They assist in savingsome schools from declining and going down by putting the time in to help them with theircurriculum documents, and that is a successful process in a number of cases.

But those board officers in New South Wales work under a legislative regime that preventsthem from saying to the school that you must have qualified teachers, because the act doesnot require it. So a board officer cannot require it. At least in Queensland or South Australiathere are statewide intersystemic registration bodies which actually say that it is illegal foranyone to put out their shingle and not have registered teachers, government or non-government. That does not happen in New South Wales, and the registration authority for non-government schools in Tasmania was abolished two years ago. The longest standingregistration of teachers and schools body in Australia’s educational history, it was put in placein 1916. It was abolished. Our union had to change its name from the Tasmanian RegisteredTeachers Association because they were no longer registered.

CHAIR —We are way out of time, so very briefly, please.Ms Rolley—I think a point to be made is that the union does believe it is a very serious

matter to start a school and there ought to be proper regulations around that. There are a rangeof enterprises that private individuals or groups of individuals might decide they would liketo venture into, put money into et cetera. If it fails, or it does not work, the impact of that



failure is quite narrow. It might impact upon those who have gone in to it, their immediatefamily et cetera. But in fact a school should not be some kind of lightly taken thing; we willjust have a bit of a go at setting in a school. There ought to be hurdles and hoops to jump overand through, especially when there is a very large amount of public money that will go intosupporting that venture and, as we are reminded very often, the buckets of money are quitelimited. They have big bottoms on them. So there ought to be rigour around these things, andthat is one of the things that we are arguing around. It is a key principle that this unionbelieves in.

Senator ALLISON—Could you clarify for the committee who you represent, in terms ofwhich schools your teachers teach in?

Ms Rolley—Any non-government education institution from early childhood through to whatyou might call private post-secondary educational institutions. So any Catholic, independent,non-Catholic, primary, secondary, early childhood in a range of states et cetera.

Senator ALLISON—You talked a lot about the need for planning and regulation andbalance and so forth. I wonder whether the current 25 per cent of Australian children in theprivate sector is the right balance or whether 31 per cent, which is 29 plus the two per centthe government is currently talking about, is the level that ought to be a factor in setting policyand planning.

Mr Lee—We do not have the view that there is a proper quota, because we would not knowhow to calculate that, but we could say a couple of things historically that everyone shouldbe sensitive to around that question. It is about 29 per cent currently; just over 29 per centare in non-government schools. As you know, there are 2,500 schools—nearly 1,700 areCatholic and the other group range from the category 1 independents through to Aboriginalcommunity schools, category 12.

Historically the share, if you like, of the non-government sector started to decline in the late1960s and early 1970s, and that was because the schools faced financial crisis, as didgovernment school systems. Of course, the entry of the Commonwealth into substantial fundingof schools at that time was in response to an Australia-wide demand. What happened afterthat was that the Catholic system, which had declined to about 17 per cent, gradually wentback up to its 20-21 per cent, and it has remained there pretty steady for about 10 years, Ithink. In some states where the market share, if you like, had been quite low, like SouthAustralia, because there had not been a tradition of convicts there so Catholic numbers weredown, that rose through that period of time from some 14 up to nearly 20 per cent and more.That is quite a dramatic shift and it needs some examination.

I think a shift of two, three or four per cent over a similar number of years or, say, five,six or seven years, where our share went from, say, the current 29 per cent to 33-34 per cent,that is a huge shift. Whether it is right or wrong in the long term is a matter for howAustralia’s history develops, but for that to happen in a short term, even a decade, will havesuch dislocational effects within the community and in many micro-communities that I thinkit is unconscionable.

It will not help settle a lot of very difficult matters which lie deep in Australia’s history.I think that is too much and it is too quick, even though, I might say, if it happens we aregoing to be there trying to unionise the lot of them and our numbers will increase. That is ournarrow interest and we will do that because in the early 1980s schools opened when there wasnot a rigorous regime of payment of award wages and the like, because it was not arequirement under the education acts at that time. You could open these schools cheaply



because you could exploit teachers, you could employ people at half the cost, and then ofcourse the fees can be low and you can get the door open. We will never go back to thosedays because we are well established and we are here to stay, and we will profit in a narrowsense from such a development, but it is not adequate.

Senator O’BRIEN—I want to defer my questioning to Senator Carr.CHAIR —We are way over time.Senator O’BRIEN—In that case I will ask one myself. In relation to 2.3 in your submission,

do you see the potential for this legislation, and in particular the plan to effectively transferfunding from the government to the non-government school sector via the mechanism of theenrolment benchmark adjustment, to reignite the type of state aid debate that existed in the1970s and 1980s?

Ms Rolley—I think we do. That is certainly what Patrick has been alluding to and I havesaid as well. In fact, already we have union officers in other states that have been confrontedby people, teachers and others from the public sector, who are actually putting quite blunt,direct and verging on hostile questions around this particular stuff and wanting to knowanswers, what will it mean, this is not good enough, we are unhappy. The debate around theeducation community at the moment is difficult because people do not really know theimplications of it. I think it is the beginning, it is really the politics of the thing that is mostdamaging. I think good relationships have been developed over the last 10 to 20 years andin the last six to seven they have strengthened a lot. There has been a lot of very goodcollaborative work at state and Commonwealth level across all of the key stakeholders—private, public, tertiary, all over there. The work that has been done has been very significantand substantial and I think people will just close down. I think they will shut down, put theirarms around their work and actually it will become very competitive and divisive. I haveabsolutely no doubt of that.

CHAIR —Thank you very much.[11.16 a.m.]CRIMMINS, Mr Peter Aloysius, Executive Officer and Public Officer, AustralianAssociation of Christian Schools (AACS), 4 Spencer Street, Turner, Australian CapitalTerritory 2612SPOOR, Mr Rommert (Bob) Alan, Associate Director, Seventh-Day Adventist SchoolsNational Office, 148 Fox Valley Road, Wahroonga, New South Wales 2076

CHAIR —I welcome the witnesses from the Australian Association of Christian Schools andthe Seventh-Day Adventist Schools. The committee prefers evidence to be given in public butif at any time you wish to give any evidence, part of the evidence or answers to questions incamera you may make the request and the committee will consider the request, but suchevidence can subsequently be made public by order of the Senate.

The committee has before it a document which is numbered 5 from Mr Crimmins, and onenumbered 4 from Mr Spoor. You are welcome to make brief, and I will emphasise brief,introductory remarks and the committee will then proceed to questions.

Mr Crimmins —Before I do, I have an additional paper submission I would like to putbefore the committee.

CHAIR —Is it the wish of the committee that the document be incorporated in the transcriptof evidence? There being no objection, it is so ordered.

The document read as follows—



Mr Crimmins —Senators, you have before you the submission from the AustralianAssociation of Christian Schools, which, in essence, says that we support the bill in its currentform as presented in the House of Representatives recently. Our reasons for supporting thebill in its current form are these. Firstly, there has been a bipartisan approach to the fundingof both government and non-government schools by the Commonwealth. That bipartisanapproach is reaffirmed in the bill currently before parliament, assuring funding for thequadrennium 1997 to the year 2000. In addition, the legislation introduced by the previousLabor government to make adjustments to non-government school funding by way ofsupplementation linked to the AGSRC movements is also incorporated in the bill.

We also have no problems associated with the reorganisation of the suite of programs thatwere formerly known as the equity programs. We feel that this provides schools with moreflexibility, and certainly the independent sector with more flexibility, in responding to thoseneeds.

We welcome the determination of the government to remove the legislation that wasformerly in place regarding the establishment and development of new and new levels ofeducation in non-government schools. We consider that the processes that are put in place bystates and territories in order to ensure that schools are registered and accredited are theappropriate procedures. We think it is unfair—and I think that has been recognised by bothmajor parties—that there should have been an artificial funding cap that has existed now for10 years on schools regardless of their level of need, as the result of previous legislation, orlegislation that still actually operates.

We similarly think that the legislation that restricted funding to non-government schools onthe basis of numbers was artificial and not necessarily based on any hard statistical evidence.It is for that reason I would like to draw the committee’s attention to the document that isbeing circulated. This document comes from the Australian Bureau of Statistics publication1995 Schools Australia. It is taken from page 5 of that publication, table 3. In the publication,it indicates the number of primary schools, government and non-government, and the numberof secondary schools, government and non-government, with different population levels. Inthe top section of the table you can see that there are 346, for example, government primaryschools with populations somewhere between one and 20 students, and there are a further 407government schools with populations between 21 and 35 students. On the same table and inthe bracket immediately below it, in those two areas in the non-government sector, there arerespectively 41 and 66 non-government schools with student populations between one and 20,and 21 and 35.

The long and the short of that means in effect that the total number of government schoolswith primary school populations lower than 36, based on last year’s statistics, governmentrecorded, was 753 and the non-government sector had 107. That actually represents in the non-government sector 12.5 per cent of the total number of schools with populations less than 36.Yet the new schools policy says that, in order to get funding for a non-government primaryschool, you had to have a population of 50. There are in Australia at the moment 753government schools with populations less than 36. If those government schools are considerededucationally viable with populations less than 36, it surely would have to be a matter ofargument that non-government schools are similarly viable. Therefore, the use of statisticalinformation like the ones that are currently in the legislation limiting the funding to a non-government school based on minimum numbers does not stand the test in the governmentsector.



The matter of the benchmark adjustment we consider is a matter of negotiation between theCommonwealth and the states, but from our point of view our parents sending their childrento our schools are taxpayers. When a student moves from a government school to one of ourschools, under the current regime the Commonwealth continues to pay $3,400 to the studentin the government school and then picks up whatever the recurring costs are for that studentin the non-government school. That means the Commonwealth is paying taxpayers’ moneytwice for the same student. I am not in a position to see how that is justified in toto.

I appreciate and understand that when students move from our schools to other schools, bethey other non-government schools or a government school, there are economies of scale thatcannot immediately be effected. But when they do that there is no continuation of any levelof government funding. So if, for example, the census indicated in 1995 that one of ourschools had 200 primary school students and the same census in 1996 indicated that thatschool had 150 primary school students, we lose the total Commonwealth and state recurrentcontribution to the school and any diseconomies that are effected have to be borne by theparents. What I understand is being proposed by the Commonwealth in the legislation is thatthey recognised those diseconomies for the states and they are simply removing from the states50 per cent of the costs that they previously allocated against those students. The net effect,as my understanding of that is, is that the Commonwealth’s contribution to those studentscontinues to be the same. Thank you.

Mr Spoor—I represent the Seventh-Day Adventist school system. The first Seventh-DayAdventist school was established in Victoria in 1892, so we have a history of over 100 yearsof schooling in this nation. Today there are 68 Adventist schools scattered across the nation,organised into nine systems. Because the schools are all owned and operated by the church,they are totally systemic. Our systems are funded at relatively moderate levels. Two of themare funded at level 8, all of the others are funded at level 7, 6 or 5. So I just give that as abackground.

I would like to speak to the submission that is before you. Seventh-Day Adventist schoolsstrongly support the bill as proposed by the government regarding the broadbanding of thetargeted programs and the establishment of the five priority areas. It is maintained that thisproposal will allow for adequate flexibility in the application of support for these targetedprograms.

We have specific reasons for supporting the abolition of the so-called new schools policyand I would like to draw attention to those. It is contended that the new schools policyimplemented by the previous government was detrimental to the freedom of choice ineducation which we believe is an inalienable right for all Australians. The new schools policywas highly discriminatory against minority groups who may choose to exercise their right tooperate a school that supported their beliefs, lifestyle and cultural aspirations for their children.

Contrary to claims that the removal of the new schools policy will result in an inordinaterate of growth of new private schools, it is maintained that there are sufficient economic factorsand state regulations to keep such growth under control. I do not believe that there is goingto be a blow-out in the numbers of new private schools. For example, as far as Seventh-DayAdventist schools are concerned, at the funding levels that our schools are funded there is avery substantial private contribution that must be made and consequently the community thattakes on a new Seventh-Day Adventist school has to contribute a very substantial portion ofthe cost of operation of that school, and that in itself is an inhibitor to the sudden proliferationof lots of new Seventh-Day Adventist schools. There will not be a blow-out of new Seventh-Day Adventist schools at all.



It is contended that the Australian constitution places the primary responsibility for educationin the hands of state governments. The Commonwealth has a supporting role in assisting thestates to meet their obligations, but it should not impose another set of registration rules inthe form of a new schools policy.

For every child that is educated in a private school there is a substantial saving to the publicpurse. This saving has been estimated at around $3,000 per capita per annum and equates tothe average private sector contribution. The savings to the public purse described aboverepresent a resource that is readily available for enrichment of public education. The argumentthat the growth of private schools is detrimental to public schools is not economically soundfor this reason.

Further, the arguments about residualisation of public schools in the sense that the freegrowth of private education will cause a downgrading of the quality of students attendingpublic schools is based on prejudice, not fact. Parents of students attending most privateschools select these schools for a wide variety of reasons, not just academic excellence. Inmany cases the private school is sought to resolve learning or behaviour problems for failingstudents. I can speak with some degree of experience there, having spent 30 years as a teacherin the Seventh-Day Adventist school system, 20 of those as a principal of schools in all statesof Australia except Queensland and the Northern Territory, and so I have personal experienceof the types of people who choose to enrol their students in Seventh-Day Adventist schools.It is frequently for a wide variety of reasons, not, as is maintained by those who talk aboutresidualisation, that only parents who have the funds and parents who have high aspirationsor high achieving children are the ones who choose private education. I contradict thatassumption.

Further, whereas Australia is a multicultural society and is enriched by the diversity of itscultural origins, it seems logical to support freedom of choice in education. The total educationprogram in Australia is enhanced by its diversity. When this diversity in education can beachieved with savings to the public purse, why should the government seek to artificiallyobstruct its growth by the retention of a new schools policy?

Senator O’BRIEN—Mr Crimmins, your document this morning, table 3, number of schoolset cetera: you have that in front of you, haven’t you?

Mr Crimmins —Yes.Senator O’BRIEN—Is there any further tabling which sets out where those schools are?

For example, my presumption on looking at this document is that in the public sector quitea lot of the government schools would be in rural and regional areas. That is due to my ownexperience in my own state as to size of schools. Would that be a fair assumption?

Mr Crimmins —I think that is a very fair assumption.Senator O’BRIEN—In terms of the non-government schools, have you got any breakdown

as to the size of schools by region, whether they are metropolitan, regional centres, rural?Mr Crimmins —They are the same. They mainly are schools serving rural communities,

country or rural communities. It is more likely that the urban schools attract large populationsof students, for obvious reasons.

Senator O’BRIEN—But there are some of the non-government schools that have very smallpopulations in the metropolitan areas, aren’t there?

Mr Crimmins —There would be some, yes.



Senator O’BRIEN—There are a couple that I know of, for example, in Hobart andLaunceston which would have very small student populations.

Mr Crimmins —I know our schools that belong to the non-government sector that are inHobart and they are not small, but there are, I am sure, small schools and they are the onesthat are struggling.

Senator O’BRIEN—I think the point that I am trying to make is that you may not becomparing exactly the same sort of data, although there would be similarities. Just lookingat this table, you cannot extrapolate that that naturally conveys that you are comparing likewith like.

Mr Crimmins —I appreciate that and I accept that. I do not think they are the same. I thinkthere are similarities, though. But I think the difference in what is a 29 per cent representationof the non-government sector currently in Australia, and that is reported in the same ABSdocument, down to a 12.5 per cent representation of schools at the primary school level under36 population shows that there is a disparity that is not explained only by that.

Senator O’BRIEN—Yes. Some state governments have followed policies of trying torationalise the number of schools. There have been closures of schools in a number of states,including the state of Tasmania. It has been quite controversial there. That is not a debate thatthe private school sector has to contend with, is it?

Mr Crimmins —No. I did not answer one of your questions. One of your questions said:is there another document or table in the same booklet of statistics that reconciles this tablewith the distribution of those schools? No, there is not.

Senator O’BRIEN—Thank you. In looking at that table, I just looked at the example thereof 98 non-government schools with secondary populations ranging from 401 to 600. I wantedto ask you a couple of questions about the effect on those schools of the removal of, say, oneper cent of their student populations. Let us say that we are looking at 600 pupils and thatschool loses six students. From your earlier answers, the effect on that school would be thatthey would lose funding for those six students.

Mr Crimmins —Automatically and completely.Senator O’BRIEN—In relation to the cost of operating that school, would it be a fair

assumption that it is extremely unlikely that you would reduce the number of teachers becauseof the loss of six pupils?

Mr Crimmins —Certainly, particularly if those student numbers were distributed across anumber of year levels, and that is more likely than not to be the case, because it wouldprobably be a family of students. They may have two children in the school.

Senator O’BRIEN—Obviously if that scenario was correct you would not reduce thenumber of classrooms that you required.

Mr Crimmins —You could not. Once you have physically got the classrooms, unless theyare demountables and you sell them, you cannot physically do that.

Senator O’BRIEN—Whatever the administration role operating in the school was, thatwould not be affected by losing those six students?

Mr Crimmins —Yes, it could. That is where the first area of cost saving would be manifest.It might, for example, mean that someone who was employed in, say, a secretarial capacitysupporting the administration moved from a full-time position to a part-time position.

Senator O’BRIEN—Would that be proportionate with the one per cent?



Mr Crimmins —No, not necessarily. There would not be a direct correlation in the loss offunds and the recoupment of those funds against the staffing savings, but that is where thefirst savings might be effected.

Senator O’BRIEN—In relation to applying that principle to a government school, wouldthe same principles apply?

Mr Crimmins —I am not sure how a government school system would effect the savings,and I understand the systemic not only requirements but responsibilities that government schoolsystems have, that is, the provision of education is a statutory requirement for them.

Senator O’BRIEN—Let us look at a government school, and there are 203 on your tablein the same situation. If we look at the same example, they lose the six students, they needthe same number of teachers, they need the same number of classrooms, there may or maynot be an effect on the administrative support cost. There does not appear to be much of asaving that the government school could make to offset that loss of the student numbers andtherefore federal funding.

Mr Crimmins —No, but I am aware of the savings that were effected by a governmentschool that my own children went to where they composited the teaching of languages andthe teaching of other electives in the secondary level. For example, they banded years 7 and8 and offered technology in a particular area for both groups at the one time. Previously andprior to the loss of numbers they offered that separately.

Senator O’BRIEN—So that is to do with dealing with a particular subject, for example—Mr Crimmins —That is right.Senator O’BRIEN—It is not possible in all—Mr Crimmins —And in a secondary school.Senator O’BRIEN—I think one of the issues is going to be the cost of this new policy in

terms of the government sector and the transference of income from that sector, so obviouslyyou can see where those questions are coming from. You have heard me put to other witnessesquestions about the potential for the divisiveness of the debate about that. Have you got anycomments about that matter?

Mr Crimmins —We think that would be an unfortunate consequence and I think how thatis managed in the public arena is going to be very important for the future of schooling in thecountry. For example, if the facts are not made known and the emotion is, it could lead to avery divisive debate. My understanding of the statistical information is that the Commonwealthis talking about recouping only half of the cost for the child that moves from a governmentschool to a non-government school. In other words, it is taking account of the economies ofscale and the problems associated with that that you have mentioned.

Senator O’BRIEN—I think the New South Wales government is putting a different positionto us on that.

Mr Crimmins —I understand and I have read of that position. I am not familiar, as theminister would be, with the details of his department’s operation and I cannot question hisstatistical information, but I know that when that same phenomenon occurs in a non-government school there is no soft landing, there is no 50 per cent cushioning. It is an absoluteloss of all recurrent funds from both the Commonwealth and the state at the point of exit.

Senator O’BRIEN—That generates the whole debate about state aid and why there isfunding for private choice on education, but I will not get into that now.



It has been put to us, as to this question on the right to choose, that that has to be temperedby the effects of that choice on others. Do you have any comment on that statement?

Mr Crimmins —I have heard that argument and that is an argument that ProfessorMcKinnon certainly advanced in his final report. My understanding of the context in whichhe put forward that argument was that it is impossible to have an infinite number of choicesbecause it would disadvantage the majority of people that might be served by the requirementsof one sector or another. I do not think he was arguing, from my understanding and discussionswith him, that the non-government sector had a disproportionate share of students in thecountry, or even that a growth in the proportion of students in the non-government sector ofthe sort of numbers that are being talked about over the next quadrennium was likely to leadto diseconomies in choice.

Senator O’BRIEN—I am trying to interpret your answer as to the question; I suppose itwas only for comment. Does that mean you have agreement with the statement but you donot agree that the effects suggested will occur?

Mr Crimmins —I agree with the statement if it is taken to its absolute ultimate conclusion,that the Commonwealth and the states have to fund all sorts of choices across a wide rangeof areas. The fact of the matter is they do not. They have registration procedures in place inorder to ensure that choice is only effected in certain areas where certain registration provisionsare met. They differ widely across the country; I appreciate and understand that. So thereforethere is already in place what we consider to be an acceptable and appropriate barrier to entryinto the schooling area, and that barrier to entry is registration and accreditation. That placesthe limitation on choice, because you cannot run a school and present students unless you areregistered by the appropriate state or territory government.

Senator O’BRIEN—And if there is no process? You heard the previous witnesses say thatin the state of Tasmania the registration process of teachers has been removed.

Mr Crimmins —I did not hear him say that—I just did not hear it, I am not saying he didnot say it. I heard him referring to his participation in the registration process in New SouthWales.

Senator O’BRIEN—Yes.Mr Crimmins —I am aware of that process that was introduced after certain reforms were

put in place. My understanding is that the registration process in New South Wales is nowmore rigorous and requires more peer assessment than it previously did. I also know that inNew South Wales there is an automatic registration procedure that takes place after a periodof time. So there are quite rigorous arrangements in New South Wales that do not prevail inother states, for example.

Senator O’BRIEN—Whilst that witness might have been disagreeing with your view ofNew South Wales, you seem to be in agreement that other states do not have rigour, if anysystem at all, although he did say, I think, Western Australia did.

