This Better and Fairer Schools (Funding and Reform) Bill 2024 is about a funding disagreement between the states and the Commonwealth when it comes to education. They split the cost of funding public schools, but the agreement that they reached adds up to 95 per cent of what's needed, not 100 per cent, so public schools are not currently being funded to the level required.

I want to talk about some of the underlying assumptions that this bill is built on and how the Commonwealth government could use this bill as an opportunity for broader longer term improvements in education funding, while still delivering on the purpose of this bill, which is to make sure that public schools get the funding that they need. The fundamental principle we must start with here is that every child in Australia should have a good education, no matter their circumstances or what school they go to. This is a basic principle of fairness and equality of opportunity. We need a well-educated population. This is essential for our social and economic prosperity, so we need to work out how to spend money to deliver the best education we can.

We know there are real problems with the direction education is heading. We hear that we urgently need greater support for students with increasing complexities and support for teachers and their schools to be able to meet these challenging demands. In WA, student performance on national and international tests has not shown any consistent improvement over the last decade. WA student school attendance and retention rates have been declining. ATAR participation rates are declining. Educational achievement is stagnating. This is a problem worth solving, and our common interest in a good education system and arresting these worrying trends should be first and foremost in any legislation about education.

The second principle is that funding should match need. Responsibility for public funding for all schools is shared between the Commonwealth and state and territory governments. States and territories have overarching responsibility for schools, including for the registration and regulation of all schools in their jurisdiction—government and non-government—and for the operation of public schools.

A formula has been developed to determine what funding is needed for each child in Australia, which is made up of a base amount and six loadings, including the school size loading, school location loading and individual loadings. This means that schools that are educating more kids with disabilities or with lower socioeconomic status or that are in a remote area should get more funding. Funding is calculated according to this formula and then the Commonwealth government pays the states the entitlement for the states to distribute. But the way it works is that, once the states have the funding, there's no requirement for them to allocate the funding in accordance with the formula and no requirement for them to account clearly to the Commonwealth for how it's spent. This seems completely crazy to me.

Sure, we can tweak the formula and continue to improve it as we learn more about what works and what doesn't, but then it just gets ignored. What's the of point allocating funding according to need, if it then doesn't get spent that way? Built into this principle of funding matching need is an assumption that more funding will deliver better educational outcomes. Believe it or not, this is hard to prove. Intuitively, it seems to make sense, but only if we're investing in the right things. And we can't tell which are the right things without looking at the data. It doesn't help that the states refuse to provide all the data needed to find out what types of funding actually improve educational outcomes. The states don't make available information about funding at a school level that can be used to measure what effect it has against educational or other outcomes. I can't believe this. All these data exist. We already have a huge and valuable dataset available, one that contains every kid in every school in Australia, with all their different circumstances. Think of what we could learn if we added to that dataset how much funding was actually allocated for each kid and how much they and their classmates received and looked at how they did in school. If we used those data well, we could understand which additional funding translates to better outcomes and which doesn't. But, because of silly state-Commonwealth turf wars, we don't know.

This is the education sector. It's meant to be all about learning. But we're not learning and applying that knowledge. We do know that schools with very similar needs are being funded very differently. For example, the NSRB report on regional school loadings showed that three schools with the same needs, of the same size, with the same socio-economic status, with the same number of Indigenous students and in the same type of location were being funded to the tune of $12,000 per student, $18,000 per student and $24,000 per student, depending on which state they were in. This makes no sense. If we knew which types of expenditure helped with educational outcomes, we could spend our money better and educate our kids better.

So now you're asking: what does this fundamental problem have to do with the current bill? In earlier negotiations, the Commonwealth committed to funding 20 per cent of what each student in public education needs, and the states committed to the other 75 per cent. Anyone who's had a good Australian education can see that this does not add up to 100 per cent. Most of the states haven't even managed to get to the agreed 75 per cent. Queensland, in 2022, provided 70.2 per cent of school funding needed, Victoria provided 69.2 per cent, and the Northern Territory 56.5 per cent. But even if the states were funding to the level agreed of 75 per cent, there's still five per cent unaccounted for, and it's the kids who suffer in the meantime. Even if we address this last five per cent, states are now including extra items in that calculation, like capital depreciation and school transport, so we won't actually get the 100 per cent as it was originally defined.

This needs to be addressed so we are actually funding the full amount, irrespective of where the money comes from. WA, NT and Tasmania have agreed to split the difference with the government on the five per cent, and this bill is needed so that the Commonwealth can make good on that commitment and contribute more than 20 per cent. Some would say that the Commonwealth government should hold out and insist that the states pay the difference. Personally, I think that the schools actually get the funding is more important than quibbling about which bucket it comes from. So I'm fine with the change, whether it's making 20 per cent a floor or, preferably, guaranteeing 25 per cent, which is what many experts are advocating for. But, no matter how big the increase is, this bill presents a rare opportunity to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of education funding. If the Commonwealth is going to put up hundreds of millions or billions more in education funding, it should at least demand some data and transparency in return, so we can learn and spend our money better.

It may be appropriate to delay this bill until after the next national school funding agreement between the Commonwealth and the states is finalised, but this requirement for better data should be used as a bargaining chip. In the last National School Resourcing Board report, the board said: 'As highlighted in previous reviews by the board, the lack of transparency of school funding at the system level presents a major challenge. The board was only provided with school level expenditure data by three states and one territory—a situation that limited the analysis that the board could undertake.' I think it would be reasonable to ask the states to do two things if they want more education funding. Firstly, they should ensure schools receive the money that they're entitled to. There's no point having an agreed allocation if kids don't get the funding they need. At the moment, the states allocate the money any way they like. Secondly, they should provide school-level income and an expenditure data so that we can learn whether and how more money actually delivers better wellbeing and education outcomes. We are all on the same team here. We all want better education outcomes and money to be used efficiently. This common goal should override silly politics between state and Commonwealth control.

I understand that state-Commonwealth relations are difficult and somewhat vexed when it comes to these sorts of issues. But we need to put the interests of kids and the country ahead of the petty politics and spend our money well. That's why I now move a second reading amendment as circulated in my name:

The motion was unavailable at the time of publishing

This amendment makes any additional Commonwealth funding conditional upon the provision of the information needed to understand whether the schools got the funding they were allocated under the formula and how they spent it so we can analyse what works in improving outcomes. If the federal government doesn't take this opportunity to at least get better data, the opportunity is unlikely to come up again anytime soon. This would be a great example of prioritising long-term interests using taxpayer money in the best possible way to educate our kids. But the Commonwealth and the states and all sides of politics should be eager to find out what works and what doesn't when it comes to education spending. I urge the government to consider my second reading amendment to that effect.