Quality schooling is cheaper than jail, Prime Minister declares
The PM has defended $1bn in bonus funding for the NT’s broken school system, as the Opposition blames youth crime on rising truancy rates.
Struggling school students are a “drag on the nation’’, Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday as the Northern Territory pledged to spend more than $1bn in bonus funding on catch-up tutoring and vocational training in remote schools.
The Prime Minister defended the federal government’s plan to double its share of funding for NT public schools, handing the Territory an extra $738m over the next five years, to be topped up with $350m in NT funding.
Mr Albanese said the spending would save taxpayers money in the long run. “If you don’t address these issues early, it costs taxpayers down the road because people aren’t in employment, they aren’t paying tax, there are issues with justice and incarceration,’’ he said at Stuart Park Primary School in Darwin.
“It costs a lot less to teach a kid in school and give them the opportunity in life than it does to keep them in incarceration down the road. When one child gets left behind in this country, that is a drag on them and their life; it is also a drag on our nation.’’
With the NT in the grip of violent youth crime, Mr Albanese’s linkage of schooling failures to jail was echoed by NT Chief Minister Eva Lawler.
Ms Lawler – who was a teacher and principal for 15 years before working as the NT Education Department’s deputy chief executive of school education – said future generations would benefit from the “full and fair’’ funding.
She pledged to spend the money on catch-up tutoring for struggling students, and to teach vocational skills, such as pre-apprenticeship training, to students in high school. “We cannot have more generations of young people in the Territory who are unemployed,’’ she said.
NT Education Minister Mark Monaghan – who worked as a principal in remote Indigenous schools in Groote Eylandt, West Arnhem and the Tiwi Islands – said providing a quality education was “about justice’’.
Asked about children as young as 10 committing horrendous crimes, he said “The core of it is poverty. We know the way out of poverty is a job and a future … and the way into that is quality education and quality health.
“If we want to keep making the same mistakes, God help us in 40 years,’’ he said.
Federal opposition education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson on Wednesday said the NT government must ensure more children attended school, noting that Labor had been in power there for 19 of the past 23 years.
She said Indigenous school attendance had fallen to a 10-year low of 59 per cent in the NT, and as low as 20 per cent in some remote locations. “With more children not in school than ever, it is no wonder youth crime is on the rise,’’ she said.
“Labor must address the high levels of truancy and lack of parental accountability which has resulted in so many Indigenous children failing to go to school.
“The government must deliver a plan to get back to basics including by mandating explicit teaching in every Territory school.’’
Senator Henderson said more than half the education funding for NT schools was now “siphoned into the bureaucracy and administration, rather than the classroom’’.
“For Indigenous students in remote communities, many are lucky to have access to a teacher once or twice a week, which is a national embarrassment,’’ she said.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said the “statement of intent’’ to provide extra funding would tie the money to educational reforms. “I want this money to glow in the dark,’’ he said. “I want parents and teachers to be able to trace this money and see it go into the schools to make sure it has the maximum impact.
“Taxpayers want their money invested in things that work – that’s why I am committed to tying this money to reforms.
“There are no blank cheques here.’’
Mr Clare said states and territories would have to agree to improve children’s mental and physical health, in bilateral funding deals being negotiated this year as part of the National School Reform Agreement.
“It could be investing in extra psychologists and counsellors and OTs (occupational therapists) and speech therapists, and all the sorts of supports you need at school to help make a difference in children’s lives,’’ he said.
Greens schools spokeswoman Penny Allman said the NT funding deal was a “half-arsed effort’’ that would fail to fully fund the education needs of every student.
National Catholic Education executive director Jacinta Collins said “Catholic schools receive almost 5 per less of what they should receive from the NT government and we would expect a commitment to fully fund Catholic school communities in the next round of agreements’’.
Queensland Education Minister Di Farmer called on the federal government to increase its share of public school funding from 20 per cent to 25 per cent of running costs.
More Coverage
Mum, daughter killed in house fire identified
A six-year-old girl and a woman have died and another two people are fighting for life after Sydney’s second fatal house fire in two days.
Man, 36, charged with anti-Semitic attack in Sydney’s east
NSW Police have given an update on their investigation into an alleged anti-Semitic attack that caused $20,000 worth of damages at Woollahra in December.