Wednesday, 30 October 2024

Bills

Education and Training Reform Amendment Bill 2024

Second reading

Debate resumed.

Sarah CONNOLLY (Laverton) (15:10): I rise to speak on the Education and Training Reform Amendment Bill 2024 this afternoon, and it is actually great timing for me to be able to stand in this place and again speak on education and training reform. Before I begin my contribution, I want to put onto the record something pretty amazing and a little bit sad that happened last week. One of my fabulous and much-loved staff members Maryam Saberi, who has been with me for two years helping out in my office – my little 2IC and the most positive young woman I think I have ever come across – left on Friday. I am very happy to say, but very sad to say, she left me to go on and be a teacher. Folks, when she arrived in this country from a very distant land, Iran, she did not speak English. She went to Western English Language School in Braybrook and learned how to speak a bit of English before she went on to finish her high schooling at Hoppers Crossing Secondary College. When I asked Maryam why she wanted to be a teacher she gave me a response I have not heard for a very, very long time, and this really goes to the heart of why teaching and being an educator is so important in this state. Maryam looked at me and smiled and said, ‘I just love children. I love them.’ She scored a great role at a school in Wyndham Vale. I was pretty upset that it was not in one of the many brand new schools that we have built in Truganina. Out in Wyndham Vale she started on Monday, and I am sure she will be doing an absolutely tremendous job there. But it was very sad to lose her – and to lose her on Friday last week, which was a celebration of teachers right across the world in fact. It was a really moving moment there with my Maryam as she went off to be a teacher.

But I do have to say it has been a really good week here. We have had legislation introduced, and we have the opportunity to speak on some of my favourite policy areas – education included, and the other one, yes, is transport. It is always clear that this Labor government values and contributes enormously to Victoria being the Education State. For so many Victorians, the vast majority of whom cannot yet vote and have their say in the democratic process, education is the most important investment we can make in their lives, because it is about affecting their futures. I see it whenever I am out and about in my electorate visiting local schools in my community. When we visit our brand new schools in the outer west, schools that we have built and opened, I see time and time again how these investments are making an absolutely profound difference in the lives of local kids in my community. Because as much as we can talk about the awesome work that teachers do, and indeed we can, as well as the work we have done in strengthening our education curriculum, I know like most parents I was pleased to see some of the announcements we recently made about phonetics and improving literacy outcomes.

This is all pointless if we do not have the four walls and a roof that make up a classroom for kids to learn in. I say time and time again: our kids deserve a first-class education in a world-class facility, and indeed that is what we are building in the outer west. It is not just in the outer west that we are building brand new schools, we are upgrading at a tremendous rate existing and established schools in the middle and inner suburbs of Melbourne’s west. Seeing the transformation of these classrooms, which could be dark and dingy and smell of mould and must, actually reminded me of what my school looked and smelled like.

When we do these upgrades it is incredible to see the transformation, and the kids cannot believe it. In fact one of the upgrades that we did that caused the most amount of excitement – and I have to say it gave me the most amount of joy to go ahead and cut a ribbon earlier in the year – was at Ardeer South Primary School when we upgraded their toilet block. The kids could not believe how fantastic it was to have new dunnies at their school, and they could not wait to use them. I have to say they looked amazing. They looked absolutely amazing. They were light, they were welcoming, kids felt safe, and they were more than happy to use them. These are the kinds of investments that matter, as well as the investments into our educators.

What I do want to put on record is that – I was pretty impressed when I read these stats – in the past 10 years our Labor government has gone ahead and built 50 per cent of all new schools in Australia, full stop. Ten per cent, people – 10 per cent – of all new schools nationwide have been built in Wyndham, and I think that is pretty incredible. I know that when I am at these schools and I look at the state-of-the-art learning facilities, I could only dream of that when I was a child, and I am reminded each and every single day of how important that is.

Just a few months ago I was fortunate enough to have the Premier pop over to Sunshine. Sunshine Primary School, as the member for Footscray will know, is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, schools in my electorate, and you would not know it. You would not know that that is a truly old school, because we have just finished an $11 million upgrade, which has completely transformed that school. We are transforming the patch of land just next door, because we are building Sunshine primary kinder – brand new kinder – so folks can get rid of that double drop-off. I have to say that transformation of that school, even keeping it in line with its heritage, is just truly amazing, and the principal, teachers, kids, school community and parents could not believe what an $11 million investment upgrade to that school could do.

