Wednesday, 30 October 2024

Education and Training Reform Amendment Bill 2024

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Ben Carroll:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Jess WILSON (Kew) (10:57): I rise to speak on the Education and Training Reform Amendment Bill 2024, but can I take a moment at the outset just to acknowledge the tragedy that occurred yesterday at Auburn South Primary School. Given we are debating an education bill this morning I think it is only fitting following the statements by the member for Hawthorn, the Leader of the Opposition, this morning and of course you, Deputy Speaker, about the tragedy that occurred yesterday. It is simply heartbreaking for the school community there and of course for the family of the little boy who lost his life. There really are no words. I think when all of us heard the news yesterday we felt absolutely sick to our stomachs. When you drop your kids off at school you think that they will be safe and you do not have to worry about these sorts of incidents happening. My heart just goes out to the school community. On behalf of everyone here I am sure I speak in wishing that community the very best when it comes to what will be a long and painful recovery, I am sure. The scar will be felt by that community for some time.

To the families of the children that are injured and are in hospital, I think it was promising this morning to hear that those children are in a stable condition, and we wish them the very best and the speediest of recoveries. To the school community, to the principal Marcus Wicher, to the staff and of course to the first responders – I am sure, Deputy Speaker, you would know as well the Boroondara police; I reached out to them this morning just to pass on my best wishes to those police officers that did have to attend the scene, and the inspector there noted how challenging it can be for those officers when they do have to attend to children who are injured – our very best wishes. We will be thinking of them all over the coming days, weeks, months and years as they do try to recover from this shocking incident.

The purpose of the bill before us today is to improve the regulation of schools and other educational institutions across our state. Let me say from the outset – I will remove any excitement from what might come – that the opposition will not be opposing the passage of this bill through the Parliament. Can I thank the office of the Minister for Education, Nakita and Fiona in particular, for assisting the opposition with the briefing and with our questions, and the department as well for ensuring that we had all the information we needed as we looked into the detail of this bill and briefed members on this side of the house.

I will speak briefly to the key measures contained in this bill before of course making some reflections more broadly on the education system here in Victoria. First, the bill contains a number of provisions aimed at strengthening the compliance and enforcement powers of the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, known more commonly as the VRQA.

The bulk of the changes outlined in the bill appear to be geared towards giving the VRQA greater oversight and regulatory authority over entities that may be considered to be unregistered schools. These amendments are designed to adequately deter providers, including schools and school boarding premises, that are operating without registration or approval, and the expanded VRQA powers are coupled with increased maximum penalties for unregistered schools or boarding premises.

These changes have likely been driven by a high-profile case of what is known as Riverside Grammar, which is an unregistered school located in Hawthorn. I know that the previous Minister for Education James Merlino has been quoted in the media regarding his concerns about unregistered entities masquerading as schools. Riverside Grammar provides an education-like environment for what they term ‘troubled teens’ but does not meet any of the education, child safety, or quality standards that schools must meet. Students, if we were to call them that, at the previous iteration of Riverside Grammar, which actually operated in the electorate of Kew, described an environment that does not tend to align with any focus on the education- or curriculum-based activities that should underpin what we know in Victoria as a school. We are looking here at a bill today that looks to make sure that unregistered schools that are using terms like ‘grammar’, which would suggest that they are potentially acting as schools, are not doing so without the appropriate registration and the checks and balances that are required around them. In the case of Riverside Grammar the VRQA did investigate it and found it to be an unregistered school, but as this bill looks to do, unfortunately the accountability mechanisms in the current regulatory framework were not able to provide the appropriate legal consequences as a result of that finding.

Specifically, the bill amends the act to increase the maximum penalties for entities found to be conducting an unregistered school or school boarding premises in Victoria. I note that this bill will bring the penalties for these offences in line with the penalties for similar offences in other legislation, specifically section 103 of the Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010, which provides penalties for the offence of operating an education and care service without approval. These amendments will increase the maximum penalties for unregistered schools or school boarding premises from 10 penalty units, which is currently equivalent to just under $2000, to 120 units, which is currently equivalent to nearly $24,000. This is the penalty for individuals. For body corporates the penalty under this bill is going to be 600 penalty units, which is currently equivalent to nearly $120,000. I note that these represent significant increases in the penalties for the offence of carrying on an unregistered school or boarding premises. However, it is appropriate that there is a penalty for individuals or organisations who seek to operate a school without submitting themselves to the various quality assurance processes that Victorians rightly expect of any school who purports to carry that label.

The concept of a school has generally been accepted to mean an institution providing instruction according to an approved curriculum, and within the act itself there is a definition of what a school is – that it operates for those who are of school age during school hours. There is no definition of course of what an unregistered school is, but if an organisation or a body meets the definition of a school, then it should have gone through the appropriate registration requirements to meet that definition. Clearly there is a need for regulatory oversight to ensure that schools maintain academic and child safety standards in order that they can continue to wear that label. Diversity in education is important, and it is why the Liberals and Nationals have long supported educational choice for parents across the public, independent and faith-based sectors, but we cannot tolerate organisations touting themselves as schools if they fail to meet the fundamental criteria required to meet the definition of a school and they are not providing those required education curriculum and child safety standards that must be met in any organisation that is operating as a school.

Importantly, parents must be able to have confidence that any school that they send their child to in Victoria, whether it be government or independent of faith based, will meet the basic safety and education standards that we expect here in Victoria. Allowing unregistered schools to persist could undermine public confidence in the education system as well as put already vulnerable youth in an unsupervised and unregulated environment. For that reason the opposition will not be opposing the bill before us today.

The bill also makes a number of other amendments to the oversight and authority of the VRQA, and let me just go through those briefly. It will clarify that the VRQA may share information with a prescribed person or body without receiving a written request. It will enable the VRQA to issue notices to produce and notices to comply to a person, body or school that the VRQA has a reasonable cause to believe is required to be regulated under the act. It will remove the show cause process where cancellation of the registration of a non-government school or boarding premises is voluntary or the school or school boarding premises has ceased to operate. It will expand the scope of matters in relation to which the VRQA may accept an enforceable undertaking from a non-school senior secondary or foundation secondary provider, an institution approved to provide courses to overseas students or an institution approved to operate a student exchange program. Finally, it will allow the VRQA to consider whether an applicant for registration or re-registration as a registered training organisation has ever failed to comply with the child safety standards. Just on that final point, we did speak during the bill briefing about the importance of being able to ensure that any application for registration or re-registration when it comes to an RTO has never had a breach of the child safety standards. I understand that this has been an oversight previously in the drafting of the legislation, and we are looking to ensure that this is fixed in this piece of legislation today to ensure that child safety standards are being checked and met at every possible opportunity.

I do note that the coalition spoke to a wide range of stakeholders about the bill before us today, and no stakeholders put forward any major concerns. But there was a potential concern more broadly about these provisions being aimed at widening the VRQA’s oversight and whether or not they could unintentionally capture homeschooling families who potentially group together an occasion or regularly for particular activities, such as excursions or to examine a particular topic or to pool resources on particular occasions. This concern was noted with the departmental staff in the opposition bill briefing and separately with the minister’s office, and I am confident that this is certainly not the intention of the bill nor the current focus of the VRQA. It is highly unlikely that these types of activities would be captured within the definition of a school in order to meet the threshold for being an unregistered school, as a registered homeschooling environment is carved out of the definition of a school here in Victoria. Nonetheless the opposition will certainly be monitoring the effects of this legislation, and if it does appear that legitimate homeschooling activities are being caught up by these provisions, we will certainly ensure any reform required to ensure that these operations can continue and are not unfairly punished.

Another technical change in this bill is to allow principals to nominate another person or group of people to make work experience arrangements and structured workplace learning arrangements in accordance with any ministerial order. This is a very sensible reform, because it will reduce the administrative burden – potentially only slightly, but it will somewhat go to reducing the administrative burden – on our school principals, who we know already carry so much weight when it comes to the operation and the governance of the schools which they lead. Currently principals have to approve every work experience and structured workplace learning arrangement for students at their schools. In larger schools where dozens of students undertake either work experience or structured workplace learning, the current framework would certainly create an unreasonable workload for principals, who should be able to delegate this responsibility to others within their team.

I am sure many of us, if not all of us, regularly have work experience students in our office. Particularly we know that year 10 students tend to undertake work experience at most schools across the state. To have the principal have to sign off on every one of those arrangements is a burden that we should look to lessen, and this piece of legislation certainly does allow that. What the bill will allow principals to do is delegate the responsibility in a way that makes sense for the schools’ individual circumstances, so the power could be delegated to an individual – another teacher or another member of the leadership team such as a careers coordinator – in one school or in another school, if it would make sense to do so, to a particular group of people, such as year 10 teachers, since that is often the year level that undertakes work experience, so that each year 10 teacher or homeroom teacher could then approve those arrangements for the students that they know. Devolving this coordinating role also empowers senior staff, who are probably best placed to know what arrangements are going to work for each individual student. This is a sensible measure and it is one that we support, but unfortunately I fear that it is probably a drop in the ocean when it comes to truly relieving the huge burden on our school principals and the workload that they currently bear. Just touching on that point, we do know that here in Victoria we have a teacher workforce crisis; just today there are over 2000 vacancies when it comes to teacher roles in Victoria. I will come back to this issue shortly, but let me first go through some remaining provisions of the bill.

The bill also contains a number of measures that affect the boards within the education and also the training and skills portfolios. I acknowledge the work of my colleague the member for Evelyn in that space. The bodies that are affected by these amendments are the pools of the Merit Protection Boards, the pools of the Disciplinary Appeals Boards, the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, the council of the Victorian Institute of Teaching, the VIT hearing panel pool, the board of the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership, the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, the Adult, Community and Further Education Board and, finally, the board of AMES Australia.

