Education Minister Mark Monaghan speaks on drive, goals ahead of 2024 election

The NT’s new Education Minister has revealed the heartbreaking reason behind his passion for schooling, and set out his goals for the next eight months. Find out

“Education and community is more life and death for kids in the Northern Territory than anywhere else in the world,” newly-minted Education Minister Mark Monaghan said.

Having witnessed a “spate of youth suicides” during his time as a teacher at Tiwi’s Xavier Catholic College, Mr Monaghan said it was clear kids’ resilience and pathways out of poverty were limited if they were not given the opportunity to thrive in the classroom.

Mr Monaghan said he’d taught an intensive English class for boys aged 12-17 who had disengaged from school – some as early as Year 3.

“A number of those boys in that class – while I was there and shortly after – (suicided),” he said.

“I put it [the reason] down to because Education’s failed their system, their communities for so long.

“A young girl at Angurugu many years ago when I was a college director … she never made it to 14.

“I look back at her and go, ‘You know what? We can’t continue to fail these kids’.

The Fong Lim MLA only picked up the NT’s education portfolio in December, but he brings more than two decades of education experience to his ministerial position.

Mr Monaghan said the sector’s biggest issues boiled down to remote outcomes and funding.

Effective enrolment and the SRS

A bigger Education budget would move schools away from the NT government’s controversial Effective Enrolment funding model and empower them to take a tailored approach to supporting students.

Mr Monaghan said he hoped to see the attendance-based model discarded by 2025 in favour of fully funding NT schools to meet the Schooling Resource Standard.

NT public schools were underfunded by about 23 per cent – or $8000 per student – in 2023.

“We’ve got the full-funding model down in Alice Springs thanks to the injection of federal government money in Alice Springs this year – an extra $40 million,” Mr Monaghan said.

The “sugar hit” makes the region the only one with fully-funded schools across the NT.

“But that’s for this year, so this is why it’s really important that the negotiations I have become an ongoing one,” he said.

“That’s what I’m fighting for at the moment, ensuring that before I’m not here or whatever happens in August, that we actually lock that in for the next five or 10 years.”

Mr Monaghan said the Territory’s Education budget would be bigger this year and would allow schools to allocate resources to where they’re needed most.

He said fully funding schools would allow educators to choose the right programs and resources for their communities, such as Families as First Teachers, engaging the right people for school-based trade training centres, additional staff, and the Remote Aboriginal Teacher Education program.

“It’s absolutely critical that kids are able to get out of poverty,” Mr Monaghan said.

“They’re able to get out of poverty by getting into a job, and the only way they can do that is through quality education.”

Gunbalanya School's first Families as First Teachers Educator Nuala Scannell works through conversational reading exercises with a parent and child as part of the FAFT program. Picture: Sierra Haigh

Attendance and engagement

The Territory’s urban students “do as well as anywhere in the country” but remote students are left behind thanks to “70 years of failure”.

Mr Monaghan said he would “love” 100 per cent attendance but without engagement, kids still were not learning in class.

He said engaging kids was about reflecting their communities in their schools.

“We used to run programs in Angurugu where we engaged an Aboriginal construction company to do literacy and numeracy learning two mornings a week as part of their work,” he said.

“The kids saw their (families) coming into the school, learning literacy in their work uniforms, and suddenly that 13-year-old kid who had been disconnected from learning is looking at them going, ‘If they’re here, I must be okay to be here myself’.”

Mr Monaghan said quick-fix solutions like truancy officers would not work because they focused on attendance without engagement.

“You’re dragging kids to school and you’re dropping them behind the door and saying, ‘you’re staying here and you’re going to learn’,” he said.

“Anybody that thinks there’s a quick fix has never worked in demographics like very remote locations but they’ve also never experienced the things to celebrate.”

Teacher shortages

Mr Monaghan said the redeployment of about 80 corporate staff into schools was not a cause for concern.

“Every single person working in Mitchell St and every one of our other corporate areas through Alice Springs and through Katherine are working for that student in Gunbalanya or that student in Angurugu,” he said.

“That’s their primary focus and they’re a teacher first and foremost.”

Mr Monaghan said 96 per cent of school-based roles had been filled, with only a “very small number” of vacancies remaining.

Last week there were about 134 positions to be filled just one week out from the new school year.

“We’re talking about a time of year where this always happens – year-in, year-out – at every school in every jurisdiction,” he said.

He said there were currently more than 3000 teachers employed in the NT.