I am not just talking about building new schools. We know that we are rolling out three- and four-year-old kinder so our kids get the best start to their school life and live out, most importantly, their best life. That early childhood education is just so important. We have not just made kinder free so that no child misses out on going to kinder and to save parents thousands of dollars each year. We are also going ahead and assisting folks with the cost of living by introducing the $400 school savings bonus, which came out in the budget earlier this year, and that was really to help families with school-aged kids cover those common costs associated with education, be it uniforms, textbooks, camps, excursions and so much more. It is also helping out families by us continuing to roll out the school breakfast club, and we are now doing that to all government schools so that no child goes hungry. And as someone who loves being on toaster duties at my local schools, I cannot tell you how popular school breakfast club is. It is not just about the kids that have not been able to have a feed before school but about kids wanting a second or third breakfast just because they love toast. I would like to say toast and Vegemite, but it turns out that toast with butter or toast and honey is really popular as well.

But of course it is not just about the students. We have done a lot to support our hardworking teachers as well, including the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership, which includes the teaching excellence program. We have helped new teaching students cover the cost of their degree through scholarships so that more students get to see teaching as a viable profession. It is an incredibly important profession, and dare I say it is an essential service. On top of that, we are also supporting more teaching students, just like my Maryam, and teachers taking up teaching posts in regional Victoria so that our regional schools have the staff that they need to give their kids a great education as well.

There is just so much happening in this space, and looking at the time I have got left in under 90 seconds I will not go into everything that sits under that list. I said earlier in my contribution – and I will say it again – Labor has built the Education State. And when it comes to our schools, I say to parents time and time again, regardless of where they live, regardless of their postcode or neighbourhood: we have got your back.

Our record on schools and education, quite frankly, speaks for itself. Those stats around the new schools being built in Wyndham are truly, truly extraordinary.

Whilst this bill introduces a number of pretty small changes, particularly around tackling noncompliant schools which are not registered, this bill is yet another step forward, an important step forward, towards creating a stronger and fairer education system. I cannot support that enough. I do want to commend the minister for the incredible work that he has been undertaking since taking up the role here in this place. I know that time and time again he has come out to my electorate, and principals, parents and students have welcomed him with open arms. I am looking forward to having him back out. I commend the bill to the house.

Martin CAMERON (Morwell) (15:21): Acting Speaker O’Keeffe, it is a pleasure to rise to speak on the Education and Training Reform Amendment Bill 2024 with you in the chair steering the ship for a little bit this afternoon, so I thank you for that. I would also like to thank the member for Kew, who led us off with the amendment bill that we are reading today, and I noticed that she did say that we are not opposing the bill. Like a lot of others that have stood up to speak in the chamber today, I would also like to offer my thoughts and condolences to the Auburn South Primary School, where tragically that incident happened yesterday. As other members have risen and spoken about, our thoughts and love go out to families, friends and the teachers and everyone involved out there.

This Education and Training Reform Amendment Bill makes a number of technical amendments to the act that appear to be aimed at strengthening deterrent mechanisms against unregistered schools and school boarding premises. As we do, most of us send our children to mainstream schools where there are rules and regulations that need to be followed, whether we are in metropolitan Melbourne or we are out and about in regional Victoria, in major regional centres or if we are out in the far reaches of the region and we are at smaller country schools. They all do a magnificent job. We need to make sure that right across the board, no matter where you are sending your children, we have certain procedures in place and standards that need to be followed so that kids are getting the proper education that they do need and are getting it safely with all those requirements. The changes in this to strengthen that and make sure that happens, for a regional MP, make a lot of sense, and it is great to be able to be not opposing this bill today.

It also empowers school principals to delegate their current authority to make work experience arrangements. Our principals do a sterling job. It does not matter what school they are in; their work day is not just made up of doing stuff for the school. They are the overseers of everything that goes on around that school and out into the community. For them to be able to offload certain bits and pieces of their job to make their time more streamlined and give them a little bit more of a family life at home I think is a good thing. You will notice with principals and also with vice-principals and senior staff that they are up to the challenge of being able to be delegated those roles. I know that schools in my electorate – it does not matter if we are talking about Moe, Newborough, Morwell or Traralgon as the main centre through the Latrobe Valley or reaching out into our other centres at Churchill, Tyers, Glengarry and Yallourn North, all the schools there – all do such a great job.

I noticed the member for Laverton talking about the breakfast program, and obviously it is right around Victoria. I have seen it firsthand – probably not as much as an MP, but in my previous role as a plumber I did a lot of maintenance in all the schools that were right around through the electorate of Morwell and the greater Latrobe Valley and saw the difference that those breakfast programs made to the children. It was very pleasing to hear of the member for Laverton putting up her hand and cooking the toast and so forth, because that does go on, and I have done it a couple of times myself.

Touching on my time doing maintenance in the schools, that is one of the major issues at the moment in schools through the Latrobe Valley – the upkeep of making sure that the roof is not leaking, the toilets are up to a standard, the walkways that the kids are walking on are sound – and it makes me wonder sometimes that the schools are left in the lurch a little bit having to provide moneys to actually keep up with these particular maintenance programs.