The measures that affect these boards are aimed at standardising and streamlining provisions relating to the process by which members are appointed and the resignation process for members, as well as fixing the remuneration and fees as they relate to these boards and board members. As I understand it from the discussion during the bill briefing, there is non-alignment particularly when it comes to how if members of these boards choose to resign from their roles, whether that resignation is to the minister or to the Governor in Council, and the bill is looking to streamline the process by which those resignations can take place.

Finally, I note that the bill makes various changes to the act to improve the consistency of terminology and also make some minor and technical amendments to improve its operation and clarity. One of the minor amendments is to update the wording of the act to reflect the name change from the Catholic Education Commission to the Victorian Catholic Education Authority (VCEA). I just wanted to take the opportunity to recognise the Victorian Catholic Education Authority, which is now the peak body for Catholic school education here in Victoria. I was delighted to attend the commissioning of that new body earlier this year. It is an important body that does advocate on behalf of all the Catholic schools in Victoria. There are over 450 Catholic schools in Victoria, and this body not only advocates on their behalf but ensures that their funding requirements and needs are met right down to each individual Catholic primary school. It was previously known as the Catholic Education Commission, and it changed in 2023 as part of the renewal process that it is going through to enhance its governance structure, initiated by the church in 2021. We have seen Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS) also form in recent time, and the administration there looked to take over the operation and running of all Catholic primary schools here in Melbourne, and then of course the regional bodies do similar work across Victoria.

Can I acknowledge the former education minister and former Deputy Premier James Merlino, as the chair of the new VCEA; and people known personally to me, Patricia Cowling, the former principal of Genazzano, as a member of the board and of course Brian Loughnane. I have had an opportunity to meet with their new chief executive Professor Elizabeth Labone and have a really positive discussion about how we can ensure that we continue to advocate for the important role in this state that Catholic education plays and ensure that choice remains an option for parents here in Victoria. I know that the VCEA and the MACS as well were very disappointed in the government’s design of the $400 school bonus, as it is known, in the recent budget not flowing through to those most needy in Catholic schools, and particularly Catholic primary schools, right across the state. I have spoken to my regional colleagues at the table here about the particular impact the design of that initiative has had on regional Catholic schools that have students in need in high numbers in low socio-economic categories and that not flowing through. Yet every student in a government school regardless of their socio-economic status is receiving that $400 bonus. The design of that is just not equitable and is not fair. That is something that Catholic education are extremely disappointed in, and they will continue to advocate on behalf of those families.

I now want to return back to the point in this bill around the small, maybe tiny, reduction in principal workload when it comes to delegating the role of approving work experience. While indeed in this bill the teacher workload is acknowledged as an area of concern by the government, we need to acknowledge more broadly that we are in the midst of a workforce crisis in our education system. We on this side of the chamber have been calling out this crisis for many years and urging immediate action from the government to help ease the workload on our hardworking teachers and principals across the state. It has been great to see our colleagues in the other place join that call in recent months with the publication of the Legal and Social Issues Committee’s inquiry into the state education system in Victoria. As the president of the Victorian Association of State Secondary School Principals Colin Axup told the inquiry:

… it would be fair to say that staffing is the number one game in town at the moment.

This is certainly what teachers and parents are telling me when I visit schools across the state. No matter which school I visit, and I visit schools very regularly, it is the number one issue. In particular principals will raise the challenges when it comes to workforce, when it comes to retaining teachers and of course when it comes to hiring new teachers, and nowhere is this more acute than in regional Victoria and in Melbourne’s growth suburbs. It seems now in Victoria that being fully staffed on any given day is a rare occurrence, and it never seems to stay that way, given the high levels of teacher burnout and teachers exiting the system. We can and we must do better when it comes to attracting and retaining the teachers we need in our schools. We need to do so for our students, because they deserve certainty when it comes to who will be teaching them.

Unfortunately we regularly hear of reports of doubled-up classrooms or students being sent home – VCE students being sent home – because there is not a teacher to teach them in the classroom on any given day. Of course there is the revolving door when it comes to relief teachers and not having that stability in the classroom to ensure that students are given the very best chance to learn, and we are seeing it reflected in the outcomes when it comes to educational outcomes here in Victoria. We had the NAPLAN results recently, which showed that one-third of Victorian students are not meeting reading and numeracy standards when it comes to NAPLAN – one-third. That is 300,000 Victorian students that are not meeting those standards, that are not being taught to read and that are not being taught the basics in mathematics. Unfortunately what we are seeing, and the Auditor-General has delivered a report on this, is the gap is widening for those disadvantaged students in particular.

Disadvantaged students have been falling further and further behind over recent years here in Victoria, and unless you are able to have the consistency of a classroom teacher and you know that you are going to be able to go to school each day and continue what you were learning yesterday in a coordinated fashion and that that teacher is able to deliver the curriculum – particularly in those early years, those primary years – then those educational outcomes are going to continue to be at risk here in Victoria.

We also know that teachers are leaving the system because of the incredible workload that they are shouldering. There are – particularly from the committee report, which I mentioned earlier, from the other place – some recommendations that I would highly commend to the minister and the government. I note from that report that finding 14 is:

The expected teacher shortfall is a serious issue for the state education system that warrants significant and sustained attention and intervention.

I could not agree more with the finding from Legal and Social Issues Committee from the Legislative Council. We need significant and sustained attention on this issue and we need real intervention, because whatever measures the government have in place – and I know the minister and the government like to claim $1.6 billion in workforce initiatives when it comes to the teacher crisis – they are not working.

We recently, through this report, saw that the incentive-based initiative that is designed to incentivise teachers to move to the regions through providing them with an uplift in their pay – a cash incentive – is not having the desired effect. It is not keeping teachers in those locations, and that means our regional schools in particular are seeing this turnover and turnover of staff – if they can find staff in the first place.

The member for South-West Coast and I visited Portland Secondary College, and they were struggling to find maths and science teachers for their VCE students. We are in the midst of the VCE exam period at the moment, and I wish all of our VCE students here in Victoria the best of luck over the coming weeks. I know it can be very stressful period, but they should know they have worked long and hard to get to this point and they are very well placed. Regardless of the outcome, there is always a pathway forward. But VCE students at Portland Secondary College are not able to access VCE teachers when it comes to maths and science. If we think about some of those subjects, whether maths methods or physics, some of those subjects are prerequisites for university placements. You need to be able to study those subjects and complete those subjects and do well in those subjects at a high school level to be able to then take on the courses at university that you want to do. If you do not have access to those subjects because there are not teachers in place, then it is simply limiting your options at the age of 17 or 18 about what you might want to pursue in the future in terms of your professional career. Despite these incentives in place that the government likes to hang their hat on, they are not having any impact. We are not seeing those places filled and we are not seeing those places filled for the long term.

I will touch on something that came up at the discussions we had with Portland Secondary College and many other schools that I have visited in the regions. One of the issues with these short-term incentives is they do cause issues within the existing class of teachers at that school, who may have been there for five, 10, 15 or even 20 years. They are not seeing a reward for remaining in place. They are not seeing a reward for being a teacher and delivering all that they can their students for 10 years or 20 years, but they are seeing younger teachers come in and being offered these financial incentives, seeing an uplift in their pay, and that creates a two-tiered system that is really unfair within our education system here in Victoria.

The report’s recommendation 31 stated:

The Department of Education should thoroughly evaluate its teacher recruitment intervention programmes in addressing expected teacher shortfall.

The committee – and I will say it was a committee that was represented by government members, opposition members and members of the crossbench – acknowledged that what is happening at the moment is the government’s initiatives are simply not working. We are not seeing enough teachers join the profession and we are certainly not seeing enough teachers stay in the profession. We have seen multiple reports recently about the attrition rate when it comes teachers here in Victoria. We saw recently in the Herald Sun a report around the number of younger teachers, graduate teachers, leaving the profession in droves when it comes to their registration with the Victorian Institute of Teaching. Those younger teachers are not re-registering, and the exodus from the teaching profession is from those younger teachers.

We know that one in five graduate teachers will leave the profession in the first five years.

One of the findings from this report a couple of weeks ago was the fact that we have an incredibly cluttered curriculum here in Victoria. We have a cluttered curriculum, and young teachers in particular, graduate teachers, leave university, come into the classroom and are not prepared to or do not even understand how to start to navigate that curriculum – what to prioritise – and it is reflected in our educational outcomes. When we see those incredibly stark numbers of a third of Victorian students not meeting the proficiency standards when it comes to literacy and numeracy it is clear that we are not prioritising what is needed in our curriculum – those foundational skills, those skills that are going to be needed to go through the following years of schooling into those secondary years – and the further and further behind that children are in those primary school years, the harder it is to catch up in those secondary school years.

The committee made some excellent recommendations to ease the teacher workforce crisis, and I want to make a mention of them here today. Recommendation 32 called on the Victorian Institute of Teaching to adjust employer requirements in the ‘permission to teach’ category of teacher registration to fast-track the employment of subject matter experts in Victorian schools, and that could certainly go some way in terms of dealing with the issue I spoke about in regional Victoria and the example at Portland Secondary College when it comes to maths and science teachers.

With my time remaining I would say that while the opposition is not opposing this bill today, for those on the other side of the house that will no doubt say that Victoria is the Education State, it simply could not be further from the truth. We have underfunded, overcrowded schools and we have short-staffed schools here in Victoria, and we are not delivering for students.

Nina TAYLOR (Albert Park) (11:27): I will just take the liberty of echoing the sentiments that have been expressed thus far and sharing my personal condolences for the incident that occurred at Auburn South Primary School yesterday – an absolutely tragic incident for the whole school community. I certainly share my deepest sadness for them and also for the first responders; it must have been extremely emotional and difficult to handle, so I just wanted to share that from the outset before I move to the bill.

