Time to Get Serious about Primary Funding

The following article by APPA President, Leonie Trimper, was published recently as an Opinion Piece in a state newspaper.

May 12, 2009

The Federal Labor Government has created a number of firsts for Australian primary schools and generated a sense that at last primary education is being taken seriously.

It eliminated a funding anomaly that has existed for a long time for government primary schools, depriving them of $635 million over five years in recurrent funding. It has recently allocated $12.4 billion for a Building the Education Revolution in primary schools and a further $1.3 billion for the School Pride project.

However, much more is in the offing.

At present, National Partnerships for low socioeconomic schools, quality teaching and literacy and numeracy are being negotiated with all states and territories. At last, there is the prospect of low SES schools getting more of the resources that they badly need.

The Australian Primary Principals Association's research has shown that many of these schools have been massively underfunded. It is time the National Partnership plans were put in the public domain. So far, they have been cloaked in secrecy.

There is a much higher success rate for reforms if stakeholders are involved in the planning process rather than a "top down" approach which excludes school principals and teachers providing feedback.

This Government has also committed to developing a national curriculum. Most people agree that this is a good, commonsense approach but there is some scepticism about whether it will ever be implemented given that most states and territories believe their curriculum is "world class", so reaching agreement won't be easy.

There is also a worry that the primary curriculum is being made to fit into a framework that suits high schools.

Primary schools have the most to gain or lose with the development of a national curriculum. We must resolve the crowded curriculum issue and we must avoid providing schools with a curriculum that is so broad or nebulous that it requires teachers to rewrite it.

The most controversial issue facing education is the Federal Government's transparency agenda. State, territory and federal Ministers recently agreed to proceed with the development of a system which compares the performance of schools based mainly on national numeracy and literacy test results and other comparative information. This information will be on a national website showing a school's details, attendance, funding, test results and a comparison of so-called "like schools".

APPA supports the principle of transparency and the parents' right to access relevant and meaningful data. However, we are only supporting this initiative if it has a positive impact on primary schooling. We do not want to go down the UK and U.S. path, where pressure on schools to perform well on their national tests has led to a distortion of the curriculum. APPA has now released a position paper on this transparency agenda where it calls for appropriate safeguards to be put in place.

While much has been done, there is more to do.
We desperately need support for students with disabilities and extreme behaviours. We need more funding for Years 4-7. Governments have heeded

the early years warning but chronic patterns of underachievement will not be fixed by a short burst of investment in the first three years.
Primary schools have served their communities well and, if we truly want every child to start secondary school with a real chance of success, we need sustained investment throughout the primary years at the levels we already invest in the senior years.

At least this Government has made a start.