Senator CARR—Do you accept the need for formal qualifications for all teachers?Mr Crimmins —Yes, I do. I do know, however, that there are schools—and I am not

referring to our schools, I am referring to government schools—where in order to get aparticular level of expertise they recruit people who have particular professional qualificationsbut not teaching qualifications. Therefore, I accept the qualifications are the appropriatemeasure. I will be specific. This is my understanding in one state in particular. In the area ofthe introduction of computer studies in the Internet, states have had to move to people who



have got particular levels of expertise in order to provide that expertise in the schools. Thequalifications they are looking for there for those people, who are working with students, arequalifications related to the area of expertise.

CHAIR —Senator Allison is next and then Senator Carr.Senator ALLISON—Could you answer this question about your own organisation and its

role in assisting new schools to set up. Would you be concerned if a new school proposalwhich you assisted to get up and running resulted in the demise of an existing school?

Mr Crimmins —Yes.Senator ALLISON—And what steps would you put in place to see that that did not happen?Mr Crimmins —One of the first steps I would put in place would be to encourage them not

to do what the new schools policy required them to do. Let me be specific. Say, for example,a particular Christian community, be it a group of parents of Protestant Christian persuasionor a particular Christian Protestant church, wanted to establish a primary school. I would sayto them that the appropriate way to start that school so that it has no, and at most minimal,impact on existing government and non-government schools in the area is to start with anintake of kindergarten children.

Under the existing policy, requiring that they have 50 students in order to attract governmentfunding, regardless of their registration and regardless of the fact that they were Australianstudents, meant that students had to be, in effect, recruited from existing schools. What wewill be doing now is saying, if this bill is passed, ‘You are now in a position to act responsiblyand to grow naturally.’ I heard in the previous evidence about the Rudolf Steiner schools, andI know from my discussions with them and many of our schools, they started by naturalgrowth. They start with a small year 7 class, if it is secondary, and that is by natural growth.They start with a small kindergarten growth and over a period of, say, six years, they growto a school quite healthy in size. We would be discouraging schools from doing what in thepast, in effect, the policy encouraged them to do. We would be saying, ‘When you establishyour school now, take cognisance of the effect of that establishment on existing governmentand non-government schools and start with the minimum year level.’

Senator ALLISON—Do you accept that the state government or the federal government,for that matter, has a role in assisting to bring together those kinds of guidelines orregulations? Or are you saying that it should just be left to school organisations such as yoursto determine what those regulations would be?

Mr Crimmins —There is already a requirement with regard to regulations in place acrossall the states and territories. That exists and I am accepting that.

Senator ALLISON—Can you expand on those regulations? It is not clear to me that thereare any consistent regulations. The example given by Mr Spoor was about funding really andnot, I think, a state government regulation as such. Can you tell me what sort of planningprovisions there are in those regulations?

Mr Crimmins —When you say planning provisions, are you talking about the curriculumthat is required?

Senator ALLISON—No, I am talking about the planning for setting up new schools.Mr Crimmins —In Victoria, for example, they require that you have certain numbers. In

South Australia and in the Northern Territory, there is a form of consultation that is requiredof the proponents for new schools. In Queensland that is now going to be developed further.



Senator ALLISON—But consultation is not regulation, is it? I imagine consultation doesnot allow you to determine policy or determine planning.

Mr Crimmins —No, consultation is not regulation.Senator ALLISON—Okay. Can you just come back to that question of regulation?Mr Crimmins —There are regulations in Victoria that say that, unless you have got certain

numbers, you cannot establish your school. Is that the sort of regulation you mean?Senator ALLISON—Yes.Mr Crimmins —That does not constitute planning, in my books. Having a certain number

is not planning.Senator ALLISON—Okay. Can you tell us about the other states then? We know about

Victoria. It seems to me anyway there will not be a very consistent approach unless theCommonwealth introduces one. Can you tell me what is in place in terms of states in thisregard?

Mr Crimmins —Every non-government school—and I presume this applies to both Catholicsystemic schools and the rest of the independent sector—has to approach the governmenteducation authorities in that state or territory in order to have the school registered. In doingthat, there is already built into that process of approaching them a planning provision becausethe government knows what it is doing in that particular region or locale. Therefore, when thegovernment determines whether or not to register that school, it is taking account of its owneducational provision in making that decision. It is not our responsibility to say to them,‘Youshould introduce these regulations or those regulations in order to make it easier or harder fornon-government schools to be registered.’

Senator ALLISON—Are you suggesting that, under the new regime, state governments willindicate to new schools proposing to set up in their area that they cannot do so on the basisof what effect they will have on existing schools? Is that what you are saying is likely tooccur?

Mr Crimmins —No, I am saying that the registration provisions that exist now, unless someof the states decide to change them, are the registration provisions that will prevail next year,if this bill is passed. Nothing will change, unless a particular state or territory decides tochange its registration provisions.

Senator ALLISON—Can I ask you another question about minimum enrolments. Wouldit be your view that it is useful to have a minimum enrolment number for private schools?

Mr Crimmins —No.Senator ALLISON—Not at all.Mr Crimmins —No.Senator CARR—The Christian schools are critical of the Labor government’s new schools

policy and you said it was inhibited or stopped the growth of new schools. Is it not a fact thatnon-government enrolments grew from 126,000 in 1985 to over 900,000 nationally by 1995?

Mr Crimmins —That is statistically correct.Senator CARR—And that the ratio of students in non- government schools increased from

26 per cent in 1985 to 29 per cent in 1995.Mr Crimmins —That is correct.



Senator CARR—Now if those two factors are correct, how can you say that the newschools policy stopped the growth of private sector schools?

Mr Crimmins —Well, you can stop the growth of something by stopping it growing fromone foot to three foot as opposed to one foot to six foot. We have Christian schools thatapplied for Commonwealth funding and were denied that funding because they were not ableto demonstrate that they would meet the minimum numbers. Those particular communitiesdid not go ahead with the establishment of their schools.

Senator CARR—Would you agree that in the last two years the number of private schoolsactually increased?

Mr Crimmins —Yes.Senator CARR—You would agree with that. Can you tell me why it was that some schools

decreased; for instance, the number of Brethren schools declined from eight to seven between1994 and 1995? Why did that occur?

Mr Crimmins —Because they closed one.Senator CARR—Why did they close one?Mr Crimmins —I am not sure of the intimate details of the closure, but it might have had

to do with declining population in the area. I think it was in Queensland that the school closed.Senator CARR—And the Steiner schools declined by two.Mr Crimmins —I cannot comment on why they closed.Senator CARR—And the Pentecostals declined by two. Do you know the reasons for any

of these closures?Mr Crimmins —I would imagine they would be for similar reasons.Senator CARR—So would you agree that there is an issue about the question of economic

viability?Mr Crimmins —Of course there is always a question of economic viability. For example,

if a school is established in an area—particularly a rural area—and there has been a rural shiftin population, both the government sector and the non-government sector are faced with whatdo they do about absolute declining numbers to the point where it no longer is appropriatefor those children to be educated in their opinion, and they make a closure. But you alsoreferred to the fact that there was net growth and then cited the individual instances ofclosures. Now usually the closures are associated with population shifts, and they reflect that.

Senator CARR—Do you believe there should be a criterion in the registration of schoolsthat goes to the issue of economic viability?

Mr Crimmins —My understanding is that schools are required to show their financialviability.

Senator CARR—Except in the larger states of New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania—there is no financial viability criteria. Do you believe there should be a criterion for minimumenrolments?

Mr Crimmins —No, I do not. I have answered that to Senator Allison.Senator CARR—How many states have that requirement?Mr Crimmins —One, to the best of my knowledge.Senator CARR—Only one.



Mr Crimmins —To the best of my knowledge, one.Senator CARR—How many states require new schools to take into account the impact on

other schools in their registration processes?Mr Crimmins —I would imagine every state takes into account, by the automatic approach

to the state government, its impact on the government schools sector and its knowledge ofother non-government schools it has registered in the same area.

Senator CARR—Can I put it to you that none of them do, except the Northern Territory,under the present arrangements. In fact, I put it to you that the present arrangements regardingregistration are grossly inadequate and grossly inconsistent across the country.

Mr Crimmins —If you mean they do not reflect the new schools policy in either its previousform or in the way in which Professor McKinnon has put it forward, there are dissimilarities.If you are asking me whether I think they are inadequate; I do not.

Senator CARR—Of course. Do you believe that there should be registered teachers inschools?

Mr Crimmins —Qualified teachers, yes.Senator CARR—Registered teachers?Mr Crimmins —No, I do not.Senator CARR—Why not?Mr Crimmins —Because that is a separate issue.Senator CARR—I see. Do you believe in registered doctors?Mr Crimmins —I believe in qualified doctors.Senator CARR—So you believe anybody that wants to set up the shingle and declare

themselves qualified should be entitled to practice.Mr Crimmins —You are not qualified if you declare yourself qualified; you are only

qualified if you have statutory documentation that demonstrates that.Senator CARR—Why should that not be the case for teachers?Mr Crimmins —That is what I am saying; they should be qualified.Senator CARR—Statutory qualifications.Mr Crimmins —That is right.Senator CARR—Registered.Mr Crimmins —No, that is a separate issue.Senator CARR—What is the difference; what is the separate issue?Mr Crimmins —Registration means that you go through a formal process with the

registering authority, such as was proposed under the Australian Teaching Council when itwas originally set up. We were opposed to that, not because we do not think teachers shouldbe qualified but because we think registration is a separate issue to qualifications.

Senator CARR—And you think that the question of qualifications should be determinedby the employer.

Mr Crimmins —Exactly. Who is the responsible body at the end of the day?Senator CARR—I see.CHAIR —It is in every other occupation.



Senator CARR—No, that is not the case at all. So when the employer chooses not torecognise your qualification, you are not employed; is that the logic of your argument?

Mr Crimmins —No, it is not. That is not a logical conclusion to my argument at all.Senator CARR—Can you tell me whether or not you believe that compulsion obliges

governments to ensure that there are adequate and accessible schools and sufficient teachersfor all students?

Mr Crimmins —Whether that is a constitutional responsibility for governments?Senator CARR—Yes.Mr Crimmins —I understand it is, yes.Senator CARR—Do you accept that?Mr Crimmins —Of course I do.Senator CARR—Do you acknowledge that it is an imperative that such minimum

enrolments necessary for the establishment of a school have historically had to be low enoughto ensure neighbourhood schools, even in hamlets, for the provision of universal compulsoryeducation?

Mr Crimmins —I do.Senator CARR—Why do you say that the table you presented somehow or other supports

the notion that the states should not provide minimum numbers of schools in the most remotelocations in the country?

Mr Crimmins —I am not suggesting that at all. That was not my line of argument at all,Senator. You construed that.

Senator CARR—So you are saying that you should not have to meet that criteria.Mr Crimmins —No, I am not saying that either. I am saying to you that, on the facts and

the evidence, 87.5 per cent of primary schools in the country—that are government schools,that are obviously viable and that are doing a good job educationally—have studentpopulations at the primary level under 36. That is what I am saying.

Senator CARR—But there is no criterion for economic viability there, is there?Mr Crimmins —I do not know. That is presumably a matter for state governments.Senator CARR—Can you indicate to me what your response is to the suggestion made by

Professor McKinnon:Choice can be infinitely divisible but not for funding purposes.

Mr Crimmins —I understand that what he means by that is that, if it was infinitelydevisable, it would mean a school for every child.

Senator CARR—And you believe that is impractical?Mr Crimmins —Yes, I do.CHAIR —Rousseau thought it was a good idea, actually.Senator CARR—A school for every child?CHAIR —No, he said the ideal of an individual teacher for each child. It is a bit expensive

though.



Senator CARR—So you would acknowledge that all breakaway groups—however small—waiting to start their own schools in the name of choice could not be justified a high priorityfor scarce government dollars; would you acknowledge that?

Mr Spoor—No. There are other factors controlling that other than just the minimumnumbers. For example, in the assessment of a school for its funding level, the government hasthe capacity to assess the school with regard to its funding. If its funding level is a relativelylow one because it is not a highly viable school, then the burden of economic responsibilityfalls upon the constituents. If the constituents can afford the school and can make up thebalance, then they should be entitled to a school. If they cannot afford it then, obviously, thatschool is not a goer. It is an economic control that is already there.

Mr Crimmins —Senator Carr, when they talk about breakaway groups and say that, forexample, it is an encumbrance upon government, in effect, if a non-government school isestablished and it is a small non-government school, in the case of our schools, that saves theAustralian taxpayers, in terms of the educational dollar, 40c in every dollar. So, in terms ofpublic funding, it is actually a saving.

Senator CARR—I see. What do you say about McKinnon’s claim that submissions suchas you have just given:. . . claimed that, as the combined Commonwealth and State cost of non-government enrolments to thepublic purse is less than for students enrolled in government schools, there can be no substantive issuesof economic resource use. This is a false belief.

What do you say to that?Mr Crimmins —I did not understand the line of argument; I am sorry?Senator CARR—The line of argument is that McKinnon, in his study, after extensive

consultation, has argued that your argument—that there is no substantive issue of economicresource use, that is, to saving—is a false belief. He goes on to say:If, to use an extreme example, three schools are each only able to have classes a third full because thereare too many schools in an area, the diseconomies for the national education budget should be obvious.Moreover, there are opportunity costs to be taken into account, especially if school services are becomingfragmented or if students have to be transported at significant additional expense.

What do you say to that?Mr Crimmins —I say first of all that he said two things. One was ‘an extreme example’.

That is the first thing he said himself. Secondly, he said that their classes were uneconomicin their size. I would say to you that both government and non-government schools haveaddressed those issues where they have had to address them—government schools in ruralcommunities like the ones Senator O’Brien mentioned before, where they have actually formedcomposite classes at the primary level and formed composite classes for electives at thesecondary level. So there are ways of addressing those economies that are not simply dismissedby that quote.

Senator CARR—But if they are subject to awards—teacher awards—that govern the sizeof each class, they are subject to rates of pay for teachers, which are governed by awards, andyour schools are not, how can you compare the two?

Mr Crimmins —I can compare them because the people who were giving evidence beforeme said that there are no requirements on class sizes in the independent sector under theawards.

Senator CARR—So is there not an issue there of difference in quality of education?



Mr Crimmins —What do you mean by that? I do not understand the question.Senator CARR—What are the criteria for measurement of quality in those circumstances?Mr Crimmins —My understanding is that it is no longer considered by the education

community that lock-stepping students through education is necessarily the appropriate wayforward. Nor do I understand, with the introduction of new technologies, that having pupil-teacher ratios which reflect the lock-step progression of the students is any longer anappropriate way to measure it.

Senator CARR—So that is how you think the savings should be made—there should belarger class sizes and perhaps the introduction of new technology? Is that the argument thatyou are presenting?

Mr Crimmins —No, it is not. What I am saying to you is that ways in which students learntoday not only involve pupil-teacher ratios. They involve the use of technologies. They involveways in which teachers work together across bands of students. They involve verticalintegration of students, not horizontal only.

Senator CARR—What do you say then about the New South Wales government’s claimthat ‘. . . it is expected that the Commonwealth’s proposal will result in a net cost to this Stateof between $20 million to $30 million for every 2% shift in enrolment shares betweenGovernment and non Government schools’?

Mr Crimmins —You put that question to me before, and I said that I am not in possessionof the statistical information to either support or deny that.

CHAIR —Senator Carr, have you any basis for that figure and can you table that? It hasbeen bandied around quite a lot.

Senator CARR—It is in their submission.CHAIR —Yes, as an assertion, but the basis of the calculation and whether it takes into

account the $1,700 that goes back per student.Senator CARR—I think you will have ample opportunity to question the New South Wales

government when they appear.CHAIR —Yes. I just thought that, if you had it, you could table it.Senator CARR—I have a number of figures here. I think you can calculate a few costs

based on the impact of these changes, assuming a two per cent shift in enrolments from thepublic to the private sector.

CHAIR —I just want to make sure your figures are not bodgie, that is all.Senator CARR—No; I am relying on the submission that is in front of me. I draw your

attention to a paper prepared by Louise Watson that has been given some publicity in recenttimes regarding the impact of these enrolment benchmark figures. It is argued there that thegovernment has substantially underestimated the shift in student numbers from governmentto non-government schools. Are you aware of that paper?

Mr Crimmins —I am aware of the paper. I am also aware that it is one person’s opinionand that they have substantially underestimated.

Senator CARR—I am more than happy to hear what you think of the paper, that was thepoint that I am making. It is argued in this paper that the likely increase is substantiallyunderestimated in the budget for the Department of Employment, Education, Training andYouth Affairs. How do you respond to that suggestion based on this article?



Mr Crimmins —I think the budget estimates are much closer to the mark than Ms Watson’s.Senator CARR—Do you have any basis for that?Mr Crimmins —On the basis of what has taken place to date. With the removal of the new

schools policy, if that is legislated, the growth will be far more natural. It will have far lessimpact on existing schools.

Senator CARR—So you would dismiss the claim that the government has underestimatedthe effect of these changes, some $50 million as fallacious.

Mr Crimmins —Yes, I would.Senator CARR—In the United States, what sort of public funding is there for Seventh Day

Adventist primary and secondary schools?Mr Spoor—Public funding is at the levels that I indicated. We have nine systems and two

of those systems are funded at level 8, the balance are funded at level 7—Senator CARR—No, in the United States.Mr Spoor—I think that it is irrelevant to this—Senator CARR—Just as a matter of interest. Is your system of schooling in the United

States funded by the public purse in the United States?Mr Spoor—At the tertiary level?Senator CARR—No, at primary and secondary levels?Mr Spoor—Not at the primary and secondary level.Senator CARR—Thank you.CHAIR —Could you comment on the effects, between 1987 and 1996, on the so-called new

schools policy. Could you elaborate on what you saw as the effects on the private schoolsystem in Australia.

Mr Crimmins —There are two that I would like to highlight. The first is that because therewas an artificial level 6 funding cap, then schools had to meet the difference between thefunding resources they attract from government and the fees parents pay. The level 6 fundingcap means that the funding provided by governments, Commonwealth and state, came backfrom about 60 per cent of the dollar in the non-government schools that I represent to about50 per cent of the dollar. That meant that the remaining 50 per cent had to be provided byparents.

Our schools, and I am only talking for our schools, serve working class and middle classfamilies. Therefore, you automatically exclude those families whose marginal costs cannotaccommodate the difference between the 40 per cent that they were entitled to under the ERIand a needs based funding formula and the 50 per cent they had to find. That was the firstand most significant effect—that the very families we wanted to serve were excluded becausethey could not afford the fees or people were forced to take second jobs.

Secondly, there were school communities, or communities of people, parents in some cases,from a wide variety of churches or particular church communities, that wanted to establisha Christian school in the protestant tradition. Because they could not see their way clear toget the minimum numbers that would attract the funding, and they were serving the type ofsocioeconomic community I am describing, they were unable to proceed with their plans.

That might have been, for example, an already established primary school that wished tonaturally proceed through to junior secondary, and their primary enrolments in year six might



have been 20 students. Unless they went actively out and recruited five other students fromother non-government and government schools in their area, they were not able to proceedto secondary, instead of being able to proceed by natural growth.

So there were two major inhibitors on our schools. One was the cost impact on parentsunfairly and inequitably applied, totally contrary to a needs based policy drawn out of the ERIwith the level 6 cap. And, secondly, it artificially forced schools to recruit numbers of studentsfrom other existing government and non-government schools in order to get established. Thenet effect of all of that was that there were Australian students in our schools who were notfunded at all at both the primary and secondary level. The full cost of their education wasborne by their parents, who were paying tax dollars, and that is unjust and inequitable anddiscriminatory.

CHAIR —Have you got any figures at all on the number of schools that have applied toset up and have failed to set up? I am trying to get some idea of the percentage of schoolsthat had difficulty getting over these various barriers in the period of that so-called new schoolspolicy.

Mr Crimmins —I have not got those numbers on hand, but I could provide information onthe applications that were made to the Commonwealth and where those applications weredenied.

Mr Spoor—In our case, it was that schools did not even apply if they knew they could notmake the numbers.

CHAIR —You mentioned earlier that you agreed with the benchmarking policies being setdown. Have you carried out any examination of the figures of the movement of money whensomeone leaves the public system and goes to the private, in terms of whether there is a netloss to the public system?

Mr Crimmins —No, I have not. But Mr Scales from the Industry Commission conductedan inquiry into provision and he cites in there at secondary level that the average governmentschool recurrent costs in the year in which he drew his statistics was $6,000 per student.Incidentally, that does not include superannuation costs, but nonetheless it was $6,000 perstudent.

My understanding is that if that student, for example, were to move from the governmentsector to the non-government sector—the non-government sector meaning one of our schools—the net saving to the Australian taxpayer would be the difference between $3,600 and $6,000—in other words, $2,400 is an absolute net saving immediately—whereas, if a student movesfrom one of our schools back to the government sector, it is immediately the reverse.

CHAIR —So this saving of $2,400 is then available somewhere in the public purse at thestate or federal level—

Mr Crimmins —Correct.CHAIR —And it is then up to the state or federal government to reapply those resources

in education if they wish.Mr Crimmins —That is right.CHAIR —So really, the abolition of this policy should not financially disadvantage state

schools.Mr Spoor—Correct.Mr Crimmins —It should have, in effect, the opposite effect.



Mr Spoor—To provide additional funds for enrichment.CHAIR —Some witnesses earlier on made statements such as that the abolition of the new

schools policy would mean raw competition and a threat to existing schools. Given that theprojection of change between now and the year 2000 is only a one to two per cent enrolmentshift from the public system to the private system, do you think such claims are exaggerated?