I will now move to the bill, noting that we are talking specifically about the Education and Training Reform Amendment Bill 2024. At the crux, the bill amends the Education and Training Reform Act 2006 to strengthen the compliance and enforcement powers of the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority – there is certainly a sound rationale for the changes being brought about here, some very practical elements; and just as an overview, to allow school principals to nominate other persons or classes of persons to make work experience arrangements and structured workplace learning arrangements; to streamline and standardise processes relating to board appointments to education portfolio entities and skills and TAFE portfolio entities; and to reduce the administrative burden for the authority, other portfolio entities, regulated entities and school principals.

Before I proceed further to do a deeper dive into the bill I just did want to pick up on a couple of points that were made by the member for Kew. I am a little bit confused about whether the Liberals still want to proceed with targeted financial incentives or not. It seemed like there was an inference that they should be cut, because they were being so harshly criticised. Just to put on the table what they actually are doing: our targeted financial incentives program is making sure that we have a teacher in every classroom right around the state. Over half of the 2019–20 and 2020–21 cohort have continued at their targeted financial incentive school, and over 75 per cent of these cohorts remain in the government school system. For the 2021–22 cohort 79 per cent of the 250 TFI – sorry, I am just making a little acronym there – teachers who received upfront financial incentives remained at their original TFI school, and we have filled almost 700 of the 830 places in hard-to-staff schools right across Victoria, with the most recent 230 places funded in the 2024–25 budget update.

So I think perhaps rather than rolling tropes and things that are being stated in the chamber, which do not really come back to the facts, it is important to look at the stats as they are, and clearly we can see by those statistics that good work is being put into schools to keep young teachers there into the future, and we actually can see an outcome from the statistics that I have just read out to the chamber, contrary to what was just inferred a few moments ago.

More broadly, when we are looking at teacher recruitment, the government school teaching workforce in Victoria has grown by almost 1700 teaching staff since June 2023. Again, we can see that those numbers speak to a significant increase in the numbers, so to suggest that nothing has been done, nothing has happened, I certainly take exception to those inferences, because it does not correlate with the actual numbers. Since 2019 – and see, there is the other thing. Did you notice how I said, ‘Since 2019’? We are now in 2024. Clearly action has been taken over a number of years – it is not that nothing has been done – and significant action. I know that the opposition suggested that an investment of $1.6 billion in schools is not significant. I would actually seek to again prosecute the contrary of that. What does that actually look like? $1.6 billion in school workforce initiatives, with around 8000 more registered teachers in 2023 than in 2020. If the opposition thinks 8000 more registered teachers is nothing, well, I am going to take a contrary position to that, not to be deliberately argumentative, but I think when we are in the chamber we need to speak in facts, and I think it is clear that we should represent things as they are.

As part of that funding, we have provided secondary school teaching degree scholarships resulting in a 23 per cent increase in university students seeking to undertake a teaching degree course in Victoria in 2024. The state budget 2024–25 continues to invest in our teachers by providing an additional $139 million to attract more staff back into teaching and from abroad. The Productivity Commission found that Victoria’s student–teacher ratios have improved by over 10 per cent since 2015, after four years of neglect from those opposite. Victoria’s teaching workforce has achieved higher growth than any other state or territory, accounting for more than half the national growth in Australia’s teaching workforce in 2023. You may have wondered why I laboured those points. It is just that I really was a little taken aback by the fairly scathing criticism of our education system and the efforts of our government to drive the best possible education outcomes for students but also to support our wonderful teachers, who we respect on so many levels for the incredible education opportunities that they drive for students in this state.

There are a couple of other points that I did want to make. Let us be really clear about this: only under a Labor government will Victoria remain an education state. Education is the most important public investment we can make in our future. Our government has set a strong foundation of education in Victoria, and this bill builds on previous reforms and initiatives we have delivered. Let us take phonics, for example. We updated the Victorian teaching and learning model to embed explicit teaching at its core, including the use of systematic synthetic phonics. Let me tell you, this is a fantastic reform. It is the right reform. We were at South Melbourne Primary School the other day, and this is absolutely the latest in education. I saw the kids, they were actually slanting. What that means is they get the little whiteboards – this is the latest technology; I am not just saying this – in terms of getting that constant accountability and working in with their teacher to make sure that they can properly pronounce words and they get those fundamental skills that they need to set them up for their future, and it is happening right in this state, and we certainly are striving forward on that front. I am very excited because I know what it delivers, particularly because we have been talking about students who are disadvantaged, and they are the ones who have been most inclined to be compromised – and this is a universal principle, I should say – where they cannot necessarily get read to at home, where they are not getting that embedded.

However, with phonics we can see this is really cutting through and helping to make sure all Victorian students get the educational outcomes that they deserve, absolutely being able to achieve everything that they want in their lives.

With the school saving bonus, let us just be clear about that, because that was getting a bit smashed up as well. The school saving bonus will provide $400 in support for Victorian school-aged students in term 4 2024 for use on 2025 school costs. Government school information – if your child, or children, attends a government school, the school saving bonus for government school students can be accessed via the school saving bonus online system in November 2024. The bonus can be used towards 2025 school activities, including camps, trips, excursions and incursions, outdoor education, graduations, school uniforms and textbooks. Cutting to the chase, on non-government school information, if your child, or children, attends a non-government school, the $400 school saving bonus will be provided directly to your school to students eligible for the Camps, Sports and Excursions Fund – just to be clear about that so that we are providing accurate information in the chamber on eligibility for this wonderful support in a cost-of-living crisis as well. This is helping to support families and carers across the state to be able to give their kids the best possible school experience, whether it is school books, whether it is uniforms, outdoor education, swimming or other things. Finally, I should say very pragmatic and appropriate reforms are being brought about by the bill, and I commend it to the house.

Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (11:37): I am pleased to rise to say a few words on the Education and Training Reform Amendment Bill 2024, which as the member for Kew has indicated, the opposition is not opposing. These are very much uncontroversial amendments in this piece of legislation relating to the appropriate registration and regulation of schools and boarding houses around the state, and it would appear that this is particularly aimed at one particular organisation that operated out of the inner city in recent times. It is important that schools and school boarding houses are appropriately qualified and appropriately registered so that there is government oversight, that any organisation that is either a school or purporting to be a school is doing so in the correct manner and that parents can have confidence that any school they send their children to, government or independent, will meet some basic safety and education standards. We certainly support strengthening these arrangements. Allowing unregistered schools to persist could undermine public confidence in the education system, whether it be the public system, the private independent system or Catholic schools as well.

I note that this is apposite to a proposal in my own electorate, Corner Inlet College, which some people are seeking to establish near Foster. They are going through the process at the moment. There has been a little bit of controversy, as there often is with a development in a rural area just out of Foster, but the Minister for Planning has already given a planning permit for that college to go ahead. They are intending to open as a co-educational independent secondary school next year – starting with years 7 and 8 I think is their intention. I note on the Corner Inlet College website the establishment and operation of Corner Inlet College is subject to Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority (VRQA) approval, so clearly they are going through the process and doing the right thing in making sure that they do have that appropriate approval, which is the correct thing to do.

This legislation is strengthening some of the provisions that are applied to the VRQA. There are quite a number of amendments, and I think the member for Kew has gone to most of them in detail, but the obvious one is increasing the maximum penalties for carrying on or conducting an unregistered school or school boarding premises.

And it was a little surprise to me to find that the penalty currently for someone committing those offences is only 10 penalty units or just under $2000. This bill will increase the maximum penalty to 120 penalty units, or around $23,000 for an individual, or 600 penalty units and nearly $120,000 for a body corporate. While we could argue over the quantum or otherwise, that certainly I think is a step in the right direction to ensure that there is an appropriate deterrent to anyone doing the wrong thing with respect to setting up a school. So there are certainly some good parts of this legislation, as I said, and we are not opposing it.

I will just touch on some of the debate. I was only partly listening to the member for Albert Park and the member for Kew talking about teacher incentives, but certainly I know talking to principals in my electorate that they have regularly had problems in the last couple of years filling the teacher requirements of their schools. I have asked in the past about teacher incentives. One of the challenges of those incentives for rural and regional schools is if we say, ‘Well, we can’t get a maths teacher at Sale College,’ for example, and we offer someone an extra $50,000 to come and to fill a gap, that is all well and good until the teacher that is already there says, ‘Well, hang on, I’m already here and I’m already teaching maths’ – or teaching science or whatever – ‘and now this person’s come in and is getting paid a hell of a lot more than me.’ That becomes an HR issue then that the principal has to manage, and there is some question I think as to how successful that program has been. I am not knocking it; it is an attempt to try and get teachers into locations where they are needed, but it is not always straightforward and simple that these sorts of incentives will work and lead to a harmonious workplace.

Speaking of which, another provision in this is the section that empowers school principals to delegate their authority when it comes to work experience. I do not personally know a bit about this, but it is something I have been familiar with in my life because my mother was a careers teacher as well as teaching English and history and geography and many other things, mostly English. I was always well versed in English, and it is probably why I became a journalist, because whenever I asked how to spell something or how something was written, Mum would say, ‘Look it up in the dictionary. I’m not going to just tell you; you have to learn.’ She was fantastic at that, but she also had for many, many years the role of careers teacher at Kildare College in Traralgon, a Brigidine Catholic school originally for girls. She ended up actually teaching me briefly when the school went co-ed.

But Mum had a lot of work finding spots for a couple of hundred year 10 girls every year around the place. I was just thinking about it now. Had I been the local member at the time, Mum would have been a great fundraiser, I reckon, because she would have known every business in the Latrobe Valley because she was constantly on the phone to people trying to find spots. As I said, I ended up being a journalist, but in year 10 I loved woodwork and I was going to be a carpenter. Well, I was meant to go to a builder. He had to pull out at the last minute, and I did my formal work experience with a cabinet-maker. It was not the best experience, and it probably started me thinking about alternatives. One of my mates actually talked about journalism, and hey presto, a few months later I did additional work experience. I actually did work experience at the Bairnsdale Advertiser, where there was a young up-and-coming sports reporter by the name of Tim Bull. So it is funny how things go around.

