The Australian Greens believe that all children have the right to an excellent education.
We believe that governments have a primary responsibility to ensure that the public education system meets the highest standards of excellence, so that all Australian children, regardless of where they live or their family income, can share that experience.
The Greens are proud that our support for the Building the Education Revolution program as part of the stimulus package has injected much needed funding into schools infrastructure, for both government and non-government schools. That funding would not have passed the Senate without the support of the Greens, when the Liberal and National parties opposed it. Independent Schools will receive funds from the Primary Schools for the 21st Century program as well as the School Pride and Science and Language Centres programs.
The Greens support the review into schools funding, as promised by the current government since their election in 2007. We agree with many educational experts that the current federal schools funding model is flawed and welcome a constructive debate on federal schools funding to ensure a more equitable funding model that properly accounts for the needs of schools.
However, as both major parties have delayed the review until 2013, there will be no changes to the current funding model in the next Parliament. The Greens will work for part of the revenue raised by a properly applied mining tax to be immediately diverted to public schools, distributed where the need is greatest.
The Greens believe that teachers are the foundation of an excellent education system. We believe that teaching as a profession should be valued highly, remunerated appropriately and teachers should be accorded appropriate professional status in our community.
The Greens support the provision of useful and meaningful information on schools to parents, schools and governments to ensure the highest standards of education but have concerns with the My School website and the usefulness of the information provided. I initiated a Senate Inquiry into the reporting of NAPLAN testing. We do not support the creation of "league tables" and share with many in the education sector a desire to see more precise comparability and the ability for transparent interpretation of information.
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