ALP to restore mid-year school intake, pledges fairer funding

Parents will get more options on when their children start school under a Labor plan which reverses its previous policy.

Kerryn Pine with daughter Ellie, 2, at Golden Grove Homestead Community Children’s Centre where Kerryn works and Ellie attends. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

Children will be able to start preschool or reception in the middle or start of the year, under a Labor Party policy announced on Saturday.

The move is another reversal from positions held by the former ALP government.

Parents would have greater choice and problems of big age gaps in early year classes would be eased, Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas and education spokesman Blair Boyer said.

Adding the mid-year intake would cost an extra $7m a year.

Now, students starting reception can be as young as 4 years 9 months or as old as 5 years 8 months – depending when they were born relative to May 1.

“Starting school is a challenging time for students and parents,” Mr Malinauskas said.

“It can be made that bit harder if a younger child is all of a sudden in the same class as an older child.

“At that age, even relatively minor differences in age can make a big difference.”

Parents would be free to choose whether to use the July or January intake, depending on when they felt their child was ready.

With a mid-year entry into preschool, a child would spend four terms in preschool, then six terms in reception.

Preschool is voluntary, and if a child skipped that, they could spend six terms in reception.

Most Catholic schools and many independent schools have a mid-year intake as well as the start of the year.

Catholic Education SA offered free tuition for terms 3 and 4 for reception students who started in July this year.

The idea of a mid-year intake was welcomed by Kerryn and Alex Pine, whose children Jack, 6, and Ellie, 2, were born in July and June respectively.

Jack is now at Wynn Vale School while Ellie will soon be ready for preschool.

“It’ll be good to have the option of when she starts,” said Ms Pine, who works at the Golden Grove Homestead Community Children’s Centre.

As well as the educational benefit, the extra terms would help the family save on childcare fees, she said.

SA public schools scrapped having multiple intakes in 2014.

Announced in the 2010-11 Budget, the then Labor government said it would bring SA into line with all other states and save $5.5m a year.

However, the single intake created problems, according to surveys at the time by the Primary Principals Association and Australian Education Union, with some students starting reception too young to manage aspects such as toileting.

Mr Boyer said the reversal of ALP policy was in response to calls by families for more flexibility.

“I know so many parents who have faced this dilemma at what is already a stressful time,” he said.

“This will also help make life easier for teachers, so they aren’t juggling large age gaps in the classroom.”

On Thursday, the ALP told The Advertiser it was scrapping long-held Labor policies on dealing with underperforming teachers.

Principals would have greater powers to instigate improvement training followed by dismissal within 10 weeks if a teacher failed to respond.

That plan was labelled as populist headline-grabbing by the Australian Education Union and as “hypocritical” by Education Minister John Gardner.

Labor also has announced it would create 400 scholarships, worth $5000 each, for students enrolling in university to become a teacher. It aims to get more men to become primary teachers, women to teach sciences and Aboriginal people to join the profession.

The government’s strategic plan for early childhood stresses the benefits of children attending preschool as well as school, which becomes compulsory at age 6.

The federal government runs an Australian Early Development Census every three years. It assesses children during their first year of school on five measures – physical health and wellbeing, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive skills and communication and general knowledge.

The most recent census, from 2018, found 24 per cent of SA children are “developmentally vulnerable” on one more of these domains, compared to the national average of 22 per cent.

Many of these children never catch up with their peers.

PLEDGE ON PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING

The deal between the state and federal governments which systematically leaves public schools short of funds must be fixed, the state opposition says.

The deal is due to expire in 2023 and the opposition says, if elected, it would renegotiate the terms “in order to restore fairness to the system”.

Analysis by the teachers’ union estimates South Australian public schools are being short-changed by $150m a year under the deal.

However, the state government defended the 2018 agreement, saying it resulted in an overall increase to all schools – government and non-government – from both federal and state treasuries.

At the moment, public schools are supposed to be allocated 95 per cent of their funding target, but non-government school funding is set above 100 per cent of their targets.

Opposition education spokesman Blair Boyer said the agreement was “an absolute disgrace”.

Federal opposition education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek said the Commonwealth should not cap its funding for public schools.

If elected, she promised underfunded public schools would be better off.

States and territories would need to do their fair share and there would be “no accounting tricks”, she said.

The Australian Education Union analysis, based on data supplied to a Senate committee and other sources, found each government school student in SA was being denied $1136 compared to the funding formula called the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS).

“The futures of our children are being put at risk,” said AEU federal president Correna Haythorpe.

Australian Education Union president Correna Haythorpe

Opposition education spokesman Blair Boyer.

Under the agreement, the state government provides 75 per cent of SRS funds for public schools, with the Commonwealth providing up to 20 per cent.

For non-government schools, the Commonwealth promised to provide 80 per cent and the state 19.7 per cent – although the state said it intended to bump this up to 22 per cent until 2023.

Education Minister John Gardner said the 2018 agreement paved the way for federal funding to all SA schools to increase from $1.3bn a year then to more than $2bn by 2029.

The state would also increase spending by $700m in total in the years to 2026-27 compared to what had previously been budgeted.

“The national school funding reforms agreed to in 2018 have seen dramatic increases in investment by state and federal governments in educational programs leading to improved educational achievement by children and young people across SA,” Mr Gardner said.

“While the former government was fixated on fake fights and arguments with the Commonwealth we are much more focused on getting results by working collaboratively with other jurisdictions.”

A spokesman for the federal Education, Skills and Employment Department said school funding to all SA schools was at a record $1.6bn this year.

“Since 2013, Commonwealth funding across all SA schools has increased by 63.5 per cent and will increase a further 37.3 per cent by 2029, with government schools seeing the largest growth,” the spokesman said.

The Schooling Resource Standard came from the 2011 review by business leader David Gonski.

It sets a base amount to replicate funding at “reference” schools where 80 per cent of students achieved above national minimum standards in NAPLAN reading and numeracy for three years in a row.

Base amounts for 2021 were $12,099 per primary student and $15,204 for secondary students.

Additional funds can be added on six grounds for priority student cohorts and disadvantaged schools.

Funds are reduced for most non-government schools according to parents’ “capacity to contribute”.