Roma Britnell interjected.

Danny O’BRIEN: I did then go and report on you, member for South-West Coast.

But that certainly is an issue for principals. The principals I talk to, whether primary or secondary, do an amazing amount of work. I sometimes liken them to being an MP because they do a lot of work, they do not get much credit for anything that goes right and they have to deal with a lot of rubbish – difficulty with parents, students and all the things. So if we can lighten their load a little bit, then I think that is a good thing. I wish them all well, and hopefully we will continue that strong program of work experience for kids, because it is fantastic to help them decide what they want to do with their lives, just as it did with me, and here I am now.

The government talks a big game about education, and certainly there has been investment. My concern has always been the lack of investment being spread right around the state, particularly in Gippsland South. We have had a couple of good programs; Sale specialist school and Yarram Primary School have had funding and belatedly, after a six-year campaign, Korumburra Secondary College, which was fantastic. But I am still campaigning for Sale College, which is a desperately needed big rebuild in my electorate. Sale College is across two campuses; that causes massive problems for the school in managing both students and teachers, but more particularly the Macalister campus is in a pretty ordinary state. The former minister Mr Merlino did provide $3 million for the master plan, in the 2021 budget I think it was. But here we are three years later, that master plan is done, the planning is all ready to go for the new site, there is a site that has now been sold to the department by the local council but we do not have any money for the school to go ahead, so that needs to occur, and likewise for the Foster Primary School. Again we made commitments at the 2022 election to finish the rebuild of Foster primary, as its main building is from 1965 and is pretty ordinary and needs updating.

And finally, there is the stadium at the Mirboo North primary and secondary schools, which is a shared stadium between the two schools and the community. Indeed I am in the process of organising some meetings with all the users of that, because it is a stadium that is out of date, it does not meet any of the standards anymore and the toilets and change rooms are pretty much disgusting, if I might say. I was pleased to have the Minister for Community Sport come and visit after the storm earlier in the year to understand the needs there, but we actually need the government to get on board, particularly the Department of Education, to fund the new stadium there. We do not oppose the bill, and I wish it safe passage through the house.

Steve McGHIE (Melton) (11:47): Today I rise to contribute to the Education and Training Reform Amendment Bill 2024, which fundamentally is to enhance and to improve the regulation of schools and other educational institutions across our state, and I am pleased that the opposition are not opposing this bill.

I would also like to give an acknowledgement and a shout-out and send my condolences and best wishes to Auburn Primary School after the incident that occurred there yesterday. We wish them all well and send our condolences to the family that lost one of their young ones.

This bill introduces several reforms aimed at strengthening the compliance and enforcement powers of the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority. By equipping the VRQA with the necessary authority we can better prevent unregistered or non-compliant schools from slipping through the cracks and ensure that every student receives a safe and high-quality education. The bill also reduces the administrative workload for school principals by allowing the principal to delegate some responsibility for work experience and structured workplace learning arrangements. This change will assist principals, who have an incredible workload not only dealing with the things at the school but also dealing with all the other issues that come in from outside the school through the parents, the families and other agencies that influence the education process. It will enable principals to focus more on leading their schools, while the staff with relevant expertise can manage some of that workload that the principals would have been carrying. It also reduces the burden, as the member for Kew mentioned earlier, that the principals carry on their shoulders. As I say, if we can reduce some of that pressure and workload on the principals, they can manage their schools much, much better.

In Melton we work very closely with our schools, as I assume most members in this chamber do. I visit schools out in my electorate on a regular basis. In fact last Friday, due to World Teachers Day, I was out at Binap Primary School, which is our newest primary school in Melton out in Brookfield. It was fantastic to catch up with some of the school captains and the assistant principal Chris Carpenter. It was fantastic. It is a great school and growing rapidly with numbers in a newish area and a developing area of Melton. We are building new schools every year in Melton, and since I have been the member for the last six years I think I have opened a new school each year, and there are two more to be built next year – a new public secondary school in Cobblebank and a new primary school at Weir Views, which will both be open for the 2026 school year, which is fantastic and catering for the massive growth in that area.

This Friday I am going out to St Francis Catholic College at their new campus at Cobblebank. We provided in excess of $5 million to that school to build stage 1 of their new campus, and it will be great to go out there on Friday and assist with the official opening of that campus. We have a great relationship with not only our public schools but also our independent and Catholic schools in the Melton electorate.

Being so closely connected to your schools is clearly one of the best parts of the job of being a member of Parliament. I am grateful to all of the principals, the assistant principals, the teachers and the support staff, and also I want to extend a shout-out to the school councils for the amazing work that they do. We have some fantastic school communities, which include the school councils, the teachers, the parents and the families in total. They are amazing schools, and as I say, we have great working relationships with them.

I think most of our schools in Melton have had an upgrade. There might be one or two that are yet to happen, but most of them have been funded for an upgrade – these are the older schools, but again, as I said, we continue to build new schools in Melton and the surrounding area. I know my friend in the electorate of Kororoit has also had a number of schools built in her electorate because it is the fastest-growing area in the state, and we are trying to keep up with that growth.

Last week I visited Melton Secondary College. They did a production of Chicago – Chicago: Teen Edition – and it was fantastic. I thought I was going to see a movie, but actually it was a live production, so that is how I am really up with things. I rocked in there, and it was a live production, and all these kids were dressed up ready to go. It was terrific. It was in the Melton community hall, and it was a fantastic production. It was as good a live production as I have ever been to. I was really in awe of all the kids that were in this production. If you will allow me to do it, I think I will give them all a shout-out, so here we go. To Sarah, Carly and Joey, Adrian, Luke, Alice, Emily, Sinead, Justine, Kendal, the arts team, ELT, Isabel, Kayska, Sage, Rhys, Madison, Lily, Ekamneet, Akshnoor, Tiana, Irene, Milka, Izabella, Alexandra, Louise, Riley, Diing, Lee, Oliva, Ash, Eric Duran, Joy, Myah, Skyler, Lilly, Jordan, Antenah, Ryan, Eshann, Cima, Fizza, Josh, Alexis, Aurora, Dylan, Roxy and Velma, you all played a wonderful part. It was a great show, and I cannot wait to see the production that they will provide next year.

I will tell you what, there is a lot of talent out in Melton in these live productions, so it will be fantastic to see what they are going to do next year. I have offered to sponsor their show next year, so it will be terrific. I will recommend it next year when it is on. I will advertise it to everyone to come out and have a look, so well done – and also to the local businesses that supported that production, and the council of course in allowing it to go on in the local hall. It was terrific. Recently with the wrapping-up of the Melbourne Fringe Festival only a week or so ago and the growing arts scene, I am trying to get the Fringe Festival out to Melton next year. This production of Chicago: Teen Edition – we need more and more of these sorts of things to allow the kids to have an opportunity to express themselves in the way that they wish to. I think it was fantastic that they were able to do that, and it needs to continue through our schools. We need to support that even more.

Coming back to the bill and some of the specific changes, it will eliminate the show-cause process where a non-government school or boarding premises voluntarily cancels its registration or ceases its operations. It seeks to increase penalties for operating an unregistered school or school boarding premises to 120 penalty units for individuals and 600 for a corporate entity, and in aligning with similar legislation it will be a significant increase. It provides the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority with new powers to issue notices to produce documents or comply with regulatory requirements, ensuring greater accountability.

While we are talking about education, I just want to talk about what the Allan Labor government continues to do in regard to keeping Victoria the Education State, and it is the one of the most important investments that we can make in the future. We are building on the strong foundation we have already set with reforms and programs that benefit our students, our schools and our communities across the state.

I will just run through a few things that this government is providing, some of which have already been mentioned in earlier contributions. Phonics – we have embedded explicit teaching at the heart of Victorian education, including the use of systematic synthetic phonics. Mental health support – schools now have mental health practitioners and a dedicated Schools Mental Health Fund to support student wellbeing. Pathways to employment – our Head Start apprenticeships and traineeships program ensures students gain hands-on experience while still in school. Health care access – initiatives like doctors in secondary schools, Smile Squad dental vans and the NDIS navigator program provide crucial support to students. Of course there is the school saving bonus, with credits arriving in family accounts soon; the Camps, Sports and Excursions Fund; affordable school uniforms; and free period products for all government schools. Programs like the breakfast club and Glasses for Kids ensure that no child is held back by hunger or a lack of essential resources, and of course we have expanded programs like out-of-hours school care, the student excellence program, primary mathematics and science specialists to enhance learning outcomes.

To further improve teacher capacity and student support we have reduced face-to-face teaching hours and added more school nurses and allied health services, and we have also launched the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership. With programs like the teacher excellence program we are actively supporting teachers and students working in regional Victoria, and of course with these reforms the Allan Labor government continues to invest in the future of every student. We are not just improving education; we are making sure every young person in Victoria has the opportunity to succeed. This is an important bill. As I say, the schools are fantastic in my electorate but also across the state, and I commend the bill to the house.

Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (11:57): I will begin my contribution by also acknowledging the tragic accident outside Auburn South Primary School yesterday and paying my respects to the families of the affected children and the teachers and the school. They all have our sympathies; we hold them in our hearts. If I can be indulged a little more, I would like to pay tribute also to the tragic accident that happened in South-West Coast just last week, where a truck went through the bedroom of Carmel and Jimmy Madden, people I knew very well. I pay my respects to their family – they were amazing contributors to our community – particularly Gerald, his brother, and Sally and the whole family. My condolences.