Mr Crimmins —Yes.Mr Spoor—They are certainly exaggerated.CHAIR —The viability of certain state schools has been brought into question by Senator

Carr if we do have these sorts of changes. If you look at it on a regional basis, when a privateschool sets up, is it not true that most of the new schools, particularly your type of schools,draw across a very wide area? And if they do, in what way would that be a threat to existingpublic schools?

Mr Spoor—I believe it is no threat at all. For example, in the Newcastle area, we haverecently built a new school. We had a school there before but it was in an extremelyunsatisfactory and restricted area, and the council required us to move. So we established anew school there.

CHAIR —Was this at Hamilton?Mr Spoor—Yes. The Newcastle council required us to move, and we have moved to the

Lake Road at Wallsend. That school serves the whole of the greater Newcastle area fromMaitland to Swansea, and consequently has such a wide catchment area that its impact on otherschools in the Newcastle area is almost nil.

CHAIR —Would this not actually save the state government money in the sense ofexpanding enrolments in the Lower Hunter?

Mr Spoor—Most certainly.CHAIR —There are no further questions. Thank you very much for appearing today.

[12.20 p.m.]RALSTON, Mr John Malbon, Chairman, National Council of Independent Schools’Associations, 12 Thesiger Court, Deakin, Australian Capital TerritoryTHOMSON, Mr James Ferguson, Executive Director, National Council of IndependentSchools’ Associations, 12 Thesiger Court, Deakin, Australian Capital Territory

CHAIR —Welcome back to yet another Senate hearing. The committee prefers evidenceto given in public but if at any time you wish to give any evidence, part of evidence oranswers to any questions in camera you may make the request and the committee will considerthe request. Such evidence may subsequently be made public by order of the Senate.

The committee has before it a document which is numbered 19. Do you have any extramaterial you wish to add at this stage?

Mr Ralston—No, just a short opening address.CHAIR —Fine. You are welcome to make introductory remarks and then we will go to

questions.Mr Ralston—The National Council of Independent Schools’ Associations is a federation

of the state associations of independent schools in the states and territories. We are the peaknational body for the independent sector and through that federated system we represent over800 schools throughout Australia. We have over one-quarter of a million pupils and



approximately 35,000 to 37,000 employees. Employees’ salaries constitute approximately 70per cent of the recurring costs of independent schools.

In relation to that last point, we support the bill. We think it is vital that this legislation passso that the funding for all schools, and in particular independent schools, is available next year.

I do not wish to speak in detail to the paper, but I would like to address a few matters ofprinciple. Firstly, we believe in and support the issue of choice for parents in selecting theeducation for their children. That is the vital and founding tenet of the association. Secondly,we support quality education for all Australian children, not just those in the independentsector. I say that because I want to dispel any ideas that may go around that we do not carewhat happens in the government schools. We do care what happens in government schoolsand, indeed, we support a strong, quality government sector as being one of the optionsavailable for parents. We believe that parents ought to have the choice of the varieties withinthe independent sector and of the government sector. The only way to make that choicefeasible and fair is to have a strong government sector. We see ourselves as partners with thegovernment sector in providing education for all Australian children.

I also want to dispel any ideas that we represent the big end of town and the wealthy.Certainly, we represent most of the old, established schools in New South Wales. They aresometimes known as the GPS schools. But, when you look at the cross-section of the schoolsthat we do cover, you will find an enormous range. We have special schools for children withspecial needs; we have the small Christian community schools; we have Aboriginal schools;we have Rudolf Steiner schools; and we have a whole variety of other schools, large and small,from different communities. We cover all socioeconomic groups, when it comes to parents.

As a governor of a small category 2 school in Sydney, it seems to me that the parents ofthat school are ordinary Australians with a wide variety of incomes and backgrounds, and withall the problems associated with ordinary Australians. I say that because I want to dispel anyidea that the independent sector is about elitism. It is not. We do support the governmentsector, and we would be concerned at what is called ‘residualisation’. We do not believe inthe concept of residualisation. We believe that that is a hypothetical theory that is being usedto frighten people in the argument about independent schools. In fact, we are rather surprisedat it, because it seems to suggest that the government schools cannot retain a following andcannot provide good education for Australian children. So, we support Mr Spoor’s commentsthat he made earlier about residualisation.

A lot has been said about choice and who is responsible for making the choice, but webelieve that ultimately it must be parental choice as to which is the best education for theirchild. That—and I come back to my opening remark—is the principal tenet of the association,and that is what we support. That is all I wish to say by way of an opening address. MrThomson and I may field the questions separately, depending on how they come. Mr Thomsonhas far more detail than I have, because of his long career.

CHAIR —Mr Thomson, do you wish to make any opening comments?Mr Thomson—No. I have nothing to add.Senator O’BRIEN—On this question of choice, I would put it to you that the issue of

choice, the issue of quality and the issue of the effect on government schools of this policyare all interconnected. That is a fair assumption, is it not?

Mr Ralston—It is, to an extent. One of the things that I do not think is being recognisedis that there is a growing tendency in the government schools to have greater autonomy. They



are beginning to do things in a way that is a little like the way independent schools do things.As that happens, they are going to attract more pupils and they are going to attract a greaterfollowing.

One of the challenges for the independent sector is going to be the attractiveness of thegovernment schools back again. We see that there is going to be a narrowing of the differencebetween government schools and independent schools, and that will be the effect of thislegislation.

Senator O’BRIEN—So you are suggesting that the effect of this legislation will be thatthere will be no drift from the government schools to the private schools. Is that what you aresuggesting?

Mr Ralston—I would not like to suggest that there would be no drift. I think there maybe some drift, but there may be some drift back.

Senator O’BRIEN—Net drift.Mr Ralston—Yes, there may be a net increase, but you have to take into account the fact

that it is not easy to set up a school. It is not easy to run a school once it is established. I thinkyou will find that the idea that there will be a blow-out is exaggerated. The new schools policywas simply one hurdle in the way of establishing a new school. There are many other hurdles.

Senator O’BRIEN—In terms of hurdles, do you think there should be some planning abouteducational provision in the community?

Mr Ralston—In what respect?Senator O’BRIEN—As to the number of schools in an area; the number of schools

servicing a particular population.Mr Ralston—No, I think it is not necessary to have that degree of planning. I think you

will find that it is a matter for the communities to determine what is best for them. If aparticular school is not providing the right service to that community—and this goes toindependent schools just as much as to government schools—then parents and pupils will moveaway and go to an establishment which will provide the right service.

Senator O’BRIEN—If they are locked into a fee system where they have students lockedinto a particular school with a particular curriculum, is that not going to be inhibiting to thatchoice once they are in the system?

Mr Ralston—Yes, there are some inhibitions. It is not going to be a free market—there willbe restrictions, yes.

Senator O’BRIEN—So that set of circumstances would operate against a free choicesystem?

Mr Ralston—Yes, it is not an absolutely free choice system. It is not, as was indicatedearlier, a system whereby every child will have its own school.

Senator O’BRIEN—The schools that you represent I would expect would like to be ableto plan on a year by year student population income base for the purposes of their operations.

Mr Ralston—Indeed, they plan on more than year by year. They like to be able to plan fiveand 10 years ahead.

Senator O’BRIEN—They would like to but obviously they cannot do that, can they?



Mr Ralston—They usually plan one to two years ahead at best. In some areas of Sydney,in particular, where there is a great concentration of schools both government and non-government, that planning is critical.

Senator O’BRIEN—Yes, the concentration of schools is an issue. You have been in thebody of this room and heard other submissions about the effect the opening of a school mighthave on another school. You are saying—if I understand you correctly—that there should notbe any inhibition on schools opening up in a particular area which might affect other schools.

Mr Ralston—A prudent approach to take would be to consult other institutions and see whatthe effect will be.

Senator O’BRIEN—But there should not be any barrier to it, if people want to go aheadirrespective of the impact?

Mr Ralston—A school will only be successful if it is providing a service that is needed bythe community. If the existing schools are not providing that service for one reason or another,then there is obviously a niche there for another school to provide that service. It may not bea school which covers the whole range of activities from kindergarten to year 12. It may bejust a kindergarten or a junior school or a specialist school of some variety.

Senator O’BRIEN—What do you know about the state based system of regulation of theestablishment of schools? Are you aware of what happens state by state, or is Mr Thomson—

Mr Ralston—I think Mr Thomson is best placed to answer that.Mr Thomson—I draw the attention of the committee to the House of Representatives

Hansard for 15 October 1996 when a table of state and territory non-government schoolregistration requirements was tabled by Mr Baldwin. That shows for each state the pre-registration of a school requirements. For example, with curriculum: New South Wales, yes;Victoria, yes; Queensland, yes; Western Australia, yes; South Australia, yes; Tasmania, yes;ACT, yes; Northern Territory, yes. With physical environment the same applies. With teacherqualifications the same applies. With minimum enrolments there are some variations from stateto state. With financial viability there is a yes in some states and a no in others. As for impacton other schools, that is not taken into account in any state except the Northern Territory.There are various other requirements as well but these seem to be the main ones.

Senator O’BRIEN—So only one state or territory has a regulation which takes into accountthe impact on other schools.

Mr Thomson—That is so but I should clarify for the committee that in two states,Queensland and Western Australia, they have relied on the new schools policy.

Senator CARR—That is the whole point, that the Commonwealth provisions have overlaidthose state registrations and that with the removal of these Commonwealth provisions you willbe dependent solely upon the state provisions.

Mr Thomson—This is Mr Baldwin’s table and I assume he made some inquiries. The tabledoes not indicate that the states, with the exception of Queensland and Western Australia, haverelied on the new schools policy. It may be that they regard it as important, it may be that theydo not, I do not know.

Senator CARR—But they could not get the Commonwealth money unless they relied uponit, that is the whole point.

Mr Thomson—Commonwealth money does not go to the states for non-government—



Senator CARR—This table relates to the regime established by the new schools policy andit overlaid all other considerations and the payment of Commonwealth moneys to schools viathe states was conditional upon meeting certain criteria, for instance, planning provision,minimum school requirements, student number requirements and a number of other factors.This table has to be seen in that context, does it not?

Mr Thomson—You may well be right. It is interesting that in the case of two of the statesthere is an explicit indication that they relied on the new schools policy. There is no explicitindication in the other states and the ACT. You may be right, I do not know.

Senator ALLISON—What is your view about the appropriate balance of enrolmentsbetween government and non-government schools?

Mr Ralston—I do not think there is an appropriate balance, it is a matter for determiningwhat people want and the balance will sort itself out over time.

Senator ALLISON—If that balance turned out to be 80 per cent in the private sector and20 per cent in the public sector, would you be not concerned about that?

Mr Thomson—That is an absurd proposition.Mr Ralston—That is just not going to happen.Senator ALLISON—If that is not appropriate, then what is? Is the status quo appropriate?Mr Ralston—It is up to the parents of Australia to determine what is appropriate, given

the choice. That is what we say and that is what we understand the minister is saying withthe abolition of this new schools policy.

Senator ALLISON—Would you like to see a situation where government funding to privateschools, particularly for low income areas, is equal to that for government schools? Wouldthat meet your philosophy of providing choice to parents?

Mr Ralston—We, as a basic tenet, support the idea that every Australian child is entitledto a basic grant based on recurrent government school costs. Where that child takes thateducation and takes that basic grant is a matter for choice. He can take it in the governmentschool or in the non-government school. If, indeed, in the non-government school it requiresmore money, then the parents are going to have to pay the extra.

Senator ALLISON—So the answer to my question is yes?Mr Ralston—I think the answer to the question is yes, but with the qualifications as I have

indicated.Senator ALLISON—If I can ask about your organisation, when you assist groups to

develop new school proposals, do you liaise with other schools in the area to assess the impactof that on assisted schools?

Mr Ralston—That national body, the NCISA, does not assist individual schools. The stateassociations sometimes assist individual schools; whether that is right across the board I amnot sure. Certainly there is some assistance in New South Wales, but I am not aware of whathappens in other states. Indeed I am reminded the onus is on the schools to consult.

Senator ALLISON—Right, okay. Can you see a situation, particularly perhaps in ruralareas, where the emergence of a new private school might in fact displace a governmentschool, leaving the parents in that area with in fact no choice?

Mr Ralston—No, I don’t see that happening. It depends on the catchment area. I heard sometalk about what is happening in New England. What I understand the problem there is thatthere has been a rural recession and the people in New England are having difficulties with



those schools and the fees in some of the schools, and indeed government schools in southQueensland are providing an attraction to the people in New England. So I do not see theopening of an independent school in a rural area as disadvantaging a government school.

Senator ALLISON—What if an independent school took such numbers from the stateschool as to force it to drop below its minimum requirements for the state government, whichseems to me to be not an unreasonable scenario? Would you be concerned about that?

Mr Ralston—Yes, we would be.Senator ALLISON—And what would you as an organisation do if it were one of your

schools?Mr Ralston—We do not have a role in that.Senator ALLISON—Okay. Let me ask you, if you were the government, either the federal

government or the state government, would you be concerned about that?Mr Ralston—It would be a case of looking into why there is a shift from a government

school to a non-government school, and it may be due to bad performance.Senator ALLISON—It may simply be due to the fact that there is only one school in quite

a small town and then a new private school emerges which takes a quite small number ofstudents away from that school and forces it to drop beneath the requirements, enrolment-wise,of the state government.

Mr Ralston—I just can’t see that happening.Senator ALLISON—But if it did—and I put that question to you again because I think it

is important, and I can see it happening—what steps and who should be involved in thatoutcome?

Mr Ralston—I think the local community should be involved in that outcome because theyare the ones making the choice.

Senator ALLISON—I come back to this again, sorry, but if out of, let us say, 30 students,five are attracted away from that school by parents who choose to take them out to put theminto, say, a religious school, a christian school, for religious reasons—not because of the poorperformance of the government school necessarily—and then the state government says, ‘Youdo not comply with our minimum number of enrolments so we will close that school and thechildren there can either go to the private school or to the next town 1½ hours bus ride away,’are you concerned about that situation?

Mr Ralston—Once again, we come back to the point that it is really hypothetical.Senator ALLISON—Yes, it is, but highly likely as well, I suggest.Mr Ralston—We cannot see it happening. It is really up to the state government. It is the

state government that has imposed the minimum enrolments on that particular state school.Senator ALLISON—So you are suggesting that the state government does have a role in

looking at the impact of a new private school on the existing government school? Is that theconclusion that you draw?

Mr Ralston—It is a matter for the state government to work out what is the best solutionfor that community.

Senator ALLISON—On an individual basis or using a regulation by which that couldoperate? Do you treat this as an ad hoc approach?



Mr Ralston—Yes. I think that trying to regulate communities right across Australia, or rightacross a state, which vary from region to region is impossible.

Senator CARR—This budget proposal will see private schools currently not funded, fundedto the tune of about $12 million, according to DEETYA estimates. Which schools that yourepresent would be funded under these arrangements that are currently not funded?

Mr Thomson—The ones that might be funded are the ones that are currently held to thecategory 6 funding cap and any new schools that may arise following the abolition of thepolicy, schools that have hitherto not made application because of the potentially inhibitingimpact of the policy and the conclusion that there was no hope. Some schools will now feelthat there is some hope that they may be established and will apply. The department hasidentified a number of schools which actually are in the pipeline, but I do not have details ofthose schools, Senator.

Senator CARR—Would you be able to indicate how many schools would fit into thiscategory, according to your calculations?

Mr Thomson—We have not done calculations of that kind.Senator CARR—The Tambelin Independent School in Goulburn, for instance, which

currently has an enrolment of 20, would surely fit into the proposition that you are canvassing,would it not?

Mr Thomson—I do not know, Senator. I notice that between 1993 and 1996 there were65 schools which had been unsuccessful in getting Commonwealth funding under the newschools policy. That is the figure quoted in Dr McKinnon’s report. We do not have detailsof those schools. We do not collect that information.

Senator CARR—Would you have an indication of how much additional funding would beattracted as a result of the removal of the cap on funding in the category 6 cap?

Mr Thomson—I only have the indication that has been given by the Commonwealth. Therewas an estimate given by the Commonwealth, which was about $1.5 million in the first year,rising to $5 million in the third year. That again was the figure quoted by Dr McKinnon, andI think that was based on figures provided to him.

Senator CARR—Yes. In fact, it is actually higher. I think you will find that the latestestimated figures are higher than that. I draw your attention to those. What will be the costto the New South Wales government, as an example, of additional payments that they willhave to make as a result of those consequential changes in terms of the current criteria?

Mr Thomson—Are you asking me?Senator CARR—Yes. Would you be aware of those figures?Mr Thomson—No. I have not got those figures.Senator CARR—Would you acknowledge that the New South Wales government, as an

example, would have to pay additional costs as a result of those Commonwealth changes tothose categories and the fact that certain schools will be receiving public funding that wouldnot have been receiving public funding under the old policy?

Mr Thomson—That certainly seems likely, yes.Senator CARR—You would have no idea of the impact of that, though?Mr Thomson—I would have no idea of the impact, no, Senator.



Senator CARR—As I understand it, that would be one issue in terms of the states havingto find additional moneys. You would acknowledge that proposition that every state wouldfall into that category; that all state governments would have to find additional funds to meetthese changed circumstances; that not only would private schools receive additional moneyfrom the Commonwealth for these changes, but that would have a consequential effect at thestate level as well?

Mr Thomson—Non-government schools do receive state subvention, yes. That is right.Senator CARR—And that would be an additional cost to the state governments as a result

of these consequential changes?Mr Thomson—I do not know how the state government would handle it, but it could well

be an additional cost.Senator CARR—So if a school currently was not receiving money but would now receive

money, because of the changes to the cap and the minimum student numbers requirement, thatwould have a flow-on to the states?

Mr Thomson—I think you are talking here about schools, Senator, and we should be talkingabout children because the children will have to be funded.

Senator CARR—Yes.Mr Thomson—It is children who are funded, and the children would have to be funded

by the state government or the territory government or the Commonwealth government—wherever the children find themselves, wherever they are sent. So whether it is an additionalcost or not I am really not able to say. It has to do with the number of children attendingschool wherever they find themselves.

Senator CARR—Yes, I see. Would you acknowledge the validity of the New South Walesgovernment’s claim in their submission to us that the proposals being presented to theparliament ignore the difference between the average cost and the marginal costs of educatinga student in government schools and the fixed costs involved in both sets of schools?

Mr Thomson—This is not a matter in which I am really qualified to offer an opinion. I daresay that the New South Wales state government is well equipped with people who can makethose assessments, and I dare say at the same time that the Commonwealth is well equippedwith people who can make these assessments. I note that there is a difference of view betweenthe Commonwealth and the states on this very issue.

Senator CARR—Would you acknowledge that there are certain costs across schools, suchas administration funding, staff development funding and school running costs as well as thecosts of classroom teachers, that do not necessarily follow a strict student ratio?

Mr Thomson—Yes. These are imponderable amounts. I do not know how much is allocatedby the state government for administrative costs. I know that in the independent sector theallocation for administrative costs is kept to the absolute minimum.

Senator CARR—Yes. I am not going to the issue of how efficient you are. I am going tothe issue of whether or not it is possible to realise these alleged savings.

Mr Thomson—Yes. And I guess what I am trying to say is that I know something aboutthe independent sector but I do not know very much about the administration of thegovernment sector.



Senator CARR—What would the consequences be if similar policies were applied to theindependent sector? Would you believe that you would be able to maintain certain fixed costs,if you have certain fixed costs?

Mr Thomson—That is what happens already. I think one of the previous speakers, MrCrimmins, indicated that this is a phenomenon that is experienced by independent schools allthe time. There are young people coming and going. Somehow, in the projections for runninga school, you have to build in an amount for administrative costs. In the independent sectorthese costs are kept to a minimum. So I dare say that with the experience each individualschool has it is able to take some sort of account of projected losses and projected gains instudent terms, not in financial terms.

Senator CARR—Your sector represented some 7.9 per cent of total school enrolments, asof 1995. Would that figure be right now?

Mr Thomson—That sounds about right, yes.Senator CARR—So there has been a growth—Mr Thomson—I am sorry, Senator, it is more than that. It is now 9.4.Senator CARR—What was it in 1985?Mr Thomson—I am not sure—Senator CARR—What if I put it to you that it was 5.4 per cent? So there has been a growth

in enrolments, has there not, in independent schools?Mr Thomson—On those figures certainly, yes.Senator CARR—And that is during the period of the so-called new schools policy?Mr Thomson—Yes.Senator CARR—So would you argue that the new schools policy actually stopped the

growth of the independent system?Mr Thomson—I think it inhibited the growth of independent schools, yes.Senator CARR—But it was not necessarily such as to stop you growing—to almost double,

from 5.4 per cent to nine per cent.CHAIR —They succeeded despite the policy.Senator CARR—That is the logical conclusion, isn’t it? You almost doubled your size

during that 10-year period.Mr Thomson—If there is a logical conclusion, and I am not sure there is, I suppose the

question that arises is what size would the independent sector be had there not been a newschools policy.

Senator CARR—Yes, that is the point.Mr Thomson—Yes.Senator CARR—Do you feel that the state has an obligation to provide compulsory

universal education?Mr Thomson—I think the state has a duty to arrange for the provision of compulsory

education.Senator CARR—Does that means that the state should not necessarily provide it? Is that

the proposition you are putting?Mr Thomson—It is the proposition you are inviting, Senator.



Senator CARR—Yes, I see. You do not feel that compulsion involves the state providingthat service across the country?

Mr Thomson—I do not think it is the necessary consequence of the proposition. Theproposition is that the state has a duty to arrange for the provision of education; then the statecan do such things as the state thinks necessary to ensure that compulsory education isprovided. How it does that is another question, I think, Senator.

Senator CARR—Would you suggest that if a school was provided, whether or not it wassecular or represented a particular philosophy in any particular region, that would be sufficientto satisfy that obligation?

Mr Thomson—I think that if there is a demand for a school in a particular location andthe community, with assistance, is in a position to support that school, then a case can be madeout for the school to be set up or combined in operation with some other school.

