IMPROVING THE SYSTEM FOR CHILDREN, STUDENTS, TEACHERS, AND PARENTS

• Lowering the compulsory early learning commencement age to 3yrs
• Raising the age children start formal schooling to 7yrs
• Extending government-funded before-school and after-school care
• Re-funding the state school system
• Your first tertiary degree should be free
• Waiving the remainder of the HECS debt for graduates who remain in teaching after four years
• Reimbursing HECS debt for teachers employed in “the bush”
• Raising apprenticeship salaries

And in more detail...

Throughout Australia, formal schooling begins at age five. Some children are more than ready to start school at that age. Others struggle. Denmark, Finland, and Japan, three countries widely regarded as having the best education systems in the world, begin formal schooling for children later. In Denmark and Japan, it’s age six. Children in Finland begin formal schooling a year later, at age seven. The rationale for the later start in life is simple. Older children are more socially mature and are better equipped to learn.

In Denmark and Japan, children attend kindergarten at age 3. The learning at this tender age is all play-based. Their ability to play together is fostered, and the teaching is geared toward problem-solving, which fires a child's imagination.

Indeed, the focus on problem-solving and social interaction is continued when children begin their formal schooling and remain the focus into high school.

Australia's state-based education systems could learn a thing or two from these nations. The Good Party would like to see our nation's children start playing together earlier and get them into classrooms later. We should see this happening in stages to give mums and dads time to get used to the idea, lowering the compulsory Kindergarten age to four and then three over a six-year period. Doing so would also benefit children from disadvantaged or dysfunctional homes, placing them in positive environments earlier.

Additional funding for before-school and after-school care

The federal government could usher in this change by underwriting the cost of additional before-school and after-school childcare for these younger Australians. The benefit to the nation would be generations of young Australians who are more adept at accessing their imaginations and have better “people skills.”

The cost to the economy of paying the additional childcare would be offset by the stay-at-home parents freed up to re-enter the workforce, a now well-accepted fact.

Addressing falling education outcomes

NAPLAN results in literacy and numeracy have been improving over the decade, but a more accurate picture is revealed when this learning is applied in the real world. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests have shown that our children need help in using the knowledge they have gained to solve problems.

NAPLAN results in literacy and numeracy have been improving over the decade, but a more accurate picture is revealed when this learning is applied in the real world. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests have shown that our children need help in using the knowledge they have gained to solve problems 

The Gonski Report delivered similar key findings stressing the need to equip our children with the ability to solve problems creatively. This is a crucial ability as the workplace becomes ever more digitally oriented.

How we educate needs to be radically rethought to provide better outcomes for children as they grow into adulthood. Accepting the key recommendations of the widely hailed and broadly accepted Gonski Report would be a good start.

Starting formal schooling at age seven will give our children more time to be children and to play and interact with each other so that they are more mature and better equipped to learn when they begin their education.

Keeping teachers in the profession

The teaching profession has hit the proverbial wall, and that’s in every state and territory. Too many teachers are leaving the system. The reasons why are not rocket science. As a nation, we need to make education a genuine priority, which begins with valuing the people who educate. The Good Party has a three-step agenda.

1. All teachers need to be paid more for the work they do
2. A coherent career structure needs to be created that values teacher expertise
3. More teachers need to be hired to share the teaching load

Valuing the Teaching Profession, a report commissioned by the NSW Teacher’s Federation and the Grattan Institute’s 2020 Top Teachers Report, both landed on common ground. The Grattan report said it best, concluding that an “expert teacher career path” needed to be created for the top 1% of teachers who would have dedicated roles with extra responsibilities. These expert teachers would then lead the professional learning and development of the entire workforce. Teachers who have reached the level of expert should expect a salary of $180,000.00pa. In addition, there would be other career steps with a pay scale to match leading up to this professional pinnacle. Meanwhile, the pay rates for all teachers would be increased by up to 15%.

Anyone who has had at least one great teacher during their schooling knows what a difference that can make to one’s interest in learning, an interest that can last a lifetime.

The Good Party will champion the findings of these reports.

The teaching profession has hit the proverbial wall, and that’s in every state and territory. Too many teachers are leaving the system. The reasons why are not rocket science. As a nation, we need to make education a genuine priority, which begins with valuing the people who educate.

Building resources for teachers

The Good Party would also support the establishment of a national resource for teaching that incorporates elements such as videos demonstrating high-quality teaching methods for all subjects, ages, and curricula, rosters of university students available for paid in-class tutoring, and a variety of learning and teaching tool modules to assist teachers in classrooms. With such a resource, teachers won’t have to create every lesson from scratch, and consistency will be brought to what and how our children are taught.

Building real-world experience for students

Our high schools are the nurseries for tomorrow’s labour force. Therefore, we should offer paid internships to students keen to experience their desired career path in a real working environment. Offering paid internships for students is a feature of the Danish education system that students, teachers and industries welcome. It builds student enthusiasm and expectation for an attainable job — something worth striving for and studying for.

Generating more interest in teaching as a career

In addition to overcoming systemic challenges identified by teachers already in the system, more work needs to be done to raise the teaching profession as a career choice. Currently, the fees incurred at university for a teaching degree in secondary schools can top out at around $65,000.00. The maximum HECS debt currently allowable is a little over $104,000.00, which you must start repaying when you earn around $48,000. Choosing to study for a career in teaching could be made far more attractive by waiving the balance of a HECS debt should a university graduate take up a teaching position and remain in the profession for four years.

Choosing to study for a career in teaching could be made far more attractive by waiving the balance of a HECS debt should a university graduate take up a teaching position and remain in the profession for four years.