I begin by speaking on the Education and Training Reform Amendment Bill 2024. The purpose of this bill is to improve the regulation of schools and other educational institutions across the state. Clearly we will not be opposing improvements to regulation. However, this is a bill that is not doing a lot to fix the education system itself. Whilst it is important that we have standards – and this bill makes sure that child safety standards are adhered to and makes other minor changes – it is very much an administrative bill. Whilst this is an administrative bill in the education space, we have an absolute education crisis going on in the state of Victoria. This discussion had the opportunity to really make some changes.

I am speaking constantly with the educators in our region, particularly the principals, and they really are their wits’ end. Some of the activities in this bill are things like taking away some of the administrative burden on principals and sharing the load, ensuring that when children go on work experience and structured workplace learning placements, they can share the load with other leaders within the school to make sure those administrative burdens are shared. These are good things. I think anything that can be done to assist the principals in particular is good, because their job in running schools has very much changed. We have got a very different environment that is happening in our schools as we speak. I was speaking to a principal recently who told me he has not had one day’s break since 3 December last year, because he spent the whole of the summer break – and he was not looking for sympathy; he is a very committed principal at one of our secondary schools, and I have a lot of them in my region – trying to find staff. That is a daily challenge.

Now we are seeing a teacher exodus because teachers are burning out. Teachers are not feeling backed in. I have spoken in this place already many times about the wonderful teachers who taught many of my children and are now teaching grandchildren of mine and who are saying they just have not got control of the classroom. These are very experienced teachers. It is not because of their skill set; it is because we are not seeing an education system now that is really fit for purpose. We have got a cluttered curriculum. We have got teachers who are having to deal with psychology issues, and they are not trained psychologists. They are having to work out where to put their priorities with the curriculum when it is so cluttered. With the NAPLAN results we saw just last year that one-third of our students in Victoria are not meeting the reading and numeracy levels needed. That is 300,000 of our students not meeting the standard for reading and numeracy. It is absolutely appalling.

The government needs to recognise that the lockdowns have affected our children These are kids who are really struggling, and as I have said already in this place before, we have got children on restricted movement in the schools because of the abuse of children against each other. So instead of having to just, as a teacher, work out what the program is and whether they can fit maths and geography together, they are also having to keep students apart. The challenges are enormous, and the children really are struggling. We have got to do things differently, and so the recommendations that have come forward from experts are talking about having a look at a solid, sustainable approach to changing how we do things. The government needs to put significant effort and sustained attention on this problem, because these children are our future, and we cannot continue to push the teachers when they are saying it is not worth it.

One of the teachers said to me recently that it is not even a family-friendly profession anymore because so many people are working from home. The government is clearly allowing that, and we end up with a two-tiered system where so many people are working from home and the teachers are thinking, ‘Well, I’ve got no-one to look after my children whilst I’m working because I can’t get childcare, and I’m making so many sacrifices.’ It is just not working for families. Even with the incentives the government gave to regional schools – I was talking to the schools in my region and they said it is not working because it puts a two-tiered approach into the schools. If someone has given 10, 15 years of their life to teaching within a school and someone comes in from out of the region and gets extra money, it creates an unfair and unequal environment. This government cannot manage money, but they also cannot use it as the only approach.

We have a real challenge in our schools. We have to back in teachers. Another teacher said to me that there is no appetite for suspension. Whilst we all understand and this teacher particularly commented about how we must make sure everyone has the right to a good education, we cannot ignore the fact that these environments now for some children are not suitable, and it is holding up the ability for others to flourish and for teachers to actually do their job effectively. That is not to say we do not need to find ways and systems that suit different individuals with different needs – we actually do – but we need to make sure we back in teachers and we put consequences and boundaries around activities or behaviours that are causing the system to go into collapse. It is pretty logical stuff, and it is not, I think, too frightening.

It should not be that teachers, like in a Warrnambool College situation recently, have to go to WorkCover to be able to get acknowledgement that they are struggling. I was shocked to hear that the department were instructing them to put up with it and be quiet – ‘We don’t want to cause any shame on the government.’ Well, I am sorry, when you are the government, you have a job to do, and when something is breaking you need to address it and you need to get it back on track. Instead of ignoring the problem and having a teacher exodus, you need to actually find ways to listen to the experts in the field, and they are the teachers, they are the principals, they are the experienced individuals and they are also the new teachers, the freshly qualified teachers who are saying it is really not what they expected and are often leaving within the first five years. So we do need to address the problem.

School refusal is up enormously. A Portland school told me that they are spending a huge amount of time chasing students. They have to contact them – I think it was either daily or weekly – and that is taking an enormous amount of time away from the school being able to actually teach children, because someone is having to contact them.

These kids, some of them have not been at school for two years, but they are still the responsibility of the school. These are really challenging situations that 30 years ago did not exist. To still have the one teacher, sometimes an assistant, not always, in a classroom and the same sort of approach, we clearly have to do something differently, and this is the responsibility of the government. You cannot just throw $400 bonuses, for example, and only to the state school system, when we have clearly got, particularly in the regional areas, low socio-economic children who are going to Catholic schools and do deserve support as well. This inequitable approach that this government takes by using money in that way is totally inappropriate. We have got a department that is not listening. We have got the need for flexible options, which is not happening. We have got the opportunity as a state, through the Allan Labor government, who are in charge, to look at the system and actually fix it, not to carry on about being the Education State, not celebrating failure when they have NAPLAN results that say that a third of students are not meeting the numeracy and reading requirements. They should be acknowledging their failures, addressing the issue and ensuring that our youth, our future of the state of Victoria, are educated, because it is absolutely without a doubt that a good education provides for a good future. Victoria is being left behind because we had the longest lockdowns and our children are the most compromised. We can all talk about how tough this world is to live in as a young person, but without a solid education around them, without the support of adults within the education system being backed in themselves by government, we certainly have a bleak future and certainly not a Victoria that we can claim is the Education State anymore.

Daniela DE MARTINO (Monbulk) (12:07): I am delighted to be speaking on the Education and Training Reform Amendment Bill 2024, and Acting Speaker Addison, I am sure you are delighted to be listening to these contributions as a fine former teacher yourself. There are several of us in the chamber at the moment, and I will say hear, hear to the teachers out there, all of them. They do an extraordinary, extraordinary job every single day in educating the students of Victoria, as do our principals, and this bill actually does go to alleviating some of the administrative burden for principals, which I am very happy to be speaking about. But I cannot continue without addressing the fact that last Friday was World Teachers’ Day, which is cause for celebration, but on a more sombre note I actually attended the funeral of a local very, very loved principal, Tom Daly, who I did speak about in my members statement yesterday. That funeral was filled with principals and teachers, former colleagues, amazing people who have made changes to everyone’s life. The impact that a good teacher has on all of us – I am sure each and every member of this chamber can think of at least one if not many, many more teachers who left an indelible mark on them, who gave them a passion for a particular area of learning, who inspired them one way or another. Whenever I get an opportunity to speak on an education bill, I seize it with both hands because it is a moment to be able to acknowledge the fabulous work of our teachers and the tremendous efforts that principals put in each and every day.

This bill amends the Education and Training Reform Act 2006 to strengthen the compliance and enforcement powers of the Victorian Registration Qualification Authority, the VRQA, and it also amends the act which I alluded to before to lift some of the admin burden off principals, to reduce admin for them, for the authority, for other portfolio entities and regulated entities. It also will allow school principals to nominate another person or classes of person to make work experience arrangements and structured workplace learning arrangements. It is going to take some of that paperwork off their desk, because there are others who are well equipped to be able to do that. Enabling principals to be able to pass that on to someone else just frees them up and gives them a bit more time to deal with all the other matters that come with managing a school, because they are complex places, schools – they are not simple. They have got a whole cross-section of community who attend, and even the smaller schools will have complexities. They are in the business of educating people, and that takes skill, it takes knowledge, it takes talent and it takes a well-organised staff team as well as teachers.

Wherever we can alleviate some of that admin burden for principals is a day to celebrate, I say. I did note the member for Kew talked about Riverside Grammar before in her example. I was looking back at that because I recall when the Riverside Grammar article came out in the Age in 2022. I was a bit shocked by the status of this school, or pseudo-school, because it was not registered. I am delighted that this bill will actually prevent situations like that from occurring again. It gives the VRQA increased powers, which is definitely something that we needed to see here, and it allows them to make sure that any entity which is a pseudo-school or could be considered to be a school can actually be investigated by them and addressed. And increasing penalties as well is very important in this regard. I will not drill into the minutia of those penalties because there are many other things that I would do want to speak about here.

This is an important bill. As I said before, anything that can make life easier for our principals is wonderful. I do note that the member for South-West Coast was fairly gloomy towards the end of her contribution when she came to discussing our Education State, and that is a real shame. I would like to change the tone here, because we have so much to celebrate. I have to say that to say that we are just all talk about the Education State is actually insulting. There is so much more than talk.

Steve Dimopoulos interjected.

Daniela DE MARTINO: It is factually correct. Thank you, Minister. I will take that interjection, because it is a great one. It is factually correct that we are the Education State. There is an extensive list of the things that we have done, and one of them is in terms of the teacher workforce. Because this has been discussed here today, I just want to mention a few things here. I do like putting facts on the record into Hansard. I think it is an obligation that we all have, to deal in facts. We are actually leading the country. Our workforce is increasing more than any other state or territory. It is a challenge – no-one is shying away from that – which is why we are tackling it and we are addressing it. One of the tangible things that we have done is create 8000 new scholarships for people to study secondary teaching. It has already led to a 9 per cent increase in university offers for this year.

Kathleen Matthews-Ward interjected.

Daniela DE MARTINO: Hear, hear indeed. That is how we build a workforce. We have to train them first. We have put our money where our mouth is, and we have ensured that this is exactly what we are doing. People have seized the opportunity. They have gone, ‘Well, there’s a great career there, and if I can get a scholarship and learn to teach without having a HECS-debt sword of Damocles hanging over my head for the next two decades of my life, what a fabulous thing to do indeed.’ So we are attracting people to the workforce, and that is marvellous. We actually spent $32.2 million in paid student-teacher placements.