Senator CARR—McKinnon has asserted:Even in modern Australia it remains unthinkable that students should be forced to attend a religious schoolor a school of particular philosophy to meet compulsory attendance laws; it is unthinkable that they shouldnot have access to public schools.

Would you disagree with that?Mr Thomson—Senator, this debate—not just here but across the country at the moment

in relation to the abolition of the new schools policy—seems to be fraught with extremehypothetical examples. Dr McKinnon there is giving an extreme hypothetical example. I thinkit is equally unthinkable that the state would ever allow that situation to arise.

Senator CARR—Do you think, then, that the government should perhaps limit itsobligations to ensure that schools are provided and limiting their responsibilities to that ofbeing providers of last resort?

Mr Thomson—No, I do not. Again I think that that is not a situation that the state wouldpermit itself to find itself in.

Senator CARR—So what are the limits of the state’s obligation to provide universal highquality education?

Mr Thomson—I think I am not in a position to answer that question, but no doubt the state,well provided with facilities in this area, is in a position to come to that conclusion. Indeedthat is what the parliament is for, for these questions to be exercised.

CHAIR —Senator Carr, this is all very interesting but I do not think it is really leading usanywhere.

Senator CARR—It gets to the—CHAIR —Order! We have five minutes to lunch. I have five questions I want to ask and

we are going to break at one.Senator CARR—I have one further question.CHAIR —Thank you.Senator CARR—Does the independent sector believe that ‘all breakaway groups, however

small, wanting to start their own schools in the name of choice would justify a high priorityfor scarce government dollars’?

Mr Thomson—Senator, I would reiterate that if there is a demand for a school in aparticular location, and the local community is in a position to support that school with



assistance, then a case can be made for it to be set up or combined with the operation of someother school.

Senator CARR—But should it be funded by the Commonwealth?Mr Thomson—No child in any school in Australia should not be funded by the

Commonwealth.CHAIR —Thank you, Senator Carr. I would like to read from the minister’s second reading

speech, because it does impact on this issue of residualisation:The fact is that my department estimates that by 1999 some 2,200,000 students will be in governmentschools—some 69 per cent of school enrolments—and that these students will be receiving qualityeducation. This can hardly be categorised as ‘residualisation’ . . .

Is it not true that historically the enrolments in private schools have bounced aroundsomewhere between 20 and 30 per cent and that there does not seem to be any great threatthat this will suddenly leap, as Senator Allison seemed to indicate, to 80 per cent? Is it nottrue that, if you do have over two-thirds of your students in public schools, there is no realthreat of residualisation?

Mr Thomson—Senator, I note that the paper by Ms Louise Watson has been quoted in thecourse of the hearing here and there was some suggestion that as a result of the policy therewould be an increase in the numbers of students going to the non-government sector. I haveMs Watson’s paper here. I think that what Louise Watson says should be paid attention to.She is a former adviser to the former minister for schools, Mr John Dawkins, and she is a veryable person. However, there is an internal inconsistency within the paper, in two paragraphs.

The paper suggests that Dr Kemp has estimated that the policy changes will lead to anincrease in non-government schools’ share of total student enrolments—an increase of 74,773students. But just a few lines later the paper says:The Federal government therefore anticipates the impact of its policy changes to be an additional 25,673students enrolling in non-government schools over the next four years.

I am not sure what figure Ms Watson has taken into account in her calculation of what theactual projected drift might be, but clearly there is an inconsistency of about 50,000 studentsin that calculation.

CHAIR —Could I just add to that perspective, perhaps, by some figures that were providedby the New South Wales Department of Education in the documents before us. Admittedly,it is not for the whole of Australia, but it is for about a third of the enrolments in Australia.What that shows is that between 1980 and 1985 the private schools enrolments grew by 3.4per cent, that is, another 3.4 on top of what it was; from 1985 to 1990, 2.1; and from 1990to 1995, 0.6. Does that not show a fairly rapid slowdown in growth over the last 15 years?And is it not really the fact that there are a lot of natural barriers to the expansion of privateschools, not the least being the capacity of people to afford to pay the fees?

Mr Ralston—Indeed. In fact, the barriers are getting stronger on that point: it is becomingincreasingly hard for parents to meet those fees.

CHAIR —And it would become harder, the greater the proportion of the population youinclude?

Mr Ralston—That is right.CHAIR —Could you just describe the effects of the so-called new schools policy on your

sector over the last 10 years in which it operated?



Mr Ralston—Mr Thomson has probably got more history to that than I.Mr Thomson—The effect of the new schools policy?CHAIR —Yes, over the last 10 years.Mr Thomson—On the existing sector?CHAIR —On your sector, yes.Mr Thomson—In terms of shifts in catchment area of students, shift in enrolments numbers

or—CHAIR —Just the effect on overall development, probably, but anything you would like to

add.Mr Thomson—We are not aware of any significant impact of the new schools policy on

existing schools.CHAIR —I am not talking about existing schools; I am talking about the establishment of

new schools, which the new schools policy was meant to address.Mr Thomson—Just to reiterate, I guess, Chair, it has had an inhibiting effect on the growth

of new non-government schools.CHAIR —Is it not true that, with more people deciding to send their children to private

schools and the fact that they contribute a fair degree of cost out of their own pocket, this isactually a saving to the taxpayer on education and that those resources should therefore beavailable to spread across the public system?

Mr Ralston—Yes, indeed, a considerable saving. If you consider the assets that parentsprovide to independent schools—over and above fees, a lot of them contribute to buildingsand facilities—that is a considerable saving that the government does not have to provide.

CHAIR —If parents are prepared to make that sacrifice of their own cash on top of the factthat they pay taxes to support the rest of the public system, can you see any reason whygovernment should put barriers in the way of parents exercising their choice in that way?

Mr Ralston—No reason at all.CHAIR —Do you have anything to add to that?Mr Thomson—Generally, Chairman?CHAIR —Yes.Mr Thomson—Generally, I would like to remind the committee that the new schools policy

imposed restrictions on one sector only—that is, the non-government sector and, in particular,the independent sector—and it did not apply to the establishment of new government schools.I just suggest to the committee that that is not consistent with the dual approach to schoolprovision which is supported by both major parties and also it contravenes the principle ofcompetitive neutrality.

CHAIR —Thank you very much for appearing today.Sitting suspended from 1.02 to 1.36 p.m.

[13.36 p.m.]McGAW, Professor Barry, Director, Australian Council for Educational Research, PrivateBag 55, Camberwell, Victoria 3124MARGINSON, Dr Simon William, Senior Lecturer, Centre for the Study of HigherEducation, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3052



CHAIR —Welcome to this teleconferencing session. the Committee prefers evidence to begiven in public, but if you wish at any stage to give any evidence, part of your evidence oranswers to any questions in camera, you may make the request and the committee will considerit. I point out, however, that such evidence taken in camera may subsequently be made publicby order of the Senate. I invite the witnesses to make some brief introductory remarks andthen we will proceed to questions.

Dr Marginson—I understand that the work of the committee encompasses the new schoolspolicy which is to be altered through the proposed legislation. It is that area which I havelooked at and have some concerns about. I have done a historical review of the schoolsfunding policies of the Commonwealth between 1965 and 1990, and I particularly had a goodlook at what happened in the Fraser years.

We then saw some of the consequences of lightly regulated new school development in thenon-government sector, with the very rapid growth of non-Catholic, non-Anglican schools inparticular and the destabilisation of government systems in certain areas. The new schoolspolicy, as I understand it—and I had some part in an indirect sense in its development in aprevious capacity—was not designed to prevent freedom of choice being exercised, but it wasdesigned to bring that principle into conjunction with other concerns, mainly those of planneddevelopment and the stabilisation of the existing systems.

To me, that was quite a good policy because it did balance the different interests and allowedthem all to be expressed. I am concerned that the new policy environment will be firstly onewhere those regulatory checks and balances have been removed but, secondly, one where thedifferent voices and different interests cannot be expressed as well through the process.

CHAIR —Thank you. Professor McGaw?Prof. McGaw—I wanted to comment on the proposed legislation in two respects. Firstly,

I want to examine the likely impact and whether that is adequately anticipated in some of thestatements that have been made and, secondly, I want to look at the desirability of the changedarrangements.

On the question of the adequacy of the estimation of the impact, much depends upon theway in which the recent trends are interpreted. Certainly, there has been a shift fromgovernment to non-government enrolments. I suspect the underlying magnitude of that isgreater than is immediately apparent in the figures, because government enrolments over thatperiod have increased because of increased retention rates in years 11 and 12.

The growth in retention at years 11 and 12 has had a much greater impact on governmentenrolments than on non-government enrolments and if, despite that, there has been a shift ofthe magnitude we have seen, there is an underlying shift of a greater magnitude. That maymean, therefore, that the costs of the shift that might flow from these changed arrangementsis likely to be greater than estimated to date.

I wanted to comment on just one or two aspects of Louise Watson’s paper in this respect.I presume the committee has seen that in detail, as I was provided with it. In that paper sherehearses a number of reasons for which parents might choose non-government schools andshe draws upon other published work. There is a further reason than anticipated quality of theschooling and so on that is not canvassed there, and that is the nature of the cohort of studentsin a particular school.

I think one of the reasons for which parents choose private schools relates to the perceivedactivity of the cohort. There is a nice example of this. In the public debate in Melbourne a



number of years ago when there was some proposal that Melbourne Grammar School shouldbecome coeducational, one father wrote and said he did not send his son to the school for thethree Rs, he sent him for the three Cs—culture, connections and cachet.

I think it is the case that parents choose schools for what they believe is true of the otherstudents in the school. That is an extreme example. Other cases are to do with homogeneityof world view, particular adherence to a particular faith, for example. The more new schoolsare encouraged to form, in the present arrangements, the more likely it is, I think, that thoseschools will be narrowly focused, homogeneous and not reflective of the general community.

An important question for those considering this legislation is the extent to which any publicexpectations ought to be imposed upon institutions that are obtaining public funds.

CHAIR —Thank you very much.Senator O’BRIEN—Dr Marginson, what has been the pattern of government funding of

both government and non-government schools over the last decade?Dr Marginson—I take when you say over the last decade, you mean back to the mid-

eighties?Senator O’BRIEN—Yes.Dr Marginson—I am sorry, I do not have those data in front of me. That is a period of

different policy mix to the one we are now entering. The data I have looked at in relation tothis matter is the pattern which occurred between 1975 and 1985—the previous decade tothat—where the funding of government schools by the Commonwealth fell by 20 per cent andthe funding of non-government schools doubled. I think that is more likely to be the kind ofpattern that we are about to see now. But I am afraid you would have to ask someone fromMCEETYA to give you those more recent statistics.

Senator O’BRIEN—Your view is that it is likely that there will be a doubling of fundingof the non-government schools?

Dr Marginson—I think that the $140 million over the four years which has been mentionedis probably an underestimate. I think Barry is right in saying the underlying trend to the non-government sector over, say, the last half decade is greater than is immediately apparentbecause of the demographic factor. But I would also think that these things tend to build upover a period of time. What we have seen since early in the 1990s is a somewhat morepermissive environment for the non-government sector and I think a probably more competitivelabour market coming out of the recession has forced greater parental choice in that directionas well. Those things tend to snowball. You get more students in year one or year seven, youget more the following years two and eight and subsequently in three and nine and so on. Thattends over a period of time to build up into quite a large expansion over all of the differentyear levels. It starts to add up. I would think that just the enrolment change alone will drivea somewhat higher commitment from the Commonwealth, even despite the partial transfer ofcost back to the states.

Senator O’BRIEN—Does it follow that you believe that the funding of government schools,under this bill, will effectively be reduced by 20 per cent?

Dr Marginson—No, I think it will be reduced by quite a lot more. I think the effect of thisbill is somewhat different from the pattern under Fraser where the government was carefulto at least maintain the outwards forms of the old Karmel settlement for a period of time. Ithink the effect of this new regime of subtracting allocations from the states to compensatefor the cost transfer will be to drive down Commonwealth funding on government schools



quite a lot faster. It may well be a way of de facto achieving what a lot of people have talkedabout from time to time in Canberra, the idea of the Commonwealth getting out of thegovernment school funding operation grants altogether. It may well achieve that over a periodof a decade or so.

Senator O’BRIEN—What do you believe would be the impact of the scenario that youbelieve will take place?

Dr Marginson—I think there is a number of things. Firstly there is the resource impactdirectly on the schools and secondly, there is the question of what you may call the politicsor overall policy environment, which tends to have a very strong effect on parental choice andthe rest of it. In relation to the resource impact, we are looking at a period where the states—toput it bluntly—are strapped for cash in their services and they are all bitterly doing what theycan to pull back costs in their services already.

If there is some withdrawal of Commonwealth funding from the states in this area, it willput further pressure on the education budgets. The overall outcome is likely to be acontinuation but acceleration of the most recent trend in resourcing of government schools,which is to too large class sizes and larger pupil teacher ratios. That has been a pattern in thelast five years or so. That is a reversal of the historic trend of the postwar period, which wasto improve resources in schools across-the-board on the basis of a social consensus that thatwas a good thing. I think we are now going to see a more rapid deterioration in governmentschool resourcing than we have had in the last five years. This bill will materially assist thatprocess.

As a result of that, it will be harder for parents to stay in the government system. We havea small child—she is only a few months old—and we are looking at her schooling now witha good deal of concern. We wonder whether we will be able to find a viable governmentsecondary school which has a good academic program, where the kids are properly lookedafter in the playground, within reach of our home. We are seriously wondering whether thatwill be possible. I think that has always been possible until fairly recently for families suchas ours.

The effect of a significant resource gap opening between government and non-governmentschools will be to make it even harder for government schools to compensate for their socialrole of involving all members of the community, of giving extra assistance to those who needit more than others and so on. To the extent that government schools do a good job withdisabled students or non-English speaking background students, they are going to be takingmoney out of literacy or the general academic program.

In a situation where government schools were somewhat better funded than non-governmentschools, which we have had until recently, we were able to strike the right balance. But now,I think, we have the situation where government schools might well be poorer overall thanmost non-government schools and yet have a much broader role as well. It is going to be hardfor families with a strong commitment to education to keep supporting those schools.

Senator O’BRIEN—We heard from Mr John Ralston, the chairman of the National Councilof Independent Schools Associations, that government schools were becoming more innovativeand that he believed that there was a possibility that they would reverse the trend and attractpeople to the government school sector in this competitive environment with the non-government school sector. Have you any comments on that proposal?

Dr Marginson—I think individual government schools can behave like good non-government schools do, and run strong programs around a fairly homogenous clientele, become



highly sought after, have a queue of people outside the gate, pick and choose students whoare good academically, who do better in their exam results and so on. That whole cycle ofsuccess can be established in government schools but it can only be established in a smallnumber of them.

The problem is that that then leaves another category of government schools which are non-competitive and which are looking after the students who are not being catered for elsewhere.They are schools which are not sought after by parents.

That is the case at the bottom end of the non-government school system. You can see there,already, the consequences of a market competitive model, where you get strong schools andweak schools. We can and I think we probably are going to replicate that in the governmentsystem. I think we then need to face the fact that, by doing that, we withdraw from our olderproject of trying to provide a good education for every Australian citizen, and embrace theidea that a good education will only be provided in those schools which are competitive, andto those parents who are prepared to outlay extra resources, whether they are in the governmentor the non-government school system.

CHAIR —You talked about these two factors—planned development and people’s choice—and you said that these things should work in conjunction. Would you agree that they haveclashed, that the so-called new schools policy that has been abolished, which was supposedto provide better planning, also greatly inhibited parent choice by stopping the creation of quitea number of new schools, because they could not get over all the hurdles the Commonwealthput in place?

Dr Marginson—That is unquestionably correct, in the sense that not all schools were beingsupported under the new schools policy and, in the early years, the school had to make a quitesignificant private effort to become established before moving into a higher funding category—although that, of course, was subsequently changed. That is right, but the point I am makingis that the conflict between the principle of freedom of choice and the principle of planneddevelopment is only a conflict if one or other of those principles is considered as absolute andunfettered by any other consideration. That is good philosophy, but bad policy making. Wecannot really sustain a policy in the schools area on the basis of a single principle. We haveto take into account the different considerations that apply in public policy.

John Stuart Mill had a good resolution of this problem in relation to freedom, where he saidthat he supported the right of free choice to the extent that it did not infringe on the choicesof others. The reality of a new schools policy is that, if every parent or every small group ofparents that wants to start their own school can start their own school, that would certainlysupport the principle of freedom of choice to the ultimate extent; and I would suggest to youthat the Fraser policies were moving in that direction.

The consequences are that, with the withdrawal of significant resources and significant socialsupport from the majority of families who are still on the government system, that system isweakened and that the quality of that choice has been diminished and changed in the process.But there is a point at which we can strike a balance and permit the development of a certainnumber of new schools. One of the complaints you might have about the former new schoolspolicy was that it favoured certain groups at the expense of others, and that is a legitimateconcern.

What I do not think we can tolerate in policy on schooling, any more than we can tolerateit in policy on housing, health or roads, is the public subsidisation of an unfettered private right



at the expense of the institutions which are used by the majority, who are diminished by thewithdrawal of large sections of the population.

CHAIR —Your answer raises an enormous number of questions, actually, so I will start witha few. If parents want to sacrifice their own dollars to put their children in private schools,often at great sacrifice, in addition to paying taxes which support both public and privateeducation, what right does the state really have to stop them?

Dr Marginson—You are arguing that solely in terms of individual interest. That is thedifficulty with the argument.

CHAIR —No: certain groups, not just individuals.Dr Marginson—Okay. That has consequences. I am not saying that the right does not exist;

I am just saying that the exercise of the right has consequences which policy, inescapably,must deal with because of the fiscal consequences for the Commonwealth and the states,amongst other things.

CHAIR —Can we have a look at some of those consequences that you are claiming? Letme read to you from the second reading speech by Dr Kemp. He said:The fact is that my department estimates that by 1999 some 2,200,000 students will be in governmentschools—some 69 per cent of school enrolments—and that these students will be receiving qualityeducation.

Isn’t it true that there are natural barriers to the expansion of private schools, anyway?Dr Marginson—No.CHAIR —You are never going to get to 80 per cent private enrolment. You are inferring

that, under the Fraser policy, the schools were heading that way. But surely, because of theenormous expense, there are huge natural barriers to people putting their children in privateschools. Isn’t this residualisation a furphy? Aren’t we always going to have about 70 per centof school pupils in government schools?

Dr Marginson—If a state is prepared to carry the cost to, say, the extent of three-quarters,the barriers that you mention are not very high.

CHAIR —Try paying the fees!Dr Marginson—If you have got your kids in an expensive non-government school then you

are not, in fact, in the kind of school which is in the terrain of the new schools policy—orthe absence thereof—because the new schools policy or absence thereof concerns low feeschools, primarily. The new schools that will open up will primarily be low fee schools.

CHAIR —With parents from low and middle income families going to them—Dr Marginson—Yes. I agree that it is obvious that parents make considerable sacrifices:

whatever the level of that sacrifice, it is a significant outlay.CHAIR —Exactly right.Dr Marginson—I do not dispute that. I am simply pointing to the fact that, by organising

a schooling system in a certain way, we have certain knock-on effects which we have to takeinto account. What I would dispute—and I remember having this argument with Peter Baumeand, I think, his predecessor as well—is whether there is a natural balance between the non-government and government school sectors. I think, if you keep on making it easy for parentsto start a new school and subsidise that process heavily and also accept in that process thatthey will be making sacrifices and so on, then you can push the enrolment share of a non-



government system up fairly quickly to 40 per cent. I think, once that starts to happen, itbecomes more and more difficult for parents who are serious about education—

CHAIR —You are assuming heavy subsidisation there. There is no plan for that. I assureyou, given the state of the budget, that would not happen. I go back to your other assumptionsabout the fact that the state schools are going to be seriously deprived of resources by thischange of policy. Could you run through the figures on that for us.

Dr Marginson—I am not quite sure what you are asking.CHAIR —What you were implying was that, if we bring in this policy, there is going to

be a substantial resource shift—I am not talking about pupils now; I am talking aboutresources—out of government schools. So could you run through the figures on that, please.

Dr Marginson—I understand that the effect of the new legislation, if it is passed, will beto reduce state grants by $1,712 for every child that transfers to a non-government school. Thatis correct, is it not?

CHAIR —That is correct, and also the other $1,700 stays with the state school, thereforeincreasing its per capita money. You were not aware of that?

Dr Marginson—I am sorry. You will have to repeat that.CHAIR —There are two figures—two lots of $1,700, the $3,400 that a student was attracting

when he was a public school student. When he moves across to the private system only halfof that—$1,700—follows him. The other $1,700 stays in the state budget. It actually goes backto the state. Therefore, the state, presumably having control over education, has the resources,if it so chooses, to put that money into that school—

Dr Marginson—Yes, I understand that.CHAIR —Therefore, increasing the average per capita money for the students left in the

school. So, in what way are they being disadvantaged?Dr Marginson—Compare it with the previous situation, where there was no reduction of

$1,712 to the states. That is the difference. That is the comparison we are talking aboutbetween the situation now and the situation that would pertain—

CHAIR —They do not have a pupil to support. He has gone. The pupil has gone.Dr Marginson—The assumption that the benchmarking exercise is premised on is that the

subtraction of a student from one system has what you might call a comparable unit cost effectcompared to the addition of a student to another system. The difficulty is this: when you adda student to a growing system, then there is going to be a marginal cost, and it is unlikely tobe, in incremental terms, as great a cost as the cost effect of subtracting a student from adeclining system, which runs into the difficulty of having to provide much the sameinfrastructure, whether or not enrolments are declining; much the same course structure,whether or not enrolments are declining; and so on. In a declining system in enrolment terms,per capita costs are rising because of the fixed costs of infrastructure and providing acomprehensive curriculum.