Attracting more teachers to the bush

If urban schools find it difficult to staff their classrooms, it's almost impossible for schools in regional centres and townships. Here again, a financial incentive might overcome resistance. If you’re a university graduate, whether you teach in the city or the country, you’ll begin repaying your HECS debt from your first pay packet. But what if the following carrot were offered: take up a position teaching in the bush and remain there (or move to another school in region), and your HECS debt will be fully reimbursed?

Talented, committed teachers in country schools are key to keeping regional centres and smaller towns viable communities. A measure such as this would prove that the government of the day has identified this as a priority.

Re-funding the state school systems

Until recently, the federal government prioritised the funding of private schools over public schools.

The common misconception is that the parents who send their children to these private schools are wealthy and can well afford it. While that’s probably true for a percentage of parents, many mums and dads suffer considerable financial pain sending their kids to these schools but endure it because they don’t feel they have a choice if they want to provide their children with a quality education.

The common misconception is that the parents who send their children to these private schools are wealthy and can well afford it. While that’s probably true for a percentage of parents, many mums and dads suffer considerable financial pain sending their kids to these schools but endure it because they don’t feel they have a choice if they want to provide their children with a quality education

Under the current school funding agreement struck in 2019, the commonwealth contributes 80% of the “Schooling Resource Standard” (SRS) for private schools, while state governments are responsible for the remaining 20%. The split is reversed for public schools.

The net effect of this SRS system is that “Government funding for private schools in Australia has increased at nearly five times the rate of public-school funding over the past ten years, according to a new analysis, with predictions of a $74bn shortfall in money for public schools this decade despite the shift to a needs-based scheme.” ^[1]

The Good Party believes the funding imbalance needs to be redressed with federal government reinvestment in the state school system. Parents who send their children to state schools shouldn’t feel that the education provided is somehow second-rate.

Making good on the zero-fee TAFE promise

As a pre-election policy, the Australian Labor Party wanted a “Fee Free TAFE” to help fix the nation’s current skills shortage. To summarise: 465,000 fee-free courses in industries hardest hit by the pandemic, courses in nursing, aged care, disability care, childcare, and 10,000 “New Energy Apprenticeships."  At the very least, the Labor Government should honour this commitment. The Good Party would go further.

In Denmark, tertiary degrees are funded by the fossil fuel industry. In Australia, the burden of paying for a tertiary degree is placed on the shoulders of the student while the government subsidises the fossil fuel industry to the tune of billions each year. What's wrong with this picture?

Your first degree is free

In Australia, the burden of paying for a tertiary degree is placed on the shoulders of the student while the government subsidises the fossil fuel industry to the tune of billions each year (in 2022-23, $11.4bn).

If that's not bad enough, in 2023, the ATO collected $4.9bn from students repaying their HECS debt, while the petroleum resource rent tax generated just $2.2bn in revenue. Students kick more than twice as much into the nation's till than the fossil-fuel industry! Something is very wrong with this picture.

The Good Party believes your first tertiary degree or diploma should be free. Why? Because a more highly educated and trained workforce would add billions to the nation's bottom line. The single proviso — only Australian citizens would qualify for a "free degree." The one caveat would be that a student who fails two semesters would then have to pay for all the semesters studied to prevent the "eternal student" syndrome.

Making tertiary education more broadly attainable has to be a national priority. Says the OECD: "Higher levels of educational attainment tend to translate into higher earnings, which in turn generate higher income taxes and social contributions for governments." In short, higher education generates national wealth.

How could free degrees be funded? If you take a look at the Good Party's Environment policy, you'll see that we strongly advocate for a Resource Super Profits Tax to be levied on the fossil fuel and mining industries. The Good Party would use a proportion of the revenue generated by this to underwrite the degree scheme. see Environment

In Norway, the fossil fuel industry pays for tertiary education. Why can't we do something similar here?

An end to "placement poverty"

Many university courses — education, medicine, social work, et cetera — require students to put in hundreds of hours of practical on-the-job training. Given that students are often paying course fees, often enough while accumulating a HECS debt, this is akin to paying to work. Student teachers, for example, can find themselves managing classes, marking homework, doing playground duties, and more because the school is short-staffed.

Today, with the rising cost of living and soaring rents, most tertiary students are forced to hold down permanent jobs to get by. The unpaid placement hours often come on top of their coursework and the employment they need simply to survive. Something has to give. Too often, it's course burnout.

The Good Party believes that this is unfair and for many students, especially those from less affluent families, it's untenable. Working for free is bad enough. Paying to work is downright wrong. We would see students paid at least the minimum wage for placement hours worked, supplementing Youth Allowance and Rent Assistance. 

End the discrimination against an arts degree

The previous LNP federal government showed its contempt for the arts by doubling the cost of studying for a Bachelor of Arts degree at Australia’s universities. The war on creativity must end. According to the World Economic Forum, creativity will be the third most important skill for employees by 2020, behind complex problem-solving and critical thinking. The Good Party will champion the fight by seeing that the cost of studying for a BA is more reasonable and attainable.

Boost the wages of 1st-and-2nd-year apprentices

The minimum hourly wage for a 1st-year electrician's apprentice is currently $15.16, rising to $17.82 for a 2nd-year apprentice. It’s little wonder that 40% of apprentices consider dropping out, and this is in the face of a national skills shortage. Apprentices need to be paid a living wage. The minimum wage in Australia is $21.38, and The Good Party can see no reason why this wage shouldn't be applied to 1st-year apprentices. The cost to the government budget of subsidising the wages of 1st-year apprentices, increasing their wage from $15.16 to $21.38, would be around $66 million, a rounding error. Second-year apprentices should also receive an appropriate rise, the amount adjudicated by the Fair Work Ombudsman. 

[1] (https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/feb/16/private-school-funding-has-increased-at-five-times-rate-of-public-schools-analysis-shows)