I remember doing my student-teacher placement – and I am going to give the game away – in 2001. I had to take annual leave. I had to take unpaid leave.

A member interjected.

Daniela DE MARTINO: Oh, thank you. There are those who are trying to flatter me and pretend that I am younger than I am. I was teaching people who – my colleagues now, I think I may have been teaching when they were mere infants. I will move on from there, but to be quite honest it was a real struggle. Acting Speaker Addison, I am sure you remember what it was like doing unpaid placements. It is a strain. There was a time when I thought, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to afford my rent because I’m not getting paid to do this. I’ve had to take unpaid leave. I’ve exhausted all my accrued leave from my work.’ I was renting. I was living out of home, and I had to pay for food and all of that. The stress was pretty huge, but I pushed on. I made it through with good supportive people around me as well. But to be able to alleviate that is an incredible support for our future workforce. It also tells them how valued they are. Because we do value our teachers in this state – we do – and that is why we are the Education State.

I want to mention as well – here again, we have put our money where our mouths are – $95.7 million to expand support for early career and returning teachers. Once again we are making sure that we are funding support for them to come back into the classroom if they have left for whatever reason and for those new teachers coming in, because there is a lot of work to be done when you first start teaching and you do need good support.

I see nodding heads around here from those who have been in that situation and understand what it is like.

We do not just talk the talk. This government gets out there and funds our schools. We get out there and we are funding teacher placements. We are supporting our workforce and our future workforce. I will not sit here and listen to claims made by those opposite which are baseless and have absolutely no substance to them.

Steve Dimopoulos interjected.

Daniela DE MARTINO: It is unfortunately unfactual, and that is why I do like to bring the facts in here, Minister. There are some other areas in which we have put in a great deal of funding, and I did hear the member for Melton’s wonderful contribution. He listed several amazing initiatives.

A member interjected.

Daniela DE MARTINO: He is a fabulous member indeed.

I want to just touch on a few other things in terms of new schools and capital investment, because we need these buildings, we need good schools and we need schools upgraded as well. Our record speaks for itself. Since we came to government – it is nearly 10 years; it is going to be our decade coming up next month – we have invested $14.9 billion into capital investment. $14.9 billion – I will make sure my enunciation is correct; it is a B, not an M. 122 new schools have been funded, including 14 new schools opened this year, with a total capacity for 9000 more students, all in our growth suburbs. That is a cause to celebrate. There have been 89,000 additional places for Victorian students, and 50 per cent of the schools built across the whole nation – this entire country – in the past decade have been built right here in Victoria.

Steve Dimopoulos: Say that again.

Daniela DE MARTINO: Fifty per cent of the schools built in the nation of Australia have been built right here in Victoria in the past decade. How is that? Are we the Education State? Yes, we certainly are.

Brad ROWSWELL (Sandringham) (12:17): I also rise to address the Education and Training Reform Amendment Bill 2024. What a joy it is to do so following my colleagues the member for Kew, the member for Gippsland South and the member for South-West Coast, and I desperately look forward to the contributions from the members for Mildura, Shepparton, Morwell and Eildon. The Shadow Minister for Education, the member for Kew, has outlined that the opposition will not be opposing this bill. It is quite clear, and there are a number of sensible changes within this bill that we think are just that – sensible.

They include the ability for principals to delegate work experience arrangements. This bill will enable principals to nominate another person or group of people to make work experience arrangements and structured workplace learning arrangements. This is a sensible reform, and it should be agreed to. I cannot believe, frankly, that it has not been thought of earlier. Principals are overworked, and they should be paid better, they should be respected more and they should be valued more. This is a small step in the right direction, but is it enough? The fact they currently have to approve every work experience and structured workplace learning arrangement for students at their school is just a little bit silly, so we are pleased that that is being addressed in this bill.

But here is the thing: while allowing principals to delegate one small part of their job is a sensible measure, it barely scratches the sides, really. The burden placed on principals these days – they are not just educational leaders within their communities, they are HR managers, they are project managers, they are psychologists, they are garbologists, they are a number of things. And all of this of course is taking away from their ability to effectively lead their school communities.

As of this week there are 2000 teacher vacancies in Victoria. This bill does not address that. In fact there are a number of things that this bill does not address. For example, in my community of Sandringham I have been in contact with the Minister for Education and the Minister for Public and Active Transport for a number of months now, going back to mid-October or thereabouts in 2023, about the overcrowding problems on the 825 bus route.

This was first raised with me by students at Beaumaris Secondary College – some outstanding students, actually, and some exemplary students who of their own initiative sought to raise these matters with me. Oskar Edwardes – I will declare a conflict – is not just a student at Beaumaris Secondary College, and I am sure he is okay with me using his name on the basis that he has penned correspondence to the minister about this himself, but his father taught me at St Bede’s all those years ago. His son Oskar is now a student at Beaumaris Secondary College, and he is leading this charge and doing so in fine, fine form.

This overcrowding problem on the 825 bus route is an issue. It is an issue. On 30 October 2023 the school wrote to the education minister at the time:

There have been numerous negative impacts –

so wrote the principal –

on students as a result of the overcrowding:

• Accessibility issues

• Safety issues

• Antisocial behaviour

• Work productivity impacted

One student –

the letter goes on, and I am happy to provide this to Hansard as well –

Amelia P –

who was then in year 11 –

… shared her difficulty in accessing the bus due to the pushing and shoving. She mentioned that walking home is not a viable option for her, especially after knee surgery, and it significantly impacts her study time and ability to complete homework.

Sofia F –

then a year 11 student –

… had a negative experience with the overcrowding, stating that people are practically “lying on each other due to lack of space.” This creates an unsafe environment and has forced her to walk further to access alternative transportation options. Similarly, Anika P highlighted the struggles she faces in getting to work on time, often having to wait for the next bus due to overcrowding, leading to lateness and professional consequences.

The letter goes on, but I am happy to make that available to Hansard.

I got a couple of responses from the government, from the Minister for Education and the minister for transport, on this. But frankly, the responses are not acceptable, because they do not seek to solve the problem. What they seek to do is justify the circumstance, and the kids see through this. I might say, this does not just impact on Beaumaris Secondary College; it impacts on Mentone Girls’ Secondary College and it impacts on Sandringham College and other schools in the area that rely upon this 825 bus. Minister Williams, on this occasion, wrote in May 2024, effectively denying that there was an issue in the first place. The minister wrote:

Student demand is particularly high in the afternoon due to multiple schools finishing at similar times –

it is hardly insightful; it is just a matter of fact –

placing pressure on a small number of trips. As there is generally only one bus that is particularly busy, it is not feasible to provide another bus as there is insufficient demand outside the school peak.

With services every 20 minutes, students are encouraged to consider minor adjustments to travel times to improve their travel experience.

That is all very good, but it does not actually solve the problem. There is still overcrowding on this bus. It goes on to suggest:

Students who live within one kilometre of school are generally no more than a 15-minute walk to school, and cycling within three kilometres of school can usually mean travel to school can be achieved within 10 minutes cycling.

All very good, Minister, but it does not solve the problem of the overcrowded bus. We wrote again to the minister, who then replied on 24 September 2024. We did not just write to the minister and complain further, we were actually offering solutions and offering alternatives, and we suggested, through my consultation with Oskar and his confrères at Beaumaris Secondary College, an articulated bus. I did not know what an articulated bus was until Oskar told me. It is one of the big ones.

Paul Edbrooke: A bendy bus!

Brad ROWSWELL: It is a bendy bus. That is right, member for Frankston. You just got yourself in Hansard with that interjection. Well done. It shows how thoughtful you are – ‘the bendy bus’. But I did not know what it was. It is called an articulated bus. We went to the minister with a solution, an articulated bus solution, but the operator has confirmed, according to the minister, that they do not have any of these vehicles available for deployment on this route. Further, it is worth noting that despite being capable of carrying more passengers, these vehicles face several challenges – their size and limited manoeuvrability et cetera.

So that is all very well and good, but here is the thing: the problem still remains. The overcrowding on the bus still remains. What I am trying to do together with students in my community is provide an alternative that the government could consider to fix the problem. What the government is doing at every twist and every turn is effectively telling us why whatever we are suggesting cannot work. I desperately plead with the government: please – we are trying, we are giving it a crack, we are offering solutions and you are knocking them over – come up with a solution yourselves to present to the kids. Oscar wrote to Minister Carroll on 19 July saying:

I am writing to you regarding a matter of student safety.

It is true; it is a matter of student safety.

Over the past year, the student communities of Beaumaris Secondary College, Sandringham College & Mentone Girls Secondary College have been advocating for changes to the 825 bus service. The core concern over this route is student safety stemming from overcrowding and high demand for this service.

I reckon the best thing that the education minister and in fact the transport minister could do is pop on down and jump on the bus, experience the overcrowding with the kids and know just how darn uncomfortable it is. They are doing their best, and I am working with them to advocate for them and to try and help them. All we are getting is block after block after block by the education minister and the transport minister, and it is not really good enough. We must do better by these kids.

As I said at the start of this contribution, we will not be opposing this bill. We think that there are some decent measures in it that do support teachers and education leaders in our school communities across the state. We do think that education standards are important, must be maintained and must be improved, and as I said, we will not be opposing this bill.

Iwan WALTERS (Greenvale) (12:27): In following the member for Sandringham – he might not welcome the comparison, I suspect – I have not heard a conservative politician so animated about buses since Boris Johnson. With that aside, it is a pleasure to rise to speak on the Education and Training Reform Amendment Bill 2024, which at its core is a set of I think simple, common-sense measures that are all about making sure students are getting the best education in a safe and supportive environment while also streamlining and simplifying the burden that is placed upon principals.