The actual outcome of all those sums, and taking into account the point I have made, I think,is quite a complex exercise and to some extent a speculative one, in the sense that we wouldhave to try and estimate what the effects of enrolment decline or increase are on costs in eachof the systems in each of the states and territories. That is quite a complex exercise. All I amreally saying is that, if you compare the proposed policy with the current policy, then



government schools are $1,700 worse off per student in a time when they are greatly pressed,I might say, at the state level.

CHAIR —The evidence in the documents before us and the evidence received this morningare contrary to that. The state has $6,000 per pupil and $1,700 follows them. Therefore, thestate system is better off, because you know who is picking up the other money—the parentwho is paying the private fees to put the resources in at the other end. There are moreresources in the education system totally because of that.

Dr Marginson—So that does suggest to me that it is a deliberate and induced transfer ofenrolments that we are now seeing. I wonder what the extent of that transfer really is—howfar the government wants to drive the transfer of enrolments. I know that nothing has formallybeen said about that, but it seems to me that does underlie what you are saying.

CHAIR —How can it be deliberately induced if it is parental choice?Dr Marginson—Because people make choices in a policy environment, which conditions

those choices.CHAIR —Which gives them freedom.Dr Marginson—I am sorry, can I answer the question?CHAIR —Go ahead.Dr Marginson—If you weaken one system and strengthen another in social terms then that

affects the pattern of choice. Governments are not innocent in this. Government policy hasan intimate effect on the pattern of choice in schools.

CHAIR —I thought we had a win-win situation here. If the private school is getting extraresources from the parents, more resources are left with the state school. There are more totalresources in the system. Isn’t that a win-win situation for both sectors?

Dr Marginson—I think I have explained the point that—CHAIR —Well, you haven’t.Senator CARR—The evidence presented to this committee has not been uniform. In fact,

substantial evidence has been presented to this committee that the state education systems willactually have to find considerable increases in resources as a result of this policy. Onesubmission we had before showed that in the state of New South Wales it will cost between$20 million and $30 million extra for every two per cent drift in enrolments as a consequenceof this policy. I was just wondering whether or not, Dr Marginson, you are of the view thatthe choices that are made are in anyway influenced by financial incentives offered bygovernment?

Dr Marginson—Yes, most definitely. I think the whole history of Commonwealth policyin this area is a very clear example of how a finely crafted policy—and there have beendifferent policies under different governments—intimately and directly affects the balance ofthe enrolments and the kinds of choices that parents make. In a period where resources forall kinds of schools are growing, aiding freedom of choice in the non-government sector hasa less sinister impact on the government system than in a period where all resources areconstrained. I think that is a very important consideration.

Senator CARR—Do you accept the notion that, as McKinnon asserted, choice is easier touse as a rhetorical term than it is to operationalise, at least for funding of schools?

Dr Marginson—Yes. I think we have seen a test of that in this area. I think a seriousattempt has been made in schooling, quite different to our policies on transport and various



other things, to fund individual family choice to a high degree and with the risks that thatinvolves for the quality of a comprehensive system. We have done that despite the evidencearound the world which seems to suggest that governments maintain a viable public sectorby ensuring that roughly 85 per cent of families are using it. I think Commonwealth policywould be incomprehensible unless you accept that there is a direct relationship between thepattern of funding and the pattern of incentives and choices.

Senator CARR—McKinnon asserts:Schooling policies do, of course, seek to make young Australians competitive, in the sense of achievinga fulfilling place in society. But providing the means for future citizens to develop to their full potentialand, by doing so, become competitive, is not the same as reliance on crude competition or survival ofthe fittest.

Do you believe that there ought be a measure of consideration to providing value adding forevery student rather than competition for the sake it in its own right?

Dr Marginson—Yes. I think a good example of that very problem is the way we bring upchildren in families. We attempt to instil in all our children the techniques they need to surviveand compete successfully in the world. But unless we are bad parents, we do not do that bysetting our children against each other consistently from the moment of birth so that theirsibling rivalries become the dominant form of family relationship. In all of this I think youwould be aware that sibling rivalry can be a problem in a family. It is not really much of avirtue. I guess the point I am making is that competition is not an unfettered good, thatcompetition has to be brought into conjunction with other social practices, such as cooperation.

In the case of education, the case for competition between students is obviously muchstronger than the case for competition between schools. We have organised our governmentsystems in Australia until fairly recently on the principle that schools should cooperate witheach other within a common system. There were many drawbacks in those arrangementsbecause of the bureaucratic character of school administration but the principle of cooperationwas not necessarily a drawback. Having now decided that we should set the schools againsteach other, I do not think we are seeing any necessary improvement in the learning outcomesof students. To some extent schools are being forced to compete in a whole range of areassuch as the provision of music or extracurricular activities at the expense of things like basicliteracy.

Senator ALLISON—Dr Marginson, could you put the Australian situation and levels offunding for government and non-government schools into the broader context of othercountries, say, the UK or the USA?

Dr Marginson—It is interesting that we are so often so close to Britain in our social policyand in the case of the US we are moving closer to the US in many policy areas but in the areaof schooling we diverge quite sharply. The British system seems to have been managed withquite a different attitude to government and non-government schooling. In the US the publicschool, for all its problems, is still a core social institution and Americans could not really dowithout it. There is really only a section of the US on the east coast which is where privateschools have got a role comparable to parts of Australia. The enrolment mix in the US andthe UK is both about 90 per cent public, 10 per cent private, and that does at least concentratethe resources of the strong families and the strong interest groups on the improvement of thepublic system.

In a situation where the public system serves a clientele which is, say, 65 per cent of thepopulation or less, and that clientele tends to be the non-professional families, the less affluent



families, the more likely to be the non-English speaking background families and so on,families with less political and social resources and less capacity to influence politicians andcommand changes in public policy comparable to the non-government schools, then you havegot a situation where those government schools start to weaken substantially. I would say thathaving built up quite a good government school system in Australia despite those problemsin the post-war period, we are now looking at the situation where we are dismantling it bitby bit. I do not think the Americans are about to make the same mistake.

Senator ALLISON—Thank you. You made some comments about your own personalsituation with a child who you would obviously wish to send to a public school. I can imaginearguments being mounted about you and your capacity to pay school fees in a private schoolbut you obviously would choose a state school for other reasons. Could you outline those?

Dr Marginson—The chief benefit that the state school system would bring to our family—and it is a benefit which I shared with others for part of my schooling—is contact withchildren from all walks of life and all social backgrounds and cultural groups. There is nodoubt that there is no other time in your life when you can have that very broad and richexperience of getting to understand how the society works through its different social groups.You can do that through the public system to a certain extent in some areas. Where I live inMelbourne you can certainly do that. I would see that as a very great advantage. I think thatproviding the school is also good academically then you go get the best of both worlds.

My own personal background is that, as a student, I went to both kinds of schools and I didfeel that private schooling was a narrowing experience in some ways rather than a broadeningone. I guess I would like to see my child in a position where she understands the way theworld works and does not exist in a social or cultural cocoon for those crucial years.

There are many families that like that and those of us who do feel like that are prepared toput significant resources of our own into the public schooling system. When I was beingbrought up in the outer suburbs of Melbourne in the 1950s my parents got together with otherparents and they half funded and built a kindergarten which, subsequently, the stategovernment funded and staffed. That seems to me to be a very good mix of parentalcommitment and state commitment. But what was significant about the parental commitmentin that case was that it was shared with other families. That is the premise on which stateschooling has been built in Australia in the post-war period, as a shared enterprise where welook after each other and where the strong look after the weak rather than just looking afterthemselves.

Senator ALLISON—I would like to add a comment to the discussion earlier about fundingand whether or not the states are getting more or less. I would like to throw in the questionof the FAG funding to the states and the reduction in that funding. In her paper I think LouiseWatson used the figure of 17 per cent of that funding going towards education in the states.If you apply that to the amount that was reduced, you get something like a $300 millioneffective cut, should the states choose to apply it at that rate, to education in the states. Isuppose that is a counter view that the states are in fact receiving more through the transferof students across to the private sector.

Dr Marginson—I would like to see those who are saying that the government schools aregoing to be no worse off as a result of these policies go on the record loud and long, becauseI think it is going to look a silly position in five years time.

Senator ALLISON—Thank you.



CHAIR —We had better turn now to Professor McGaw. Are there any questions to ProfessorMcGaw?

Senator O’BRIEN—Apologies for putting you back on the shelf, Professor, while we wereasking questions of Dr Marginson.

Prof. McGaw—I always enjoy listening to Simon, so it was not a hardship.Senator O’BRIEN—A good starting point, then, would be to get your views on the scenario

that he puts about the effect of this bill, if it is passed into law, on the size of the non-government versus the government sector.

Prof. McGaw—That was a key point to part of the exchange about whether he is right inarguing that we are approaching a kind of precipice over which there will be a downward rushin government enrolments. The point was made in response that there is no intention of aheavy subsidisation of the non-government sector in a way that would lower the barriers andthat there would remain a sufficient natural barrier to such a great transfer. But in fact, as Iunderstand it, the proposal is to remove the restriction that new schools formed under theprevious policy could only claim level 6 funding and give them access to the highest levelof government support.

If you look at the figures for all Catholic primary schools, to take one large set as anexample, almost 80 per cent of the funding of those schools comes from the government—stateand Commonwealth. And if you take schools in the most substantially funded category, over90 per cent of the funding, as I understand it, comes from government. So a 10 per centcontribution from parents is scarcely a large impost.

Senator O’BRIEN—Okay. So what you are saying, if I can summarise it, is that you agreethat there will be a much greater departure from the government sector into the non-government sector as a result of this proposed legislation?

Prof. McGaw—Yes, because as I see it there is no limit set on the subsidisation that canoccur. The schools can all be in the most heavily subsidised category where the parentalcontribution is low and there is not much of a barrier to entry. The other point I would wantto make is in relation to the impact of the funding reduction on schools. It actually has aparallel, from the other side, in what used to happen in universities.

During the period of growth in enrolments in universities, in the early days universityfunding was increased at the rate of the average funding per student places for each new setof students it took in. Then the government quickly realised that you do not need to keepfunding new places at the average cost of places, so new places were funded at the marginalcost. Now what we are seeing in this case is a proposal to remove funding not at the marginalcost but at the average cost. So that will take funding away from government schools at amuch faster rate than their expenses are reduced.

Senator O’BRIEN—Thank you.Senator CARR—So you would support the notion that these alleged savings are not

realisable—that is, that state governments will still have to meet a whole series of overheadsfor the running of a universal, quality education system?

Prof. McGaw—Yes, for two reasons. One is that the most expensive provisions anywayare the ones that the state has to bear—the small rural schools, the schools for students inspecial need, and so on. That is the reason government schooling in general has cost more thanprivate schooling. It does not cost more than some private schooling, but it costs more onaverage than private schooling—and that is one of the reasons. But the other reason is that



at the individual school level, if funding is reduced as a student departs costs are not goingto be reduced as a consequence of the departure of a single student.

Senator CARR—As I understand it, the Commonwealth has essentially unilaterally decidedthat it will provide stronger incentives to parents to transfer their children to fee paying schoolsoutside the public sector, and that in turn will have an effect on the character and operationsof the public school system. Would you agree that that will leave the state systems withincreasingly high cost responsibilities to provide services in all areas and to students with highsupport needs, particularly with growing concentrations of children from poorer familybackgrounds?

Prof. McGaw—I think that is distinctly possible. What we have got is a policy proposalwithout a clear discussion of the framework within which the policy is to be implemented.There is a set of principles about choice and about markets, but not a surrounding discussionabout the respect of magnitudes of the systems and the impact of different balances betweenthe systems—one on the other. And that is the difficulty. Everyone is speculating, of course.I am inclined to support the view which Simon Marginson was putting, that we will see anaccelerated transfer from the government to the non-government sector as a consequence ofthis policy. There is, however, one good side to the policy, and that is that it reduces theincentive for states to transfer their students to the private sector. It does not remove them butit reduces it. Under the previous policy, every time a student moved to a private school itsimply transferred costs from the state to the Commonwealth, which the National Commissionof Audit pointed out.

Senator CARR—So in fact you could see a circumstance where states, in an attempt to tryto plug the leak in funding, will be forced to actually impose more restrictive policies towardsthe expansion of the private sector.

Prof. McGaw—Maybe. Yes, I suppose that is possible.CHAIR —Not under Liberal governments.Senator CARR—Not under a Liberal government, as Senator Tierney says—if I could just

pick up that interjection.CHAIR —Of course not. It happens to be seven out of eight of the state and territory

governments.Senator CARR—If I could just get your argument clear, what you are in fact suggesting

is that the combination of the effects of unplanned growth of the private sector and the cutsto the recurrent programs to government schools from the Commonwealth without any realprospects of savings from the state system will in fact reduce the capacity to financegovernment schools, particularly when you take into account the effect of the June PremiersConference outcomes which cut untied general purpose grants to the states. All of thatcombined, will it not place greater pressure upon the states capacity to defend publiceducation?

Prof. McGaw—It will certainly place limitations on the states’ capacity to fund governmenteducation and the funding capacity will be reduced faster than the needs of those systems. Weare doing all of this in a context in which the states are already reducing their expenditureson government schools. The reason for this is not just to do with what our educational policyis, it is to do with a much more general set of considerations about the nature and size of thepublic sector in all sorts of areas and the level of taxation that we are willing to tolerate forthe provision of community resources.



Senator CARR—We are faced with a dilemma in the evidence we have heard this morning,and I am wondering if you are familiar with this argument. On the one hand we are told thatthe new schools policy under Labor restricted dramatically the growth of the private sector.We are told, however, that the removal of the new schools policy will not lead to a massiveexpansion in private school places. Are you familiar with that argument?

Prof. McGaw—It is not an argument. It is two conflicting views and only one of those canbe true.

Senator CARR—That is clearly the evidence that has been placed before this committeewhich presumably we will have to address. But in essence is it possible to remove restrictionsand therefore not expect a significant growth in the private sector?

Prof. McGaw—I think it is unlikely that there will not be a significant growth. I think thereare two pieces of evidence for that. One is that under the previous arrangement there wereaspirants for the establishment of new schools who were unsuccessful. If it were not for therules they would have been established. So that in itself constitutes evidence that there is alevel of demand out there that was not satisfied and is likely to be satisfied.

The proposed new arrangements not only remove the constraints that stop those but alsolower the barriers to establishment in addition. So I think it is likely that the number of schoolsthat sought to be established and were denied establishment would be an underestimate of thenumber that would now want to be established.

Senator CARR—If I have it clearly, what you are suggesting, in fact, is that the decisionof this government to try to create competition amongst schools by funding placings accordingto individual parent demand, rather than demographic demand, has left a situation whichultimately will threaten the stability, the security and the predictability of resources for publicschools particularly and the necessary support that the state can provide for sound curriculumand quality education.

Prof. McGaw—I do not want to have all of those words put into my mouth, I guess, butit certainly removes the predictability of funding available to the states, because what is leftfor the states is a function of a whole set of individual choices that are going to get made toan extent that no-one can really predict. Much of the discussion between members of thecommittee and Simon, and now with me, is about how big the effect is going to be. I thinkthere is clearly going to be an increased move from government to non-government. The onlyquestion is: how big and how fast?

Senator CARR—What do you think are the social and political implications of that change?Prof. McGaw—Dr Kemp, in the Bert Kelly lecture the other night, argued that we have

for a long time had a quite substantial private sector and we have remained socially cohesive,and I think that is generally true. So our own history gives some encouragement to the viewthat a strong and diverse private system does not threaten the fabric of our society. But I worryabout the extent to which all of the new schools are likely to be more unifocal, morehomogeneous, than many of the existing private schools because they are smaller institutions,formed around an often narrowly shared world view. They get formed around a particular faithor a particular set of social interests. That will generate a private system that gradually changesin character from the one that has been there all along. That is why I said earlier that I thinkwe ought to ask, on the other side of the coin: if substantial amounts of public money aregoing into private schools, what public obligations do those schools have beyond what theymight otherwise just choose to do for themselves?



Senator ALLISON—Professor McGaw, we have heard today that there are adequateregulations in place in the states to protect the viability of existing schools—non-governmentand government—and generally plan for education provisions by way of registration. Wouldyou agree with that comment?

Prof. McGaw—Those rules, by and large, are only to do with the quality of the provisionand not to do with the impact on anything else. I think it is the case in many of the states thatit is pretty pro-forma review and registration. You would need to talk, as I am sure you willdo, to the people actually engaged in that registration process. I do not think it has got all thatmuch in the way of teeth.

Senator CARR—Simon, I am just wondering what your views are on the so-called broadbanding of the targeted programs, particularly the abolition of the DSP programs and thecountry area programs.

Dr Marginson—I really do not have enough information on that to make a sensiblecomment.

CHAIR —That is your question, Senator Carr. We are out of time. I have one for you,Professor McGaw. I am quoting from government figures. The proportion of students in non-government schools increased from 1983 to 1995 from 24.4 per cent to 29 per cent. Accordingto government figures, this saved the state and territory governments $3 billion. Surely, theargument that the slow shift over time to private schools is going to strap the state system doesnot really hold up, because the state and territory governments actually have the resources,do they not? Whether they choose to apply them to education, I suppose, is up to thosegovernments, but a saving has been made in education. If they want to devote it to education,they can actually make things a lot better in state schools, can they not?

Prof. McGaw—It seems that all of the areas of large public expenditure at the state levelare being cut. It is not that they are taking it away from education to put it into hospitals; theyare taking it away from education and hospitals, and they are the two big areas. I just thinkthe fact of the matter is that the states have less to spend in general. We are, as a matter ofpolicy—it is true not only of Australia but of a lot of places—taking the view that reducedgovernment expenditure of all forms is a good thing and a shift to private patterns ofconsumption is a good thing. In an area like education, which is to be universally providedfor children for 12 or 13 years of schooling, I think we do have to worry about theconsequences of those who do not have the capacity to privately provide, and that is reallywhat this debate is all about.

We talked before about competition. The evidence in England from work that Whitty at theUniversity of London has done is that, when schools in the public sector compete, the onesthat are successful differentiate themselves in ways that put them in niches at the top of themarket, and then parents do not choose them; they choose their students. Choice in theprovision of professional services is usually exercised by the service provider; not by theconsumer.

CHAIR —Thank you for your evidence today. We will have to leave it there. We are nowmoving to teleconference again.



[2.32 p.m.]MARTIN, Mr Peter, Executive Officer, Australian Secondary Principals’ Association,Unit 2, 13-21 Vale Street, North Melbourne, Victoria 3051STALKER, Mr Duncan, President, Australian Secondary Principals’ Association, Unit2, 13-21 Vale Street, North Melbourne, Victoria 3051WOOLLEY, Mr Terry, Vice President, Australian Secondary Principals’ Association,Unit 2, 13-21 Vale Street, North Melbourne, Victoria 3051

CHAIR —I call the committee to order and welcome, by teleconference, witnesses from theAustralian Secondary Principals’ Association. The committee prefers evidence to be given inpublic, but if you wish at any time to give any evidence, part of your evidence or answers tospecific questions in camera, you may do so and the committee will consider the request. Ipoint out, however, that evidence taken in camera may subsequently be made public by orderof the Senate. You are welcome to make some brief introductory comments and then we willgo to questions.

Mr Stalker —The statements we wish to make are in two parts. In the first part, we wishto talk about the impact on government secondary schools which are already struggling withmany of Australia’s social problems as they relate to youth, alienation, poor family support,a low socio-economic base and high exit youth unemployment. We wish to speak about, inthat same section, the misuse of physical resources under this proposal and also theunnecessary expenditure of capital funds in a time of constraint. In the second part of thesubmission, which will be handled by myself, I wish to talk about the very substantialdiscrepancies in public accountability for the expenditure of public funds. Mr Woolley willpresent the first part of what we wish to say.

Mr Woolley —Thank you for giving the Australian Secondary Principals’ Association theopportunity to make this submission to the Senate committee. We believe that it is importantthat we have an opportunity to do so and, in particular, to recognise the fact that in the stateschool systems, which are clearly the systems we represent, over 70 per cent of all studentsand staff at the schools are represented by the submissions that we make. We think it isimportant for the Senate committee to understand the proportion of schooling that is offeredin the public sector compared with the private sector.

Our concerns, as Duncan introduced, are several, particularly resource management. It wouldappear to our association that relaxation of the guidelines means, in effect, that a private schoolcan open and attract federal funding almost based on application. It seems difficult for us inthe public sector to understand why it would be necessary to apply funds to an area wheresomebody wants to form another school when the educational provision in a particularmetropolitan or country area is well serviced by existing private and public schooling.

There are plenty of places around the metropolitan areas of our cities where there are unusedand unutilised public areas, public schools, which have decreased by means of populationgrowth. It just seems unusual for us to see a waste of public resources, whether it is from thefederal or from the state purse, to be allocated to the whim of a group of people wanting toform a private school. There is an existing infrastructure which was already within our statesystems and the balances, we believe, are relatively fair at this stage.

It seems odd, when you take that argument just a little further, that if the federal governmentdoes allocate funds for the formation of an independent or private school, in the light of theway the current legislature seems to indicate, in effect, it would appear that the federal



government is in competition with the states for the provision of schooling. What it meansis that the federal system will be paying for private schools and they will be in competitionfor students from the state system, which ultimately bears responsibility for the quality ofeducation.

The concern that follows from that is one of equity. Clearly, if parents exercise their rightof choice for their children—and that is clearly their right to do so—the problem would bethat, ultimately, those parents who would have the luxury of being able to exercise that choicewould certainly do so and those that do not have the finances, the resources or the ability totake these children to those schools would, therefore, be constrained to the state system.

We believe, ultimately, that when you look at that argument over a period you would beforming a two-tier quality of education. From our point of view, that would be quiteunacceptable. We believe there is a major equity issue there to be considered. In effect, itbecomes a debate, we believe, about the quality of a parent’s choice or of a care giver’s choicefor their children and the provision of a state education system. I guess, quite bluntly, ourassociation is saying that the quality of education, of the parent exercising their choice, means,in effect, that they are taking away resources from the state systems. I believe that one parentchoosing for their child is an unfair situation when they are taking away resources for fourothers. Clearly, the distribution of funds means that if one child goes to the independentsystems approximately four children will not be getting equal grants into the state systems.I will pause there for any comments.

