Transcript - Doorstop - 4 March 2011

SUBJECTS: My School

Christopher Pyne: The My School website could have been an opportunity for a website that produced good educational outcomes in literacy and numeracy for students across Australia. Instead the My School website is now being used as part of the tool the Government wants to run against non-government school funding.  The My School website should have been about literacy and numeracy. It should have been about educational outcomes for students. That's what the purpose of it was and we had bi-partisan support for that. Instead the Government is now using it in the campaign to de-legitimise funding for non-government schools. It wants to and has had for many years an ideological obsession with the funding of non-government schools. Julia Gillard said so in 2001 that she wanted to oppose the SES funding model for schools and this is all part of the AEU's campaign.

There is no compelling reason, and there is no convincing argument at all why information that is publicly available in the annual reports of schools should somehow be put online for every person that wishes to visit it to look at that information. There is no educational benefit for publishing the financial data of schools other than trying to play the politics of envy between the non-government and the government sector. The Coalition supports the My School website, but we don't support the publication of the financial data. We certainly don't support the Government looking behind trust foundations and other vehicles parents and communities have built up over many years to build capital works or to fund teachers in particular schools.

This year will be the year the Government has to respond to the Gonski Review and this new My School website that will publish financial data will be part of the campaign they use to undermine and de-legitimise funding for non-government schools; an area that's essentially been bi-partisan since the 1870s until now when we have a Prime Minister who's in hock to the Greens and we know the Greens want to take funding from non-government schools back to the 2003 levels. That would recognise a genuine cut for non-government school funding. The best the Government has offered is to continue funding at it's current levels without indexation which of course means a real cut over time for the non-government school sector.

Journalist: Doesn't this also support that some public schools that have special needs are given significant amounts of funding as well?

Pyne: The financial data indicates that there are schools and students that are funded very dramatically because they look after students with special needs if you're referring to children with disabilities and so forth. That's an obvious outcome isn't it? There's no way that educating an autistic child is going to cost the same as a child without any kind of learning difficulties. We didn't need the My School's website to tell us that children with learning difficulties cost more to educate than children without them. I have two children with learning difficulties and I know full well the challenges that families and schools face.

Journalist: What about the comments about the financial information. Why shouldn't it all be put in one place to make it easier for parents to look up if it is all publicly available anyway?

Pyne: Why should it? I hear your question, but the Government hasn't actually made that case. Peter Garrett has made vague references to the need for transparency. On what basis is the financial data of private institutions, authorities, or even companies required to be published online unless you wanted to use it to play the politics of envy. The My School website was supposed to be a tool where parents could go and see how their children were performing vis-à-vis the national average and other benchmarks how their schools were performing. There was no basis for the My School website to be used for the AEU, the Australian Education Union's campaign against the non-government school sector and yet that is exactly what the Government is now using it for. The My School's web site has gone from a site that had bi-partisan support as an educational tool to another victim of this Government's ideological obsession with using every means possible to de-legitimise non-government school funding.

Journalist: So you don't think it'll be helpful for parents in deciding where to send their children to school?

Pyne: Parents use all sorts of reasons why they send their children to particular schools. For example, I'm Catholic, so I choose a Catholic education for my children. Other parents have all sorts of other reasons why they send their children to schools. They don't look over the books of the school and think well, I like the way this particular school has setup their trust, I think I'll send my children to that school. They don't do that, and so therefore why on earth would there be any educational reason why you would publish that data unless you assumed that it would make the case against funding for non-government schools and the Coalition's absolutely clear about this. We support government funding for non-government schools, we believe both government and non government schools should be excellent, I think it's noteworthy that the information that My School has published today shows that in fact there is as much money if not more being paid per student for government students as there is in the independent and catholic sector.

Journalist: Well if that's the case, then how do you think the government can use this campaign against non-government schools? Surely the fact that there is an even field across the line surely that suggests the government is being fair in their distribution of funding.

Pyne: Well, what the Government and the Australian Education Union will do is point to the capital, the difference between the capital comparisons in the non-government and the government sector. The government sector of course gets all its capital funding from government and the non-government sector has to build up its foundations, its trusts and so forth so that it does have capital funds from which they can withdraw. That's one of the things that the AEU has already pointed to today. None of this was necessary, none of this politics of envy was necessary but Julia Gillard said in 2001 that this was a flawed model which she wanted to see ended. Stephen Smith, the Minister for Defence has said it in even more colourful terms, Labor is opposed to the SES funding model because it was the Howard Government's model which is an objective way of funding the non-government schools sector. They will do everything they can to destroy it, they only wanted to get through two elections in 2007 and 2010 by pretending that they weren't going to touch non-government school funding, the Gonski Review, this My School website today, and the general attitude to the non-government school sector should strike into the hearts of all parents of children in non-government schools. There are 1.2 million children in the non-government school sector and if the government has their way, school fees will have to rise if government funding is removed from these schools at a time when cost of living pressures are killing families in Australia, not literally but metaphorically, they don't need any more pressure.

Journalist: Where do you anticipate seeing these cuts to non-government schools?

Pyne: Well, the Government has guaranteed one more year of the SES funding model, we've actually been debating a Bill in the House of Representatives this week on that matter, so we'll see what happens from the end of this period, which is about 2013.

Journalist: Are you suggesting that any private schools might close due to any changes in the funding model?

Pyne: There is no doubt that there are many small independent Christian schools for example who would find it impossible to remain open without serious government funding, the Labor Party opposed those schools opening in the first pace, in the Hawke Keating Government hardly any new schools opened, their new schools policy was actually a no new schools policy, there was no financial support for new schools. Under the Howard Government new schools blossomed because there was financial support for the starting up of those schools. Schools in my own electorate started with 50 students and now have over 800 in the north of my electorate because there is a demand for those kinds of schools. They run on a shoe string budget, they would not be able to cope without an injection of government funding through a per-student model like the SES model.

Journalist: But, isn't it going just a bit far to say that this system's striking fear into parent's hearts though?

Pyne: Well, right now parents and families are really facing cost of living pressures. This year has been amazing, private health insurance is going up, electricity prices are going up, groceries are going through the roof and people are very genuinely concerned. What the 2.4 million parents of the 1.2 million students in non-government schools around Australia don't need is more cost of living pressure because of rising school fees.

Journalist: The argument then could be to send them to a state school...

PYNE: Well, if every student in a non-government school went to a government school, there'd be 1.2 million students and all of the Australian taxpayers would have to pay everything for those students rather than the current subsidy that of course means that the taxpayers are saved billions and billions of dollars because parents choose to put their children into the non-government sector and pay fees.

ENDS