In opening my remarks I want to also acknowledge the tragedy that occurred yesterday at Auburn South Primary School. I was very moved by the leadership of the principal of that school Marcus Wicher. His leadership, his empathy for the families and his presentation to the media exemplified the array of burdens that are placed upon the shoulders of a principal at any school across Victoria at any time. In recognising that tragedy and the burden that that principal is carrying to support his school community in this very challenging time, I think it is a really important step that this bill is taking to alleviate some of that burden by enabling principals to delegate work experience and structured work-integrated learning arrangements and so forth.

Of course the bill also I think strengthens the capacity of the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, the Victorian regulator of many registered training organisations that operate in Victoria and also our schools. It is important that the VRQA enjoys the confidence of the public and that it has the capacity to properly regulate schools and ensure that we do not have unregistered schools, because of the extraordinary risk that that creates for students, because we cannot be certain of the quality of provision and instruction and the safety of students who are in those schools. I am reminded of some of the difficulties that the VRQA experienced about a decade ago – not coincidentally when those opposite were last in government – when we saw partly as a consequence of the Howard government’s attempts to inject so-called contestability into the vocational education and training market a huge detriment not only to our TAFE system but to the quality and reputation of vocational education and training more broadly, leading in very short order to a huge influx of private dodgy providers into the VET sector.

In a sense the VRQA was caught napping; it was overwhelmed by the number of dodgy providers which came into the sector during that 2010 to 2014 period.

A lot of the work that was undertaken by this government in its first term was really cleaning up that mess – cleaning up the mess that was inflicted upon the training sector, which it is still recovering from. Our work to safeguard TAFE, to ensure that we have a robust training regime, is all part of that, but there is an enduring lack of trust and confidence, sadly, across the community in TAFE and training. That is an incredibly damaging thing for our economy and for our society when we are talking about things like parity of esteem between the higher education and the tertiary sectors, where we want to encourage children to pursue whatever pathway is best for them and to recognise that there are really valuable jobs in our trades, when there is a massive trade shortage. Yet we cannot get enough young people going into TAFE and into VET programs to fill those shortages, and a lot of that stems from a regulatory failure 10 years ago that we are still grappling with today.

There is also the school sector that the VRQA has responsibility for, those minimum standards for school registration, and we have heard from previous speakers about some of the very damaging examples where there have been schools operating in an unregistered manner. So it is important that this bill does get to grips with and enables the VRQA to get to grips with unregistered providers and also to share information with other regulators.

I want to revert back to the dimension of the bill that addresses principals’ capacity to now delegate approval for work experience. This is such an important part of a student’s experience at school. I am looking forward in the coming weeks and months to having students who are interested in public policy and government coming to work in my office. Who knows where that might take them? But across the board, young people who have the opportunity to undertake work experience are exposed to, in a sense, the real world and to the application of things that they might be interested in at school level in the economy.

The member for Gippsland South talked about his experience, which may not have been the best one, but it perhaps also crystallised for him that the media was an option that he wished to pursue. That is replicated across Victoria in every school. But because it is replicated across Victoria in every school, the current arrangements create an unnecessary burden for principals that is easily avoided if those who really have the confidence and the authority within schools, whether they are careers managers, heads of year level or classroom teachers – those who know the students themselves and who are capable of signing off on a placement – are given the power to alleviate some of the unnecessary burdens placed upon principals. And that is so important, because both having been a teacher and now in the very regular visits I make to the fantastic schools across my community, I am constantly struck by the incredible weight of responsibility that principals carry and the impact that their leadership has for establishing a positive learning culture, which is in a sense the key thing for translating into student achievement.

So much is asked of principals. So much is placed upon their shoulders. Their actions are so powerful in shaping a school’s culture. The more that we can support them to do that important work, the more that we can alleviate unnecessary burden, the better. So it is incredibly important that this bill does that.

In dwelling upon that point, I just want to acknowledge all of the principals who I work with very closely, seeing firsthand the deep care and empathy they have for their students, the support they provide to their staff and the unrelenting commitment they have to the holistic development of their students, not just in an academic sense but in a personal sense. And they are grappling with phenomena that I do not think were even present when I was in a classroom, and that was not too long ago. Acting Speaker Addison, I know you too have been in schools pretty recently, but I think the pace of change as a consequence of things like social media, of just the really dynamic and evolving nature of society – schools are at the frontline of those changes and principals are grappling with those as best they can, but it is also why this government has been so assiduous in supporting the work of principals through so many of the Education State initiatives.

I do want to come back to some of the contributions of the member for South-West Coast, who bemoaned the lack of action, and I have got to say, in the context of these debates, when we hear from those opposite about what they would do if they were in government, well, the simple fact is they were in government for four years, and what happened in that time was in effect nothing in the context of education.

You can have as many Institute of Public Affairs or IPA-initiated column inches as you like talking about regressive things like school vouchers, but what in effect did they do to improve the student experience, to target that nexus of teachers and students in the classroom, which is the single biggest determinant of whether or not a child is going to achieve to their potential? The short answer is nothing. I was in schools as a teacher between 2010 and 2014, and what I was struck by was the overwhelming lack of support for principals from a regional or central level. No new schools were built. There was a lack of investment going into the capital infrastructure of our education system – and the fabric of buildings is not everything, but it does matter.

Can I ask the member for South-West Coast: which government delivered the $4.4 million upgrade of Brauer College? Which government delivered $2.4 million for St Joseph’s, Warrnambool? Which government delivered the $2 million upgrade for Hawkesdale P–12 College? Which government delivered the $2 million for Portland college?

Tim Bull: Acting Speaker, I draw your attention to the state of the house.

Quorum formed.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Juliana Addison): The member’s time has expired.

Kim O’KEEFFE (Shepparton) (12:37): I rise to make a contribution on the Education and Training Reform Amendment Bill 2024. Before I proceed, I wish to acknowledge the tragic event that happened at Auburn South Primary School yesterday. My thoughts and prayers are with the family who have lost their son, the other injured students and their families, the whole school community and also the first responders. It truly is a tragic event.

The bill before the house is for an act to amend the Education and Training Reform Act 2006 in relation to regulatory and enforcement matters and for other purposes. In doing so, the bill amends the principal act to strengthen the compliance and enforcement powers of the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority. Under the bill the VRQA will have the power to issue a notice to produce a document or information that the VRQA reasonably believes is necessary to determine whether a person or body is engaging in conduct in respect of which they are required to be regulated by the VRQA. In addition, the VRQA will have the power to issue a notice to comply to a person or body that the VRQA has reasonable cause to believe is required to be regulated by the VRQA under the act, requiring the person or body to either apply for registration or approval under the act or cease engaging in the relevant conduct.

Under current frameworks the VRQA has insufficient compliance and enforcement powers to determine whether a person or body is carrying on or conducting a school or a school boarding premises that is required to be registered. Without an appropriate regulatory means, the VRQA is a powerless and ineffective enforcement body. But as clause 51 of the bill amends section 5.8.10 of the principal act, the VRQA will now have the ability to adequately deter providers, including schools and school boarding premises, that it has reasonable cause to believe are required to be regulated from operating without registration or approval.

The bill also increases maximum penalties for unregistered schools and school boarding premises. Currently it is an offence to carry on or conduct a school or school boarding premises unless the VRQA has registered the school or school boarding premises under the act. But as a state we should not tolerate organisations touting themselves as schools if they fail to meet the fundamental criteria for the definition of a school. Parents can generally have confidence that any school that they send their child to in this state, whether it be government or independent, will meet the basic safety and educative standards.

Allowing unregistered schools to persist could undermine public confidence in the education system as well as put already vulnerable youth in an unsupervised and unregulated environment. The only enforcement power within the legislation that the VRQA possesses is prosecution for a relevant offence and the imposition of a penalty following a successful prosecution. However, the maximum penalty at the moment is not enough, as identified by the VRQA. It is only 10 penalty units, $1975. This does not provide adequate deterrence, and there is little value in prosecuting these entities for such a small maximum penalty. Instead, in addressing this, the bill will increase the maximum penalties to 120 penalty points, $23,710, for individuals and 600 penalty units, $118,554, for a body corporate. This is a significant increase in the penalties for the offence of carrying on an unregistered school or boarding premises, but also these penalties are in line with others for such offences under the Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010 and the Children’s Services Act 1996.

As per VRQA’s website, in Victoria as of 30 June 2023 there were a total of 2310 registered schools, along with 38 registered school boarding premises. Of the registered schools, 68 per cent are government schools, 22 per cent are Catholic schools and 10 per cent are independent schools. I will also note that the bill will allow the VRQA to consider whether an applicant for registration or re-registration is a registered training organisation or if a high managerial agent of the applicant has ever failed to comply with the child safe standards, regardless of whether the VRQA is the integrated sector regulator for the applicant.

Another amendment the bill makes to the principal act is allowing a principal of a school to nominate another person or class of persons to make work experience and structured workplace learning arrangements for students in accordance with a ministerial order. Currently school principals do not have this ability, and they are instead required to approve every work experience and structured workplace learning arrangement for students at their school. As a result, this is a large administrative burden for principals, particularly in large schools and schools where a majority of students undertake work experience or structured workplace learning. By allowing school principals to nominate others to make these arrangements, the bill will provide schools and principals with the freedom to approve these arrangements in a way that is appropriate to their school’s individual circumstances. This is a sensible reform measure and much-needed legislative amendment, as we all know in this place the enormous workload of school principals and the role they play in our schools across the state. The last thing school principals want to be burdened with is time-consuming, excessive paperwork, and having to sign off every work experience or structured workplace learning arrangement for their students must be a huge task. I am sure this will be a welcome change and will empower the school staff, who are likely to know best what arrangements will work for each individual student.