CHAIR —Well, we will move on to the other people and then we will have questions.Mr Stalker —Thank you. I wish to speak about the accountability process. I have five points

that I wish to make under that. Firstly, we are talking about the use of taxpayers’ funds withoutequivalent accountability procedures to their use in the government systems. In the governmentsystem, where public funds are used, there are: firstly, stringent financial audits; secondly,annual and tri-annual reports required; thirdly, inspection of the schools is required, with publicreporting; and, fourthly, compulsory curriculum directions which have to be taken. None ofthis accountability applies to the private school system. We say that where public funds arebeing used, the accountability processes should be similar. I will expand that argument.

Secondly, with government schools, the enrolment in the school reflects the social,socioeconomic and ethnic mix of the neighbourhood in which the school is located. We wouldargue that non-government schools should have to reflect this same neighbourhood mix to atleast a percentage equal to the percentage of government funds that they are receiving. Forexample, if 40 per cent of their funds are from government sources then 40 per cent of theirstudent enrolment should reflect the socioeconomic, social and ethnic mix of the neighbour-hood in which the school is located. Enrolment must be based on fair and non-discriminatorypolicies. That is a point which we would wish to make very strongly.

Thirdly, we believe that the private school that is receiving public funds must be accountableto the same extent as government schools for student management. This means that if a non-government school wishes to terminate the enrolment of a student, it must first accept theresponsibility to negotiate a placement for the student elsewhere. This is currently not the case,and where a non-government school receiving public funds wishes to terminate the enrolmentof a student, the student is simply told to go to a government school. We say that this cannotcontinue.

Fourthly, in an instance of a parent complaint, a government school receiving public fundsis required to have an open and transparent process to deal with that complaint. Frequently,



that process is hurtful to the school. The government funds expended in a non-governmentschool do not produce this same accountability process with a parent complaint.

Fifthly, public funds being used to provide a facility available only to those who are thenable to pay additional amounts and a substantial fee. Yet the government schools are deniedany opportunity at all to place a fee, even a very small fee, to ensure that there is some equityin this process.

Recent research by Mr Dean Ashenden, published in the National Industry Education Forumpublication, shows that $1.50 is expended on each non-government school student throughoutAustralia to each $1 that is expended on a government school student. We say that this is inconflict with the direction of the minister to address problems of youth unemployment,particularly through programs such as vocational education, the modern apprenticeship andtraining scheme, and pathways from school to work. He is so desperately seeking to improvethis, and with our overwhelming support, at the same time as a proposal is coming throughwhich is going to take funds from the government sector—not just to give funds to the non-government sector. That will be very much to the disadvantage of those students and willincrease the very problems that everyone is seeking to solve. Thank you.

CHAIR —Questions? Senator Carr.Senator CARR—Mr Stalker, between 1992 and 1994 the Victorian government has cut its

spending on government schools by almost 10 per cent in real terms. What do you believewill be the impact of that cut, plus these cuts by the Commonwealth government, on thequality of educational provision in Victorian government schools?

Mr Stalker —In Victorian government schools further reductions in funds must mean furtherreductions in programs. The two critical areas that we are concerned about are, first of all, themiddle school as represented by students in years 9 and 10, approximately ages 14 to 16, andthe senior school as represented by years 11 and 12, approximately ages 17 and 18.

The statistics show that there has been a very substantial drop in retention to year 12 ingovernment schools throughout Australia. That is undoubtedly linked to two major factors.One is the employment opportunities to students that the students can see as being availableat the time that they leave school—overwhelmingly they see that those opportunities aredecreasing. But the second is the removal of many of the programs that were attractive to thosestudents.

The problem then slips down to years 9 and 10, where the statistics again show that thedrop-out rate of students from age 15 is increasing. That is the figure which is more worryingto all of us. Again it can be traced to an issue of student alienation. Youth alienation is a totalsocietal problem, but student alienation is quite a considerable problem within our schools.It is linked to two issues, curriculum and student welfare. Undoubtedly, the increases in classsizes and reductions in programs—because with the increased numbers in classes the programscannot run—have had a contributory effect.

Senator CARR—You would be aware of the calculations done by the New South Walesgovernment and you may be aware of the submission they have presented to this committeewhich suggests that the effect of the enrolment benchmark adjustment would be somewherebetween $20 million and $30 million for every two per cent of students that transfer.

Mr Stalker —Yes, we are aware of that. We have checked those figures as best we are ableto from our research and we would agree with the figure.



Senator CARR—So in the case of Victoria, which has a slightly smaller system than NewSouth Wales, although a slightly higher percentage of students actually engaged in the privatesector, the figure would not be much less, then—at the minimum, $20 million—for additionalcosts to be met from the Victorian budget. Would you agree with that figure?

Mr Stalker —We would agree with that figure on the information that we have available.One factor which distorts the figures somewhat in Victoria is that Victoria has a significantlyhigher proportion of so-called wealthy private schools than the rest of the states and that affectsthe percentage of funds that they are receiving.

Senator CARR—So what do you believe would be—Mr Stalker —I think your figure would be very close to what would it would actually be.Senator CARR—Broadly correct?Mr Stalker —I think it would be marginally less than what you are stating but it would be

very close.Senator CARR—So it is somewhere around $20 million additional cut, on top of the

$35 million or thereabouts that would be removed from Victorian funding as a result of thechanges in the Commonwealth programs as announced in this budget?

Mr Stalker —The much greater impact in Victoria—I do not want really to dwell onVictoria—is on the programs specifically aimed at students with difficulties in our schools,through the change in the socioeconomic index which allocates funds for disadvantagedschools, literacy and other special programs. The cost to Victoria in that area alone, Iunderstand, is in the area of an additional $7 million. That loss will be passed directly throughto the schools, whereas the loss that you are speaking about—if we accept it as $20 million;it may be less—would have to be picked up by the Victorian Treasury. If it were not, theeffect upon the schools would be absolutely devastating.

Senator CARR—Yes, but there is an additional amount of money to be taken out of thepublic sector in Victoria, as a result of this enrolment benchmark adjustment, of approximately$35 million. Would you agree with that calculation?

Mr Stalker —I would agree with that calculation.Senator CARR—There would be additional costs for Victoria in terms of having to provide

additional resources to the private sector, as a result of the change in status of the differentcategories of schools and as a result of schools that are currently not being funded now beingfunded as a result of these changes. Would you agree?

Mr Stalker —Correct.Senator CARR—All senators here on this committee would no doubt be aware of the recent

changes announced by Mr Gude, in Victoria, and the points that he made concerning theprovision of a broadly based curriculum being dependent upon the size of a particular school.Are you aware whether, in the quality provision framework which actually guided the presentgovernment’s policies on school closures in Victoria—the 300 or so schools that have closedin Victoria—any enrolment minimums were specified?

Mr Stalker —None that I am aware of, no.Senator CARR—Was it not the case that the framework specified an enrolment size of 500

students for a stand-alone senior secondary college?Mr Stalker —You may be correct, but I cannot recall that figure, I am sorry. You may well

be correct. The figure at the moment is 400, but if you are talking back to 1992, when the



other 300 closures were enacted, then that may have been the figure. But if it was, thencertainly a very substantial number of schools with less than 500 remained open. I simplycannot recall that figure.

Senator CARR—So, in your calculation, you think the figure is now about 400?Mr Stalker —The figure that is being quoted at the moment, in the announcement yesterday,

is definitely 400. That is for a secondary school, and 170 or 175, I am unsure which, for aprimary school. That only applies to the metropolitan area and the major provincial cities.

Senator CARR—For a new primary school or a new secondary government school inVictoria, in growth corridors for instance, is the planning provision based on a minimumenrolment of some 450 for a primary school and 1,100 for a secondary school?

Mr Stalker —I am not aware of those figures, I am sorry. You may have access to figuresthat I have not access to.

Senator CARR—We can say for certain, though, that existing schools have a minimumrequirement of 400 for a secondary school and 170 for a primary school?

Mr Stalker —Yes.Senator CARR—However, for non-government schools—I emphasise that Victoria is the

only state in Australia to actually have a minimum requirement—the Victorian requirementis for 20 students for a private primary school and 10 students per year in a secondary school,so presumably a minimum at most of 60. Do those figures sound right to you?

Mr Stalker —I believe they are correct, but I would believe that they are also undersubstantial review. I cannot make any other comment other than that at the moment.

Senator CARR—As principals, from time to time you would be familiar with the thinkingof the DSE in Victoria. Has there ever been any explanation given to your organisation as towhy there is such a marked difference between the numbers required for a governmentsecondary school, or a government primary school, and a private primary school or a privatesecondary school?

Mr Stalker —During the past years we have not had a case to pursue that particular matter,because of the way that the policy on new schools operated at the Commonwealth level. Thatis our concern at the moment, that with very, very substantial change to that policy the figuresthat you are quoting—which I have not had access to—would obviously become very, veryimportant indeed.

Senator CARR—I say that in the context that Victoria is the only state with a minimumrequirement and that other systems do not have any requirement. In fact, it would be openslather. What impact do you think a policy of open slather would have on the provision ofexisting schools, both public and private?

Mr Stalker —Are you talking about for Australia?Senator CARR—For Australia. What is your general policy position as a national

organisation?Mr Stalker —We have considerable concern, for the reasons that we have put forward, with

a very substantial increase in the number of non-government schools funded from publiccontributions, with the duplication of resources and the lack of an equivalent accountabilityprocess for the use of those public funds. We would see that, in areas, government schoolswould be required to close because of substantial drops in enrolment, whereas a non-



government school would be opening in the same vicinity and taking students. Parents, Ibelieve, would see that as demonstrably unfair.

A second issue would be that, as the number of students enrolled in the government schooldecreased because of the close proximity of a non-government school, then the curriculumofferings that could be made within the school must decrease. With that decrease in thecurriculum offerings, you come straight back to the problems that I referred to before, withyour students in years 9 and 10, with student alienation, a major reason for which is curriculumand student welfare. So you are going to compound the very problems that the federalgovernment is at present trying so hard to address through new programs. It is simply goingto make the situation worse.

Senator CARR—Do you believe that the Commonwealth has any role to play in theprovision of planned educational provision?

Mr Stalker —I see it as most unfortunate in this country that we have two such diversesystems, which do not exist in other countries. We should look very closely at what has beenachieved in New Zealand and Canada, for example, and why we have this divisive structureof two quite different systems, each receiving either 100 per cent or a different percentage ofpublic funds with totally different accountability procedures and operating so divisively incommunities. I can only regret, after looking at these other systems, that we want to continuethis divisiveness. When we are all trying so hard in our schools to produce attitudes oftolerance and acceptance and community sense, I regret that we divide our young peoplebetween two different systems of schooling.

Senator CARR—Do you believe that the Commonwealth has an explicit commitment, orshould have an explicit commitment, and responsibility to maintain a strong and sociallycomprehensive public education system?

Mr Stalker —It goes without saying that every Australian, whether they are a member ofgovernment or not, has a substantial duty to the youth of their country to make sure that a fineeducational opportunity is provided to them which will not only equip them to take their placein the community but which will strengthen our nation as a whole. That is the responsibilityof each and every person, whether they are in education or not, or whether they are ingovernment or not.

Senator CARR—How do you think that can be done, when the Commonwealth under thisproposal would be providing stronger financial incentives to parents to transfer their childrento the private sector? Would that have an impact, do you believe, on the operations andcharacter of the public education system that remains?

Mr Stalker —It has every opportunity to substantially and negatively impact upon thegovernment system which remains. We would argue very strongly, as Mr Woolley said at thecommencement, that not only is this allocating additional funds to non-government schoolsbut at the same time it is taking funding off government schools. So, if you like, it is a doublewhammy that is being placed against us.

Senator ALLISON—Mr Woolley, in South Australia what is your assessment of the degreeto which school registration processes can accommodate considerations of planned educationalprovision?

Mr Woolley —I am a bit unsure about the registration process. Could you just clarify thatpoint for me, please.



Senator ALLISON—We heard evidence this morning—at least, a view—that stategovernments’ registration processes were adequate in regulating and providing that opportunityfor planning educational provision.

Mr Woolley —I see; the actual quality of the registration of the school and its academicprograms. Now I understand. I have a belief that in South Australia the registration processis adequate, in the sense that there could be evidence presented which says that we can deliverthese particular curriculum outcomes in these major broad areas of learning. I have a personalview which comes back to the economies of scale, the quality of education and the size ofthe school. My knowledge is not substantial on this, but I do not believe that the registrationrequirements take into account the effective domains, the economies of scale and the qualityof education with respect to school size. I may not be fully correct, but my belief is that theregistration requirements are more to do with the qualification of the teachers and the fact thatthey will be teaching across certain areas of the curriculum.

Senator ALLISON—Is there an educational planning committee or something of that sortin South Australia which would be cross-sectoral?

Mr Woolley —Not to my knowledge, in the sense that it would direct the traffic, so to speak,on issues such as that. At the change of our state government, there were some very strongrecommendations that came from the Audit Commission which indicated the size whichschools would be to maximise or at least to strike some balance between the size of the schooland the quality of educational provision. It adds to the questions from the previous senator.Those figures, from memory, were about 350 students in a primary school and a little above600 in a secondary school. They were figures which were quoted in the Audit Commissionas trying to strike the balance between sufficient size to offer breadth of curriculum and someeconomies of scale.

Senator ALLISON—If I can turn to the question of broad banding of equity programs—Iwill leave this open to anyone to respond—how confident are you that there will be adequateconsultation at the state level about moving funds between programs according to priority andneed?

Mr Woolley —I do not have that confidence. It has been my experience, having worked inthe state system all my life virtually, that there seems to be a significant imbalance in the wayvarious independent and private schools deal with that issue. Clearly, as Mr Stalker said, thereis no doubt that in the state system we are required to deal with those issues as equitably andas evenly as we can. No matter what the policies may be, I do not get a sense of the outcomesacross the independent and Catholic systems to deal with those in the same way. I have noticedthat many independent schools do spend considerable time, energy, effort and funds upon someof these socially disadvantaged groups of students. But the point about student alienation andthose disaffected in schooling is quite clear. Most of my colleagues in South Australia whowork in the state system have stories to tell about students being transferred from the privateschools into the state system when, for a whole variety of reasons, they are deemed not to besuitable.

CHAIR —Thank you very much for appearing today.



[3.06 p.m.]HALLIDAY, Ms Susan, Assistant Director, Business Council of Australia, 10 QueensRoad, Melbourne, Victoria 3004McLEISH, Mrs Anne Louise, Director, National Industry Education Forum, PO Box7225, Melbourne, Victoria 3004

CHAIR —Welcome by teleconference to witnesses from the National Industry EducationForum and the Business Council. The committee prefers evidence to be given in public butshould you at any stage wish to give any evidence, part of evidence or answers in camera youmay make the request and the committee will consider the request. I point out, however, thatevidence given in camera may subsequently be made public by order of the Senate.

You are welcome to make some brief introductory remarks each and then we will proceedto questions.

Ms Halliday—I would like to note that I am participating as one of a number of employergroups that sit around the National Industry Education Forum table and that after a discussionthose groups agreed on the five points that we are going to be making today. As such, I amnot specifically representing the Business Council but rather a group of employer associationsas one of those who sit around the table.

CHAIR —Thank you for clarifying that. You could go ahead with your five points.Mrs McLeish—Yesterday the executive of the National Industry Education Forum had a

meeting. We discussed the issue that we are talking about today and I now read a statementthat has been agreed to.

NIEF supports arrangements for the funding and establishment of both government and non-government schools which: (1) ensure that all schools established are viable, and theestablishment of any school should not create a situation whereby access of students toeducation of a high standard is jeopardised, (2) ensure that schools, whether government ornon-government, are willing and able to deliver the national curriculum frameworks deemedby the community to be essential for all Australian students, (3) ensure that schools, whethergovernment or non-government, are accountable to their community and the public in generalabout the outcomes of their education programs, (4) ensure that schools meet national standardsdesigned to guarantee that students are taught in a safe and healthy environment, and (5)ensure that all schools employ teachers in accordance with nationally accredited competencystandards yet to be developed.

Those five points will form the basis of the conversation we have during this hearing.CHAIR —Thank you. Ms Halliday, did you have anything you wish to add?Ms Halliday—No, not at this stage.Senator O’BRIEN—Perhaps you will take the decision amongst yourselves as to who fields

my questions. I was trying to note the points down and I am not sure I did as good a job asI could have. Your first point was to do with ensuring that all schools established are viable.In coming to that view, did you have any views about the size of schools as to their viability,or is that just a general principle that you have adopted?

Mrs McLeish—It is a general principle and we did not talk about overall size or class size,but we hinged success or failure of that principle to the ability to deliver curriculum. I guesswe have an understanding that there are some elements of a good, comprehensive curriculumthat cannot be delivered to very small groups of children very successfully.



Senator O’BRIEN—I wonder if you would mind repeating your second point for me. I havea question on that but I just want to be clear on exactly what your second point was.

Mrs McLeish—Certainly. It is to ensure that schools, whether government or non-government, are willing and able to deliver the national curriculum framework deemed by thecommunity to be essential for all Australian students.

Senator O’BRIEN—How do you understand this bill affecting that proposal?Mrs McLeish—We are not certain about whether or not you can mandate independent

schools, or at least non-government schools, to deliver a curriculum even if the communitydeems it to be necessary to all students.

Senator O’BRIEN—Have you seen the bill itself?Mrs McLeish—No, we have not. I would like to add that we are particularly concerned on

that point about your ability to monitor the curriculum given to children being educated inhomes, and we suspect that the bill will allow that to happen much more readily.

CHAIR —Who spoke just then? Sorry, we are still having difficulty working out who iswho.

Mrs McLeish—Anne McLeish.Senator O’BRIEN—Who in particular should determine whether a school is viable? Should

it be a state body, the federal body or some other body; government, private?Mrs McLeish—We believe that there should be national guidelines that give you some sense

about how to establish schools, and that after that there should be a capacity to just monitorwhether or not they are fulfilling those guidelines. I think that this can be done cooperativelybetween both federal and state governments.

Senator O’BRIEN—Are you aware of the regulatory environment for schools in all of thestates?

Mrs McLeish—I do not know the detail of those. There are some differences in states, andI believe that it varies from a situation where some states focus only on registration of theteachers, through to others who might pay attention to things like the physical buildings thatthe students are educated in. But it varies quite markedly; that is our understanding.

Senator O’BRIEN—Your third point talks about ensuring that schools are accountable tothe community and public in general. How does that sit with an environment where, forexample, the establishment of schools with particular philosophies is to be permitted andfunded under this bill?

Mrs McLeish—That is fine. We believe that in all these things there is a balance and that,in fact, by providing information through those accountability mechanisms you are empoweringparents to make some choices amongst and between schools.

Senator O’BRIEN—If a school establishes itself and the community that have establishedit have a particular view, how do you suggest that they would be accountable to the publicin general for the teaching of that view as distinct from the teaching of a broad set of, say,community values?

Mrs McLeish—On those more sensitive issues I do not foresee a situation where that schoolwould have to let the broad public know every detail of what it was doing, but it would haveto satisfy the authorities that the students were not being jeopardised.

Senator O’BRIEN—When you say the community and public in general, are you talkingabout through public authority?



Mrs McLeish—In some instances, yes.Senator ALLISON—I am still a little unclear as to what your criticisms are of this bill.

I just wonder if you could outline those.Mrs McLeish—If you apply those principles to the bill and the bill prevents those sorts of

principles from being fulfilled, then that would be a criticism. If the bill does not prevent anyof those circumstances from being fulfilled, we would be quite comfortable. Our problem isthat we have not seen the bill in any detail. Those are the principles against which we wouldmeasure the bill’s success or failure. We suspect, though, that the bill has the effect of freeingup a bit too much the guidelines which determine whether schools should be established ornot and which determine how they are operating.

Senator ALLISON—Do you hold views about appropriate levels of enrolments ingovernment and non-government schools, or is that not something that your organisation isinterested in?

Mrs McLeish—We have not addressed the issues of numbers.Senator ALLISON—It was rather the proportions, I suppose. I gather that private schools

currently have 29 per cent of Australian children enrolled in them, and we are looking at anincrease of somewhere between two and an unknown figure. Do you have a view about thatin terms of proportion and the direction in which this bill is going?

Mrs McLeish—No.CHAIR —We are having a bit of difficulty in clarifying what your position actually is.

Perhaps I could test it with this question. If parents are prepared to use their savings andsacrifice to pay fees as well as to pay taxes towards the support of school systems, do youbelieve they should be restricted in any way in choosing a private school if that is their wish?

Mrs McLeish—No, we do not think that they should be restricted. But we think they shouldbe safeguarded so that when they do make that choice they are assured that there are someauthorities and some checks and balances on the establishment of that school. They shouldbe able to make their choice with some sense of safety about the overall quality of theeducation provision, whether it be in a government or a non-government school. We wouldwant to minimise the risks that parents take in selecting between government and non-government, and amongst those schools.

CHAIR —If the state has certain requirements for these schools, as has indeed always beenthe case and was only the case up to 1985, can you see any problem with that system of checkon your concerns?

Mrs McLeish—We would prefer that those guidelines be nationally based, so that they arean expression of cooperation between the national and state governments and they share theresponsibility of not only identifying the guidelines but also ensuring that they are adheredto.

Senator CARR—Mrs McLeish, I wonder if you are familiar with the Commonwealth’sbooklet entitledDelivery of Commonwealth Targeted and Quality Schooling Programs from1997, which goes to the issue of broad banding of the targeted programs like the disadvantagedschools programs.

Mrs McLeish—No, I am not familiar with that.Senator CARR—Are you familiar with the proposal to broad band the targeted programs?Mrs McLeish—In general terms, yes.