The bill also makes some amendments as to how members of a Disciplinary Appeals Board pool and members of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority resign from their positions. Currently, under the Education and Training Reform Act 2006 for any member of a Disciplinary Appeals Board pool or member of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority to resign from office, they must resign in writing to the Governor in Council. However, under the bill, if members wish to resign from office, they will now do so in writing to the minister. Amongst other things, this amendment will speed up the process of standardising resignation requirements with other boards across the state within legislation.

This bill highlights the need to support the education system, but it is clear that there is so much more that needs to be done. In my electorate the state government merged our only four public high schools into one school, Greater Shepparton Secondary College, leaving no choice for students and families in the public system. The school has faced significant challenges, and numbers are declining with parents looking for or turning to other alternatives. At the time, the government expected enrolments to be over 3000 on the one school site. As you can imagine, putting so many students from all of the former public schools together has been a significant challenge for the teachers, staff, students and their families. In 2020 there were 2269 students enrolled, and that figure has dropped down to currently just over 2000.

But as I mentioned, there is no other option in the public system, and many families simply do not have a choice due to financial constraints. Many families have left the region. A one-size-fits-all approach does not work for every student, and it certainly is not working at this school. I know a family that wanted to move back to Shepparton to be close to their family, but their year 8 daughter, who has some anxiety issues, would not cope with the size and model of this school. So they moved to Benalla, still 45 minutes away from the family. The Greater Shepperton region has a population of almost 70,000 yet only one option for a public high school. I am doing all I can to support the school for students and families. We all want it to work. We know that we do have many issues within the education system more broadly, which are not only impacting on the Greater Shepparton Secondary College.

I wish to acknowledge the amazing teachers that are doing everything possible that they can. My daughter is actually a teacher at one of the local schools.

My daughter loves her job and she wants to stay in the system, but we know that there are significant challenges with teacher shortages and teacher burnout. As we move forward into the future there has to be some significant change to ensure that our teaching staff are supported, that families are supported and that we provide the very best education that we can to our students, and provide their families with choice – as I mentioned, that is something that is not happening in my region when it comes to public secondary schools. We are not seeing enough teachers enrolling and we are not retaining enough teachers, and I do feel we just simply need to do better.

Chris COUZENS (Geelong) (12:45): I am pleased to rise to contribute to the Education and Training Reform Amendment Bill 2024. Before I begin, can I pass on my condolences to Auburn South Primary School after the tragic incident that occurred yesterday. I know everyone in this place, as would every Victorian, will be thinking of those families at this really sad time.

The bill amends the Education and Training Reform Act 2006 to strengthen the compliance and enforcement powers of the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, the VRQA. The bill also amends the act to allow school principals to nominate other persons or classes of persons to make work experience arrangements and structured workplace learning arrangements, to streamline and standardise processes relating to board appointments to education portfolio entities and skills and TAFE portfolio entities and to reduce the administrative burden for the authority, other portfolio entities, regulated entities and school principals.

Victoria really is the Education State. I know in my electorate we have had an unprecedented amount of funding into our schools. We have had complete rebuilds, we have had upgrades to every school in my electorate and many across the Geelong region, and I know our communities are really excited about that and excited about the new schools that are on the radar. This government has supported education from the very first day we started in 2014 after being elected. Education is the most important public investment we can make in our future, and we know that. We also know that it is one of the ways of addressing poverty in our communities. We know the importance of a good strong education, which leads to employment and addresses the issues around poverty. I do want to give our teachers, staff and principals at all the schools across Victoria a real shout-out, because the work they do is extraordinary. Sometimes they get a bit of a caning from parents and different lobby groups, but from my experience with teachers – particularly in my electorate, where I regularly visit all my schools – the work they do is extraordinary. They are there because they are committed to teaching those young people. They are not there for the money; they are not there for any other reason but their commitment to education and to ensuring that young people get the education that they deserve.

As I mentioned, we have rebuilt and redeveloped all of our schools in the Geelong region, but we have also established in Geelong the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership, including the teaching excellence program. That has been a really important one in my community and right across the Barwon south-west region. Teachers were very excited about that opportunity. It was opened I think two years ago now, and the feedback I have from teachers is outstanding; they see that as a great opportunity for them.

We also incorporated the Geelong Tech School into our Gordon TAFE, again providing significant education opportunities for young people in the Geelong region. Not every school can have the high-tech facilities that they would all love, but by having the tech school provided in that one location at the Gordon TAFE, every school comes in and has that education opportunity in the latest technology in a whole range of areas. So that has been an excellent opportunity for our young people in Geelong, but not just in Geelong; I know there are many others across the state.

I think introducing phonics, updating the Victorian teaching and learning model to embed explicit teaching at its core, including the use of systematic synthetic phonics – that is a mouthful – will be a game changer for our students and for our teachers in Victoria. I am looking forward to seeing the outcomes once that starts to roll out. But I think looking after our students and our teachers to a large degree by having mental health practitioners and the Schools Mental Health Fund incorporated into our schools, the Head Start apprenticeships and traineeships, the Doctors in Secondary Schools, the NDIS Navigator program – all these make such a difference to students in our schools.

We have also supported disadvantaged students through the school saving bonus, with credits to hit family accounts in the next month, which is another really important part. We want students to be turning up to school, and with all these supports in place we are seeing those children taking up those opportunities. When I visit my schools – and there are 21 schools in my electorate – they are all reporting how amazing those facilities are for the young people, supporting them to be able to attend camps and sports by having that excursion fund. The affordable school uniforms program is another big one for many families in my electorate. With the free period products in all government schools, when I go to the schools the young girls there tell me how amazing that is, because there is a huge cost factor – there is – and it makes such a difference for them. Also, the breakfast club program delivering free school breakfasts – we know how important that is with the cost-of-living challenges that many of our families are facing at the moment – is just another thing that takes pressure off those families. Glasses for Kids is another fantastic program. I know that many schools in my electorate were able to participate in that program, along with the Smile Squad, having our kids’ teeth checked. I know that for many families that is one of the things that they cannot afford to do, so to have that in our schools is fantastic.

Out-of-hours school care, the student excellence program and primary mathematics and science specialists are all really important additions in our schools, as well as reduced face-to-face teaching hours for our teachers, the active schools program and additional school nurses and allied health services. When I talk to young people in secondary school, they love that; they love the idea that they can see someone and discuss what might be a medical thing or a mental health thing. But they have those opportunities there within the school, which they really appreciate. There is support for tertiary teaching students and teachers to work in regional Victoria – we know of the skills shortages. Particularly for the more rural communities it has been challenging, so this government has put programs in place to ensure that we can get those teachers in there.

Of course introducing three- and four-year-old kinder to our children, making them ready for school life, is another important program that we have put in place. It does make a difference. It makes a difference I know to my community and I am sure to Victorians right across the state, and we know how important education is and the need to ensure that we are providing those much-needed services not just in some areas but right across Victoria. I see the benefits of that in the schools that I go into. They are very positive about what we are delivering for students in the Geelong region.

I continually hear about how wonderful certain programs are and what we are doing and the support that we are offering students, so it is important that we continue to remind ourselves that what we are doing is building the Education State.

This bill is an important one. There are a number of factors to it, but I think overall it is important for us to continue to provide the supports within the education system and within our schools and to support our teachers, the staff in the schools and principals to ensure that we are providing the best education for our students. I commend the bill to the house.

Jade BENHAM (Mildura) (12:55): Along with a lot of members in this place that have risen to speak on this bill today I too would like to send my condolences to the Auburn South Primary School on the tragic incident that occurred yesterday. As the mother of an almost-10-year-old, it is just tragic, and I was certainly emotional whilst reading about it in the news. So I am making sure I take some time to send my condolences to Auburn South Primary School.

We are not opposed to this bill, and it does take some steps in the right direction towards helping our teachers, in particular principals – and I have been doing a lot of work with principals in my region recently, particularly around Robinvale College and the issue they have had finding a permanent principal. I think we are on our second or third now, and unfortunately the last was one of those teachers that has left the profession. According to the most recent teacher supply and demand report there was a 48 per cent increase in the rate of both primary and secondary school teachers leaving the profession between 2021 and 2022. That is staggering. It is the teachers, but yes, it is also principals.

A couple of weeks ago I attended the St Paul’s Mildura 50th anniversary. My cousin Vince Muscatello is the principal and has been for, gosh, a long, long time. He told me that he is also leaving the profession. He will not be back. Vince has done incredible work at that school, and on the day that they had lots of people and former students come back, he just felt that – he has been on extended leave, and after much soul-searching has decided that he can no longer serve our young people in his role as principal, so he is leaving the sector entirely, which is just staggering. If someone like Vince – he is a nonno; he is not a young man to be changing careers, but that is exactly what he is doing – is doing that, that is a reason why there are 2000 teaching vacancies in Victoria right now, which is just staggering, particularly in the regions where CRTs are not always easy to come by. We have a small pool of teachers; it is hard to attract teachers.

We have got some Department of Education housing in Robinvale that Swan Hill Rural City Council have been lobbying the department and the government to actually redevelop to help out with the housing shortage. There are these huge, old blocks with huge, old houses with one person living in them, and we are getting very little traction in that space – whereas the community knows, the teachers know, the council knows, if they were to be demolished, you could build one- and two-bedroom units on these 1-acre blocks and open it up to healthcare workers and to other support staff as well, if that was a possibility. So there needs to be some flexibility there.

Also, before we tick over to lunch, I did want to send a shout-out to Donald Primary School which will be visiting the Parliament this afternoon. We had Charlton primary school here last sitting week, and they were thrilled with their tour and thought it was fantastic. So it is great to see more future leaders from Donald Primary School come to Parliament House this sitting week.

Sitting suspended 1:00 pm until 2:02 pm.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.