Senator CARR—Are you aware of the consequences that that change will have forVictoria?

Mrs McLeish—No, not in detail. It might alter the financial entitlements of Victoria and,if the criteria for each of those programs are altered, then it might let a different group ofschools have access to the money. But I have not seen anything in writing about that. I amguessing that that might be the effect.

Senator CARR—Do you normally get Department of Employment, Education, Trainingand Youth Affairs discussion papers on disadvantaged schools programs and other suchmatters?

Mrs McLeish—We get occasional papers, mostly related to changes or proposed changesin vocational education. We have not received for a very long time anything in relation to thespecial purpose programs.

Senator CARR—We are advised that the proposed changes for the allocative mechanismfor disadvantaged schools programs has been the subject of considerable communityconsultation. Have you been consulted in any way about the changes in the allocativemechanism?

Mrs McLeish—No.Senator CARR—Are you familiar with Professor Reece’s work in terms of the allocative

mechanism for distribution?Mrs McLeish—Not in detail. I have heard, via work that I have done recently with the

Catholic Education Office, that there is a proposed change to the indicators used to identifydisadvantaged schools. I am wondering if that is what you are talking about.

Senator CARR—I am indeed. But I was just trying to check to see how extensive theconsultation process has been with DEETYA. It would seem, given that your organisation hashad an involvement in this for some time, a little odd that you are not familiar with thesepapers. I know it is not your problem; it is obviously the restrictive nature of the distributionof these discussion papers. Thank you very much.

CHAIR —There being no further questions, I thank you very much for appearing today.Mrs McLeish—Thank you.

[3.27 p.m.]STAPLES, Mr Keith, President, The Australian Council of State School OrganisationsInc., c/- Hughes Primary School, Kent Street, Hughes, Australian Capital Territory 2605

CHAIR —Welcome to this teleconferencing session. The committee prefers evidence to begiven in public but should you at any stage wish to give your evidence, any part of yourevidence or answers to any questions in camera, you may ask to do so and the committee willconsider the request. I point out, however, that such evidence may subsequently be madepublic by order of the Senate.

Your submission is still coming to us. You are welcome to make some brief introductoryremarks to the committee and then we will proceed to questions.

Mr Staples—My apologies for not being able to be with you but my work commitmentsdo not permit it. I am sure you are aware of that situation with voluntary organisations. Weregard this matter as extremely important and are rather perturbed that a matter of suchsignificance is being rushed through the parliament in such a manner.



However, having said that, some of our fundamental concerns with this bill go to the veryheart, we believe, of what a government’s responsibility is to its citizens and where it sits interms of its responsibilities to international treaties and obligations that have been entered into.As well as that, we believe that this is an attempt to rob Peter to pay Paul rather than anattempt to address what is a national disgrace, and that is the low overall spending on schoolsin Australia compared with other OECD countries.

This bill is a clear attempt to shift money from the public to the private sector under theguise of increasing parental choice. However, the choice for some undermines the rights forothers. We believe this bill goes sufficiently to undermining what we believe is an absolutelyessential choice for a democratic country—the right to free, compulsory and secular education.I will return to this a bit later. In fact, we believe that there is a danger that the publiceducation systems in Australia could be residualised and marginalised as a result of the bill.

Particular features that are troublesome for us include the abandonment of planned provisionof schooling. We believe that not only have open and collaborative processes been abandonedbut there could be unnecessary duplication and public infrastructure created and, as I haveindicated previously, threats to universal provision and risks of raising the state aidconflagration all over again.

Furthermore, the proposal to transfer funds is based on a bogus calculation of costs whichare not, in fact, real. If one or two students leave a class at a school, the cost of that schoolis not reduced proportionately; it is reduced marginally. There is still a need for a classroom;there is still a need for a teacher; there is still a need for all those infrastructure costs. It isonly at the margins that there is any saving. We believe that that sort of calculation, whenapplied, would lead to the destabilising of the government school systems because they wouldbe in a constant state of reorganising and restructuring their schools and closing them.

As far as we are concerned, there is some interesting maths in it. If you are planning torecoup more than you directly pay, you get very quickly to a point where instead of theCommonwealth contributing, the states could be in debt to the Commonwealth. It is proposedthat the sum to recoup would be $700 or so. It has been estimated that the direct payment fromthe Commonwealth is $406. In that case, if 25 per cent of kids transferred out of governmentschools to non-government schools, the states would owe the Commonwealth money.

This further reduction should also be put in the context that public schools in Australia havecarried an unequal burden of the costs in recent years. While moneys from the Commonwealthare the main source of income for non-government schools, public schools rely on the stateand state budgets have been severely squeezed over recent years. The election of the coalitiongovernment did nothing to ease that, with a further reduction in moneys to the states. Publiceducation is a major budget item for state governments and they have all been squeezed. Onthe other hand, in recent years, the Commonwealth has increased money which has gone,disproportionately, to non-government schools. So, over the last few years, they have enjoyeda period of relative stability with gradually increasing funds, whereas government schools havehad the very opposite. This proposal will make it worse.

This should be seen in the context of increasing gaps between rich and poor in Australiaand increasing numbers of children living in poverty. As we know, poverty is the greatestindicator of educational disadvantage. There are other major disadvantage factors but povertyis the constant. Further, we believe that an open slather policy for the new schools willadvantage the strong. Based on the notion of markets and competition, you have to be in the



marketplace. You have to be able to buy before you can do it and you have to find somebodythat has a product you want to buy. We do not believe that this is occurring.

Finally, the proposal contains the capacity for double standards over the opening andcontinuing of government schools, compared to non-government schools. States and territorieshave very stringent requirements before they will open new schools, many times larger thanwhat was required in the past of non-government schools. This bill does nothing to addressthat. Our main concern would be that there is a danger that a public alternative for all kidswill disappear.

ACTING CHAIR (Senator Carr) —Would you be familiar with the Victorian government’squality provision framework?

Mr Staples—Very well, yes.ACTING CHAIR —Were you a member of the new schools committee?Mr Staples—No, I was not.ACTING CHAIR —What is the extent of your familiarity with the quality provision

framework?Mr Staples—I was employed professionally doing work around it. Do you wish me to state

specifically what I was doing?ACTING CHAIR —I am just trying to get a feel for what you were involved in.Mr Staples—I chaired a task force and subsequently a school closure committee.ACTING CHAIR —Was it a provision of that framework at the time to specify enrolment

minimums for public schools of 500 students for a stand-alone senior secondary college?Mr Staples—Certainly they attempted to close one that had 485 students, that is Northland.ACTING CHAIR —Yes, that is right. And was it the case for primary schools that the figure

was around 170?Mr Staples—It was, although it did vary somewhat, on circumstance. But the capacity to

have straight age grades of at least 25 students was part of the framework.Senator CARR—In terms of new secondary schools in Victoria and new primary schools,

say, in growth corridors, is there a minimum requirement of 450 students for a primary schooland 1,100 for a secondary school?

Mr Staples—That is my understanding.Senator CARR—That it is a requirement?Mr Staples—Yes, that is my understanding of it.Senator CARR—Let us turn to non-government schools in Victoria, which is the only state

in Australia to have any criteria for student numbers in terms of registration of private schools.Is it the case that Victoria requires 20 students in a private primary school and 10 studentsper year in a private secondary school?

Mr Staples—That is my understanding, yes.Senator CARR—Given your expertise in this area, are you familiar with the arguments as

to why there is such a vast difference between these figures?Mr Staples—I do not know that you can call them arguments. The government says that

it is not viable, economically or educationally, to open schools within its system below thatsize. You would be all too familiar with the news from Victoria that another round of school



closures is about to add to the 300 and something in the last four years. Apparently, theeconomic and educational viability argument does not hold when you turn to non-governmentschools. As I said, I do not know that there is an argument, it is just a contradiction, it seemsto me.

Senator CARR—Yes. Does your organisation support national registration principles ona uniform and consistent basis for private schools?

Mr Staples—Private and government, we would be quite happy with, yes.Senator CARR—What should the overlap be between public and private schools in terms

of minima requirements?Mr Staples—One would need to have some flexibility, given the spread of population across

Australia and the need to guarantee all kids access. But it is very hard to argue that,particularly in non-government schools, some of which are almost totally funded out of thepublic purse, they should not have the same criteria as those applying to government schools.

Senator CARR—In the same region, presumably.Mr Staples—Yes, certainly.Senator CARR—Given that the state—that is, the public sector—has an obligation to

provide a universal, high quality service for all Australians, no matter where they live, it doesimpose, one would presume, certain requirements on the public sector that are not imposedon the private sector. Would you agree?

Mr Staples—Absolutely. One of the things is that government schools take all comers. Tothe best of my knowledge, the non-government school system is not prepared to accept that.

Senator CARR—Do you believe that these measures support that commitment to providea public sector based on universal quality access?

Mr Staples—Quite clearly not. Our submission, when you get it, will say that the issue ofquality will disappear. It will be the holy dollar that drives provision within the governmentschool system; school quality will no longer be relevant.

Senator CARR—Are you familiar with the enrolment benchmark adjustment?Mr Staples—It gives benchmarking a bad name, does it not?Senator CARR—Why do you say that?Mr Staples—I do not understand what there is that is a benchmark in it. It is an attempt

to recoup four times what you are directly paying on the basis that, by dragging kids out ofthe government school system, you are saving the state an equivalent amount.

Senator CARR—Did you say ‘four times’?Mr Staples—Is not the direct Commonwealth contribution to children in government schools

around $400 but yet they are going to recoup $1,700 to pay for the expansion of the non-government school system?

Senator CARR—It depends how you measures these things.Mr Staples—I suppose it does, yes.Senator CARR—Because there are moneys that are paid through the FAGS. In fact, 46 per

cent of—Mr Staples—Yes, well, that is interesting, is it not?



Senator CARR—Are you familiar with the argument that the states will have more moneyas a result of this program because the Commonwealth is taking back only $1,700 of the$3,400 provided?

Mr Staples—The supposed savings?Senator CARR—Yes.Mr Staples—Is that not an incentive to force kids out of the government school system into

the non-government school system?Senator CARR—Given your familiarity with the Victorian education system, would you

be able to indicate to the committee how much this system will actually cost the state ofVictoria? The New South Wales government has estimated between $20 million and $30million extra will have to be found. There will actually be a cost to the state of New SouthWales.

Mr Staples—To implement this system?Senator CARR—Yes. What would the impact be in Victoria?Mr Staples—The Victorian government does not find extra money, it just takes it away.

We are seeing already in Victoria the anticipated impact of this. We are seeing the massiveclosure of more schools and the sacking of more teachers. This is what I was alluding to. Thisis how you permanently destabilise the system. Each year you reduce more and more you makeyour own system non-viable and eventually it implodes.

Senator CARR—Thank you.Senator ALLISON—I have a question not directly related to the bill but it is in another

way and it concerns announcements made over the last week about the ranking of schools fortheir literacy standards. How do you think that fits with this bill in terms of encouragingparents to transfer to the private sector? What is your view about that and do you think it hasa bearing on this bill?

Mr Staples—This is particularly important. It is particularly important in terms ofdisadvantaged communities and it is important in terms of what we have known for 35 or moreyears about who wins and who loses in the schooling stakes in Australia. It is very easy tomake it appear that schools serving low socioeconomic or disadvantaged communities are notachieving well because we know that on the supposed tests and measures those kids’ literacyability is at risk whereas schools in more affluent areas will appear better.

Simplistic comparisons made will destroy schools doing absolutely terrific jobs in verydifficult circumstances, as has happened in Britain. You see the closure of schools in thoseareas and the end product is that participation rates drop. We already have a problem inAustralia with participation rates even for children in the compulsory years. This will makeit worse. League tables are the crudest of unfair devices.

Senator ALLISON—Can you imagine a situation—and this was alluded to earlier—wherewe have different requirements in terms of enrolment for schools? Can you anticipate asituation where in a country town there might be a state school which is forced to closebecause it loses a small number of students to a new, private school either in that town or closeto it thereby leaving that community without any publicly run school?

Mr Staples—Absolutely. This is one of the real dangers, particularly where you have stategovernments putting pressure on minimum enrolment sizes but you can open non-government



schools that are much smaller. So the guaranteed access of kids to free, secular education isgoing to be denied.

Can I just go back to your earlier point. There was something else I wanted to say aboutthe league tables. The Australian Council of State School Organisations has worked with theAustralian Parents Council, which is the non-government school parent body, and neither groupsupports league tables. Both groups think they are totally bogus. That is right across the board.As a matter of fact, until Dr Kemp raised them earlier this week I thought that issue had dieda natural death. Sorry, I have digressed.Senator ALLISON—No, that is fine. On the question about the broad banding of equityprograms, how confident are you that there will be adequate consultation at the state levelabout moving funds between programs according to priority and, say, need?

Mr Staples—Who will be consulted?Senator ALLISON—I guess I am asking you for your confidence that in the existing system

there will be consultation.Mr Staples—I think what you can say is that, over the last few years, most systems have

abolished consultation. It is now in the hands of the bureaucracies, and they know what is bestfor people. In particular, one of the things that ACSSO is most disappointed at is the way inwhich local communities participated in those programs at the local school level. It is ourbelief that, if you are going to solve educational disadvantage and you are going to achievebetter outcomes for kids, the programs themselves have to be transformational. It is not expertscoming and delivering, but it is actually engaging the people themselves in attacking theproblems and working on them.

Senator ALLISON—Can I just clarify that? You are saying that there are no equityconsultative groups operating in the states any more?

Mr Staples—In some states they still continue, but they have nothing like the status orimportance they had. They once were a key feature of it. They will now be more a referencegroup than a body which is driving the process and the programs forward.

Senator ALLISON—Can you tell us in which states they do still operate at least?Mr Staples—Not off the top of my head, but I could find that out for you.Senator ALLISON—Thank you.CHAIR —Thank you very much for appearing today.

[3.50 p.m.]BAKER, Ms Beverly May, Publicity Officer, Federation of Parents and CitizensAssociations of New South Wales, 210 Crown Street, East Sydney, New South Wales 2010MOLESWORTH, Mr Rodney Peter Carleton, Metropolitan Vice- President, Federationof Parents and Citizens Associations of New South Wales, 210 Crown Street, East Sydney,New South Wales

CHAIR —Welcome. The committee prefers evidence to be given in public, but if at any timeyou wish to give any evidence, part of your evidence or answers to any questions in camerayou may make the request and the committee will consider the request. However, suchevidence may subsequently be made public by order of the Senate. You are welcome to makesome brief introductory comments, and then we will go to questions.



Mr Molesworth —The federation has not yet submitted its written submission to thiscommittee, but intends to. It is our intention to not reproduce the contents of that submission,but rather to give supplementary information to that.

To begin with, it is important to note that we represent parents of 757,000 students in NewSouth Wales public schools. The precise number of parents that indicates is not known, butit is well over 800,000 people. It is often asked whether or not we do effectively representthose people. I suppose that is a very difficult question for all of us who claim to representpeople to answer. Certainly we would respond, and have been accustomed to responding, tothat notion with at least the proviso that we should not be the only person who is asked toensure that they do so.

There is one area in which we feel that we have failed to represent the true interest ofparents and that is to carry forward the very strong belief of the vast majority of those parentsin the absolute necessity for a vibrant or even exuberant public education system.

We have another failure with which we would like to commence and that is our failure totransmit to our constituents the full depth and extent of the changes which have taken placein relation to public education and which are proposed to take place. One of the mostextraordinary experiences which a representative of parents can have is to go to a school withan analysis of the current budget and associated measures and to receive the shocked anddisbelieving response of parents. The most usual response is ‘Who has allowed this tohappen?’ Of course, there is an extent to which it is we who have allowed that to happen andit is our intention that that should rapidly change. One of the things we would like to ask ofthis committee is an extension of time for submissions by individuals and small groups.

CHAIR —It is not possible because of the timing of the bill if schools are to get the billionsof dollars we have to allocate next year.

Mr Molesworth —If I may just pursue that point for a minute, is it the intention of thiscommittee to report on the 1 November?

CHAIR —No, not 1 November but we have before us two major pieces of legislation. Thisone and the higher ed which we have to report by the 23 November. It is going to beincredibly difficult to do it and funding involving billions of dollars to higher ed and stateschools are dependent on it reaching the deadline.

Mr Molesworth —Obviously the committee will decide as it sees fit. The basis of oursubmission for an extension of time for one week is for one-page to two-page submissionsby individuals and small groups not submissions which need to be carefully—

Senator CARR—Mr Molesworth, the public advertisement which was placed in theSydneyMorning Herald, the Australian and the MelbourneAge last weekend specified thatsubmissions should reach the committee by the 30 October. However, it has been the practiceof this committee in recent years to accept submissions, particularly the ones that you arespeaking of, a little time after the official cut-off point. We will need obviously time to writea report and we are due to report to the Senate by 25 November. Clearly that is the time framein which we are working and I give that information to you to make an assessment in termsof the advice that you tender to your members.

Mr Molesworth —Thank you, Senator, that is the best we could hope for. Obviously withinthat time frame or in the time frame which we were requesting we cannot expect to contactall of 800,000 people or even all of 2,200 schools in New South Wales but it is our intention



to do the best that we can and we hope that we will display a level of support for publiceducation that will give some pause to our elected representatives.

The committee may be surprised at the level of confidence that I express in being able toelicit this kind of response in the context of so-called evidence of widespread discontent withthe public system. We contest this head on. Most of the evidence is anecdotal and the rest isbased on deeply flawed opinion polling. None control for the most important variables. Thefirst of these is parental fear for the future of their offspring whether this fear is founded ornot. Second, is the desire in parents to receive assurance that they are taking the best coursefor their children and the third is the desire of parents to effectively counter feelings of guilt,inadequacy and fear, and fear of criticism, in relation to their care of their children. It seemsto us that what we have been facing is not a genuine desire to discover the real wishes ofparents but a genuine desire to create a climate in which these natural fears of parents willbe exacerbated. Existence of a private alternative to a public system both creates these fearsand provides an avenue for their easy resolution. I pay therefore I care. It is our contentionthat the basis on which these provisions, and provisions of the previous government, whichare inimical to the continued provision of an excellent public education system, have not beenfully articulated and have not been properly tested. It is our submission that this should bedone before any further changes, particularly changes of the degree which we are talking about,should be undertaken.

The basis of the government’s proposals is the increase in parental choice. The mostimportant aspect of the choice argument is that the desire by governments to increase supportfor private provision predates any talk of general dissatisfaction with public provision. Therehas never been any articulated dissatisfaction with the publicness of public education. Allparents will express dissatisfaction, nervousness and worry in relation to the future of theirchildren. This occurs in the private system and it occurs in the public system. We have yetto have any firm evidence to note that any articulation of dissatisfaction in the public systemrelates to the fact that it is public or that this would be removed by making it private. Anybelief that any dissatisfaction resulted from the lack of competition between public schoolsor between public schools and other schools, if it exists at all, has only developed in responseto the vigorous articulation of that connection by those committed to it.

In summary, parents will always care about their children and will always be vulnerable tothe politics of fear in relation to their future. Many parents will seek a positional advantagefor their children, but in varying degrees and with varying levels of evaluation. The lack ofgovernment support for the public system is a vital factor in the opinions of parents. This billis an important move to signal lack of support at a Commonwealth level for the concept ofpublic schooling. The vast majority of parents, including parents of children in non-governmentschools, for a number of reasons, see a thriving public education system as the context inwhich their children will learn and part of the context of the country they will live in.

The question that has to be approached is: is the public system thriving? If not, why not?And what is to be done? The policies of the government indicate that it is not thriving; thereason it is not thriving is that it is public; and their solution is to increase the provision ofprivate education. The federation of P&Cs totally disagrees with this proposition and thinksthat the cause lies entirely elsewhere. I am not going to refer to the OECD figures, which Iam sure you are all familiar with and have articulated arguments to dispute, except to ask:where is the justification of the policy they represent? How is it that everyone is out of stepbut us?



We are waiting for the accountability for the decisions that leave us at the bottom of thelist for public funding for public education and at the top of the list for public funding forprivate education. What do we know that the rest of the world does not know? What is theoutcome accountability for the billions of dollars that Australian governments have spent toachieve a shift of a few percentage points in the public-private mix of enrolments?

It seems to us that vast policy changes have been and continue to be made without sufficientjustification, without sufficient public accountability and without sufficient discussion in thecommunity. We know that our members do not understand the import of these provisions. Weknow that, if they are going to find out, there is only way, and that is that we, somehow—avoluntary organisation dependent on the sale of lamingtons—are going to work out how tocommunicate with 800,000 people effectively. We can send a letter to all of them, but thatis obviously not going to be enough.

What we are faced with is a situation where there is highly contestable evidence ofdissatisfaction with public education but none that relates to its being public. There is noevidence of parent satisfaction in the private sector. Public schools are public. If someone hasa complaint about a public school, they will make it public; if someone has a complaint abouta private school, it may never become public, and mostly does not.

Certainly, from my own experience, I have a great deal of anecdotal evidence ofdissatisfaction with private education. I know that none of this has ever been made public.So we do not actually know why it is that parents are moving their children from the publicsystem to the private system and we submit that it is time that this question was answered,and answered fully. Our hypothesis as to the reason for this is radically different from thatof the prevailing ideology. Whatever is the opinion of the committee of our view, we canassure you that you will be hearing more of it in the future.

I think it is time that the Commonwealth government took steps to publicly justify what itsees as the future of education in Australia. Those things which the government seems to besaying are wrong with education in Australia are certainly not what we see to be wrong witheducation in Australia. What we see to be wrong is that universal education, since achievingmassive gains in literacy and numeracy in its early years, has failed to go on to produce thequality of outcomes for targeted groups. At present, the picture is dismal. Both governmentand non-government schooling does a debatable, but grossly insufficient, amount to changethe SES rankings from which students emerge.

We suggest that there is one founding reason for this, and it is contained in one astoundingfigure. The New South Wales department of education spends, from all sources, 1.1 per centof its total budget on attempts to rectify educational disadvantage resulting from SES status.We are expected to believe that this is the extent of the problem. If we knocked off 1.1 percent of the total expenditure on public education in New South Wales, said that that wassufficient to deal with all comers and to provide them with an education except for those thatrequired special attention because of educational disadvantage, and then turned around andsaid, ‘Oh, well, we are going to solve the whole of that problem now by an increase of 1.1per cent’, we would say that that was ludicrous.

I have not gone into the detail of the bill. This will be dealt with in the submission, and,in any case, we all know the basis of it. The idea that this is going to be fixed by shiftingfunds from the public to the private sector, that the question of parent choice is going to dealwith this situation, that the economic and social future of the country is going to be sufficientlydealt with by the kinds of provisions which are contained in this bill, is clearly not the case.



It is clearly not the opinion of our federation and it is clearly not the opinion of ourconstituents.

We are suggesting, and it is our submission, that the status quo should be preserved untilsuch time as an inquiry of Karmel proportions looks at the whole question of publicexpenditure on education both in the private and in the public sphere, articulates the reasonsfor the kinds of changes which we have seen in the past and the kinds of changes which areproposed in the future, and looks at the whole question of how education should be providedfor the future of our country.

That is the end of our submission at this stage. We are open for questions.Senator CARR—I will start with the smaller aspects of this bill, and they are the targeted

and quality school programs and the proposals contained within this bill for changes to theallocative mechanism. That is part of this so-called broad banding. Has your organisation beenconsulted about these changes?

Ms Baker—Yes, our organisation was consulted, if consultation means being told aboutthem. We put forward a very strong submission in opposition. The notion that you can sortof lump a disadvantage into a heap and say that it is fixed is just a nonsense to ourorganisation. There are factors and compounding factors. The way the special purposeprograms are organised currently identifies each of those targeted groups. So you could havesomeone from a disadvantaged background who is disabled and who lives in isolation, andthey would get some kind of financial support across those three by lumping them all togetherand moving it around.

There has been no appreciable increase in that money. There has been no way to deal withthe fact that we know that millions of children are living below the poverty line. We knowthat most of those children are in public schools. There has been no identification of thegenuine needs within our society. The notion that you can just lump poor people, ethnic peopleand disabled people into one heap and say, ‘We can fix them all up,’ is just absolute nonsense.

Senator CARR—This particular proposal talks about changing the way in which moneyis spent on disadvantaged schools in country area programs and it suggests that there shouldbe a new index adopted in terms of census data. Are you familiar with those changes?

Mr Molesworth —Yes, but not fully familiar. Essentially the objection which has beenarticulated by our organisation is that the size of the sample being the poorest 16 per cent isnot the size of the group which is intended to be assisted. It seems to be a deliberatemanipulation to use a larger sample than the sample which is intended to be affected by theprogram because the more tightly you match the sample to the people who are going to beaffected, the more of that money goes to the public schools because the poorest people arein the public sector. To assess which schools are to receive assistance on the basis of a widersample—I mean, if you went to 50 per cent you would virtually equalise the total amount ofmoney which goes to each sector. We regard this as a deliberate manipulation of statisticalevidence for the purposes of achieving a desired result.

The other thing which we are particularly concerned about in relation to these programs isthe loss of the concept of disadvantage. The idea of using literacy as the indicator forapplication of funds, we consider to be dangerous. It does not of course require states toallocate the money in that way, but it does in fact remove the principal crux on which thefunding rests from disadvantage to performance, and we are in opposition to that.



Senator CARR—Are you aware of the department’s recommendations to discard the currentindex of disadvantaged methodology?

Mr Molesworth —Yes, but we are not fully aware of—Senator CARR—Could I perhaps get an understanding of what information has been

provided to you by the government in terms of this consultative process? Were you providedwith a copy of the paperDelivery of Commonwealth Targeted and Quality Schooling Programsfrom 1997?

Ms Baker—I am sorry. I do not know. We received information about this consultationyesterday afternoon and we have been on the back foot since. We do not know whether thathas come into the office or not.

Senator CARR—This particular document was distributed by the Department ofEmployment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs.

Mr Molesworth —Can you tell me when that was distributed?Senator CARR—The provisions are in the bill and there was a letter circulated—I do not

have the actual date on the original letter, but sometime in August.Mr Molesworth —I believe we did not receive that. Most of the information which I have

transferred in the last few minutes has been gained via other parent organisations, not directlyfrom any publication, but I cannot actually say that that was not received by us.

Ms Baker—ACSSO, the Australian Council of State School Organisations, was the onlyparent group that received that. The time frame was such that simply there was no time forthem to get it to their affiliates—there are 11 state affiliates—and get out into the widercommunity so ACSSO on behalf of those state affiliates put together a submission.

Senator CARR—The department wrote to organisations and asked for comments, saying:The Commonwealth Minister for Schools, Vocational Education and Training will be making finaldecisions on allocative mechanisms in the context of draft legislation which will be introduced into theparliament after the budget.

It goes on to say:In doing so, the minister will take into account any comments made as part of this process. The ministerwill also consider whether transitional arrangements may be appropriate to phase in the revised allocativemechanisms.

What you are saying is there was no time for you to comment?Ms Baker—And there is no time for us to comment on this either, in terms of the needs

of our organisation. We have 2,000 schools, whose parent groups meet once a month. Awindow of three weeks is simply not enough. I spent an hour and a half—I spent 150 phonecalls last night ringing up key personnel in New South Wales across the state. Half of themwere at meetings so I could not even speak to them about this issue. The other half had theirmeetings last week and they do not get another meeting for a month. That is outside the cut-offdate.

What we have said is just do something, anything, write and say that you defend publicschools, that you believe that they are important. The nature of the information is socomplicated, so complex that you need time to work through it to see what it is going to mean.We do not have time. We are a voluntary organisation with jobs of our own. We are tryingto take on board highly technical information that was hidden somewhere other than the budgetfor the educational portfolio. I mean, you first go and look at the bottom line and it appearsthat there are no fundamental changes so you back off. Suddenly, you find out that lurking



somewhere else is something that is absolutely going to change forever the nature of thefunding of schools. It takes a while to wander through and find that. You have to rely onpeople who have got that expertise to dig it out for you because it is not where you think itmight be. You would think that the attack on education would lurk in education but in factit does not. It lurks in other places apart from the abolition of the new schools policy.

Mr Molesworth —The other aspect is that there are several levels which this has to gothrough. If the minister contacts ACCSO, ACCSO has to contact each affiliate, and eachaffiliate has to discuss the matter with its executive which then has to contact, in our case,2,200 schools which then have to contact 800,000 parents. The idea that this can occur in aperiod of weeks is ludicrous. What we are trying to do in response to this, what we are alwaystrying to do, is to do the absolutely impossible. We think it is an extraordinary thing for agovernment to suggest that it is consulting when it is consulting with something as diverseand disparate as a parent community in a time frame such as this.

Senator CARR—In the case of Victoria, there will be nearly a 12 per cent loss of funds.Ms Baker—Yes.Senator CARR—In terms of the targeted and quality programs, this is a very small

proportion of the overall budget framework. But I think the principle is very important. Interms of the larger criteria, given that this is a $14 billion bill, how adequate has theconsultation been about the broader issues of the abolition of the new schools policy?

Ms Baker—Absolutely none. It is valueless, absolutely valueless. We had an enormousconsultation process to develop the new schools policy under the previous government, whichwas fairly vexed anyway, and now that process, bad as it was, has simply been rejected. Therehas been a lack of planned provision. Where was it said, in terms of any discussion in thepublic arena, that there would be no planned provision, that there would be open slather toopt out and set up boutique schools wherever and have it funded not only out of the publicpurse but out of the public education purse? There has been no discussion of that. I think thatlevel of discussion would be absolutely resisted by parents from both non-government andgovernment schools.

Senator ALLISON—I want to clarify what you are saying. I think you are suggesting thatyou would like to see this states grants bill amended such that it would provide the status quofunding for a 12-month period in order to give sufficient time for a longer consultative processand an inquiry.

Mr Molesworth —A detailed consultative process.Senator ALLISON—Is that what you are suggesting?Mr Molesworth —That is our submission.Senator ALLISON—You talked earlier about the fears of parents and I have certainly had

indications of that myself. This week there was an announcement about the need for stateschools to operate in a so-called competitive climate, or in an area of competitive neutrality,and there was also the announcement that there would be ranking of literacy levels at schools.Do you see those two statements and announcements as being factors in this piece oflegislation? How did you feel about that in terms of reassurances for your members?

Mr Molesworth —We consider that the whole doctrine of competition between schools, andcompetitive testing between students, is part of another agenda altogether. We do not believethat there has been any evidence articulated that it is educationally better to have either ofthese things. It is one of the things that would be of primary concern if the inquiry is set up.



We believe that the majority of the alleged justifications for this kind of change in the wayin which education is provided are ideologically based, are not even properly articulated asa hypothesis, and have certainly not being tested at all. The only extent to which they havebeen tested is in an ad hoc way by those countries that have gone further down this line thanwe have. The results there are uniformly bad; uniformly not what parents, certainly in NewSouth Wales, want; and uniformly not what a sensible society would want for its educationsystem.

We do not say that there is no place for competition in a society, but we do say thateducation should be judged on its capacity to achieve educational results. It should not beforced into a mould which is taken from some other context altogether, assuming thateducational results will follow. We would like to see the government and those otherproponents of competitive provision, both of schools and between students in schools, fullyarticulating it and justifying it, and everybody being given an opportunity to comment on it,and it not being brought in and our being left with no opportunity to have a system which doesnot operate on that basis.

Ms Baker—The question for us was really about what is its purpose. If you test students,as we did in the national literacy survey, to establish a standard and a benchmark, that is onepurpose, and there is some validity in that. It discovers where you are starting from and howyou would map improvements against that point. If, then, you decide that the sum total of aschool’s performance is how they rank on this scale, you have got to ask yourself: what isthe purpose of this? What is the purpose of a school with students who are already sufferingenormous literacy problems? We do not need the test to demonstrate where those schools are.We know where those schools are. They are in socioeconomically deprived areas. They arein areas of isolation. The evidence is in as to where these kids are.

How is ranking the schools and putting them on a matrix of 100 at one end and nil at thebottom going to help those students one iota? When you have got a normal curve with a meanand 50 per cent are above it and 50 per cent are on or below it, in this market theory, thetheory is that those that are above the average will walk away from their schools and choosea school that is above the average. If you take that to its absolute end, it is ludicrous. You gofrom 2,000 schools down to 1,000 schools. You do the test again. Fifty per cent of those areabove the average and 50 per cent of those are below the average. So, with that 50 per centshift, you end up with a super-school with absolutely everybody in it, and it is still going togive you the same stuff. It is a nonsense argument. It is not thought through. It is designedfor one purpose: to artificially create a notion of competition.

When you have a school in an area like Cabramatta, we know that the literacy levels in thatschool compared to a school in North Sydney are low. But when you actually have a look atwhat that school is achieving, when you have a look at what the students come in with, whenyou have a look at what they need to do to give the students basic English literacy levels, youfind that they are working three or four times as hard as somebody at Newington, where thekids walk in with a reading level of eight anyway because they are surrounded by the cultureand the language. Yet we will make a matrix and we will say, ‘Look at this school. Isn’t itterrific? Look at that one. Isn’t it not?’ What an insult! It is an insult to the children who arethere, an insult to the parents who are struggling to raise funds to support their kids, and aninsult to the teachers in that system who are working extremely hard.

Senator ALLISON—So, if it is not competition or exposure that will improve literacylevels, what is it?



Ms Baker—The evidence is actually there. The very people who propose this competitionpolicy have the essence in it. They choose schools that have a lower pupil-teacher ratio. Theypay from their own pocket enough to guarantee the resources for their children to lower thepupil-teacher ratio, to individualise that teaching at an earlier stage, yet argue that for stateschools—the schools that educate all comers, irrespective of their background—it is quite okayto have 30 in a class but, given an opportunity, they will pay for 14 in a class for themselves.We need to spend more money on education, not less. We need to target those early years ofschooling absolutely tightly. We need to increase the ability of teachers to work individuallywith young students. We need to work on smaller groups so students are not marginalised orisolated or swamped in the sheer number, so that they are brave enough to experiment withthis new thing called ‘learning how to read’. It is very important that we actually individualisethat learning at an earlier age so that kids do not fall through the cracks.

Mr Molesworth —The other aspect of that is that one of the major ways in which peopleare marginalised and in which people lose the confidence in the ability to learn is by beingrelegated. Students of low SES status who arrive at schools which are largely middle-classinstitutions suffer considerably from being relegated from the start. I am talking educationallyhere. Students from advantaged backgrounds arrive at school with a familiarity with the kindof institution that school is, a familiarity with the kinds of processes of learning, even theprocesses of sitting still, which students from other backgrounds do not have. The processwhereby those students gain the confidence to learn in the rather restricted environment in ourschools is something which has to be paid for.

We simply cannot say that the same amount of money is going to achieve the confidenceand love of learning in all children. What we are talking about is not increasing the funds tothose schools that cater largely for students that come from advantaged backgrounds; we aretalking about greatly increasing the funds of those schools that cater for children that comefrom disadvantaged backgrounds. At the moment there are quite insufficient funds within thestate of New South Wales to do this.

The kinds of provisions which are contained in this bill are intended to make it moredifficult for schools that deal with those students to achieve that result. The levels ofcompetition which are going to be placed in schools are going to further disadvantage thosestudents that already have a confidence deficit to make up, simply by the cultural backgroundfrom which they come being different from the culture which is promoted within schools.

Senator ALLISON—To turn for a moment to the abandonment of the new schools policy,we heard this morning that the registration requirements imposed by states would see that therewas not a blow-out, if you like, of new schools emerging. What is your view of thatlikelihood?

Mr Molesworth —Our view is that it certainly could happen. There is nothing to stop eachstate from placing in its state a provision which completely duplicates the provisions of thenew schools policy at a Commonwealth level. The idea, of course, is that not all states willwant to do that. There certainly are states in the Commonwealth which will be delighted tohave no restrictions, or very few restrictions, at least, on new schools opening. Naturally, thereis a funding questions for states in relation to a blow-out of new schools, and all states willbe considering that at some level.

What we are bordering on here is the question of Commonwealth responsibility for schools,for national goals in schooling, and whether or not the Commonwealth ought to abdicate itsresponsibility for the provision of new schools. It is certainly our contention that the



Commonwealth should not abdicate that responsibility. If the Commonwealth does abdicatethat responsibility, we will certainly be campaigning for it to be reinstituted at a state levelin our state. But that is no substitute for the Commonwealth fulfilling what we see to be itsresponsibility in this area.

Senator ALLISON—Would you say that that is another reason for delaying the decisionabout the new schools policy for 12 months, to see how the states will react and what sortsof measures they would put in place in terms of planned educational provision?

Mr Molesworth —I do not know what the states are likely to do. I repeat my position: Ithink the Commonwealth has a responsibility to deal with this and I think the Commonwealthhas a responsibility to inquire, for its own purposes, as to whether or not it should haveplanned provision and should receive all submissions in relation to that. If the process is tobe repeated at a state level, then certainly we would support that and we would makesubmissions at a state level. At the moment, the state level provisions are narrow and relatenot to the broader policy situation, as did the new schools policy. Perhaps it is timely that thestates have that in place in any case. But I do not think that alters the situation that we saythat the Commonwealth ought to state its position in relation to the new schools and oughtto have a policy in place as to what it intends.

CHAIR —Thank you very much for appearing today.Senator CARR—Hang on, I have not finished my questions. There was an interjection

which contained a series of questions.CHAIR —Senator Carr.Senator CARR—I was speaking about the level of consultation with regard to these

proposals, and you basically indicated that there has been very little—next to none, in fact.What was your organisation’s involvements with the McKinnon review process regarding thenew schools policy?

Ms Baker—We were quite actively involved in that. We were a little bit alarmed to seethat a submission representing the voice of the 2,000 state schools was reduced to onesubmission, when from six fundamentalist Christian schools there were six submissions. Itskewed the mix slightly. ACSSO was also actively involved in the response to that submission.We were not happy with the end result, at any level of the changes. But in terms of what weare faced with now, that seemed like a golden age.

Senator CARR—McKinnon makes a number of points about the importance of theCommonwealth leadership roles in the provision of comprehensive, universal education. Doyou support those comments?

Ms Baker—We certainly do. The difficulty for us was that the preface and the argumentscontained within the document did not seem to be reflected in the recommendations. Wesupported virtually everything he had to say in terms of the preamble and the backup, and thenthe recommendations came, which just was an odd mix. In terms of what he had to say aboutthe necessity for public provision of planned provision, of government requirement andresponsibility to actively participate in that, we completely supported it.

Senator CARR—The supporters of the government’s proposal maintain an ideologicalposition that this is only about freedom of choice—that somehow or another education canbe reduced to a commodity, that parents should be able to buy and exercise choice as theywould for any other commodity, whether they are buying a box of cornflakes or a motor car.What is your view about this notion of choice? Do you believe there ought be freedom of



choice, and to what extent should that choice be exercised at the expense of others in termsof the choices that are made, for instance, for people that wish to use the public sector?

Ms Baker—That is the whole crux of the argument. Choice for one means lack of choicefor someone else. The choice of people to opt out of a public system and have the money fromthe public system go with them actually downsizes the choice that is available for people whoactively choose to stay in a public system. Seventy-one per cent of the nation’s populationchoose to stay in a public education system. In spite of the enormous amount of funding andencouragement for them to move across, they choose to stay there.

Now, as punishment for that, they are going to have to pay for everybody who experiments,because the strength of a public education system is that you can experiment. You can takea boutique school and, if it does not work for you, you can put your kid back in the publiceducation system, knowing that it is going to be well funded or reasonably well funded, lookedafter—that they are going to be safe in that environment. The more people are encouragedto choose boutiques, experiment, isolation, single world views, whatever particular peculiarityyou have as a view on the world—the flat earth school that will encourage your child tobelieve that the world is flat, those sorts of movements and choices—the more it will be tothe detriment of a society, and it is the society paying for the education so they ought to behaving a far greater say in what they think is important for people.

Senator CARR—You mentioned religious fundamentalism as a component of thosechoosing to opt out of the system. I put this to you, somewhat provocatively, I believe: is itnot the right of everybody, of small groups, to actually break away from the system if theyso choose?

Mr Molesworth —I think the answer to that lies in the extent to which the government isrequired to subsidise choice. The gravest aspect of this bill is that it moves towards the notionthat everybody not only has the right to choice but has the right to the funding which iscollected for that purpose to be redirected to them.

The end result of this is that if I do not like sharing the pavement with somebody else I amentitled to extract from public funding my share of the cost of providing pavements and I canput that towards building a street for myself. If I am not satisfied with the way in which thecountry is defended then I am able to extract my share of it. This is what a voucher systemmeans; this is what we are moving towards. We are moving towards a situation where we aresaying to citizens that they have a right to a certain amount of money from the public purseto carry out their purposes and they can spend it where they like.

The thing is that this is not being provided equally. The things which I wish to extract fromthe public purse are not being offered to me. We are targeting education, we are targetinghealth as areas in which there is somehow a notional amount of public money which anindividual is entitled to, and they are entitled to take that away and do something else withit. We are totally opposed to this idea because, simply, it does not work.

It is the equivalent not of outsourcing your garbage collection in your local government area;it is the equivalent of saying that a certain proportion of your rates is for garbage collectionand if you wish to do something else with your garbage—engage a garbage service that takestwo bins instead of one—you are entitled to. Obviously that would completely destroy theeconomies of scale that the council’s garbage collection has and would make it impossiblefor people who stick with the council to have the same level of service. That is exactly whatis happening in relation to schools if this bill goes through. We are talking about costing thosepeople who stay.



Senator CARR—Is it not an inevitable consequence of the philosophy that the chair,Senator Tierney, has obviously indicated he supports, that if in the name of choice we wereto allow all breakaway groups, however small—that is, religious groups or specifically,perhaps, ethnic groups or political groups—that wanted to establish their own schools to doso, the government would be left as a provider of education as a means of last resort? Is thatnot the direct consequence of that philosophy?

Mr Molesworth —We believe it is the direct consequence and we believe that those peoplewho are moving this political motion have it as their final result that public education shouldbe a safety net provision for those who are unable by any means to get into private provision,or pseudoprivate provision in the public sector—which, of course, is another thing which isbeing pushed. We think that the vast majority of parents, including those whose children arein private schools, realise that an excellent public sector schooling system is important to theirchild’s schooling and to the society in which their child will grow up.

The idea of education as a commodity which people will choose if they feel it will do themsome good is clearly going to lead to utter disaster. There are so many children now who donot wish to choose schooling and who are encouraged, cajoled, forced into schooling by asystem which has said that schooling ought to be available to everybody and ought to becompulsory. What are we going to have when we say that there is no requirement on anyparent to send their child to school, and what kind of an underclass are we going to createby that system? It seems to me that we are headed for a total disaster if we follow theideological line.

Of course, people are following parts of the ideological line, but the thing is that that is notthe same as thinking clearly about what we actually intend for education in this country andwhat we actually intend for the future of this country. That is what our submission is, that youcannot rely on wishy-washy ideology and untested hypotheses in order to plan the future ofyour country.

We have no evidence to suggest that market forces are sufficient or appropriate for decidinghow school education will be provided. We have no evidence whatsoever. If the evidenceexists, let the proponents bring it out and let them justify it. Let us critique their justificationfor these moves. It is not sufficient for a responsible government to say, ‘There are complaintsabout the public education system. Therefore we are going to remodel this system along thelines of corporations and markets.’ We must call on the government to justify its positionbefore it makes these changes, which are going to be irreversible if they continue.

CHAIR —Thank you appearing today.Committee adjourned at 4.37 p.m.


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