I was at a school not so long ago, and they have a make-safe program. I talked to the principal about how the make-safe program works and how the people that run the make-safe program do come out and actually have a look and see what the issue is in the school. It is not only the school I was at; I did follow up with some other schools. For the procedure to actually rectify these issues that occur – whether it be removing asbestos or the new one at the moment, which is black mould within schools, which does cause a little bit of grief – it is nine times out of 10 left up to the schools to use their budgets, what they are meant to be using to pay for relief teachers and so forth. They are now having to use that budget to pay for some of these rectifications. I think that there should be another avenue. If they are coming out to make safe these certain situations where there has been a water leak or a floor has collapsed or a wall is moving about, it should not be up to the school to provide this money to actually fix the problem. I think that should be part of the program.

It does put a lot of pressure on the principals and the teachers and the actual maintenance staff that are inside those schools to, one, highlight that there is an issue, and this goes for most schools out in the regions. We are lucky some of our schools have had – not full redevelopments – new classrooms here and there, but a lot a lot of our schools that are on the outskirts of our major city centres are still working out of portables which have been probably onsite for many a year, and when I say ‘many a year’ I mean probably 20 or 30 years. The schools are thrown into the situation where they have to make sure that the upkeep on these facilities is sound so the children have somewhere safe to learn, and it does make it very, very hard when the school moneys are being spent on maintenance and they are having to choose, so they actually do not have a relief teacher to come.

There are pressures there too for the principals trying to supply a full staff to their schools. There is not a bidding war – I would not call it that – but teachers at the end of the year do have opportunities to move around to other schools. If we cannot fill those positions, we do have the situation where teachers from outside the area are coming down, travelling down daily from the city – and we do thank them for doing that – to fill the roles of teaching to teach our kids out in the country areas. So there is the pressure that the spots are not filled for teachers to teach our kids, and it may be that they are not filled at all. It might be that a teacher is away on stress leave or they are sick and we need to fill those roles, because it is probably getting harder and harder for our educators to do the one thing that they put their hand up to do when they became a teacher, which is to actually sit in a classroom and teach our kids. It is the outside influence of trying to keep parents happy, because as I well know, teachers get 360 feedback from a lot of parents, which is most of the time unwarranted. Our teachers now are in the classrooms not only trying to educate our children but trying to teach them some manners as well, because they do not get that at home.

A big shout goes out to all our teachers down in the Latrobe Valley throughout all our schools. We have a lot of schools that are disadvantaged, so there are kids coming from backgrounds which are not as pleasant as what you would think.

Finally, before I finish, I know the exams are on for our year 12 students now, and I wish them all the best. My journey through education pulled up at year 10. I actually went into the workforce and went through TAFE and became a tradie, so there is always something out there. It does not matter how you actually get to stand here in the chamber in Parliament; whether you have an education and go through university or whether you are a year 10-educated person that goes into the trades and does their four years of TAFE, there is an opportunity to come and represent your community. To all those people out there: good luck, and all the best for you all.

Bronwyn HALFPENNY (Thomastown) (15:31): Before I begin, I would also like to express my sadness and condolences to the families, students, children, staff, teachers and principal at the Auburn South Primary School after the terrible, sad and shocking incident that occurred yesterday. That is all I can say on that.

Other than this terrible thing that happened yesterday, it has always been good to speak in here in the Parliament around education legislation and amendments, because it is such an important part of a state government’s responsibilities, and it has the ability to change lives and provide great opportunities for the next generations that are coming up to make Victoria an even better place once they get through their schooling and even during their schooling and beyond.

This piece of legislation is the Education and Training Reform Amendment Bill 2024. Like some of the other bills we have been debating this week, it is a bit of an omnibus around some amendments brought to the Training and Education Reform Act 2006. It is in various aspects about that piece of legislation. For example, I will talk first about the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority (VRQA). It is providing some more powers and different powers for that authority, which is an authority independent of government. Its role is very important. It is around ensuring both the regulation and compliance of the regulations of our schools – all schools, really, state schools, and the non-government sector in particular, because that is outside, in many ways, the line of sight of government and some of the government’s policies. It is so important because our children, students, need the best quality learning, and we need to ensure that there is the full curriculum and that the way the students are being treated, the resources they have and what they are being taught is in a very regulated manner and is up to the proper standards. I shout out to the authority for the work that they do.

This legislation is going to provide some more powers when it comes to schools that are not registered. Sometimes we look at these things and think, ‘Gee, why is that not already happening?’ But it is really just a matter where, over time, processes change, the way we do things changes. Perhaps the unregistered schools have changed in the way that they are doing something and therefore we have to make sure that legislation is kept up to date and is modernised and appropriate for how we operate now. In the case of the changes for the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, this bill provides further powers in terms of being able to request information. That information from the unregistered school is probably one of the easier ways to get evidence of things that they are not complying with in order for the VRQA to take action in response, ensuring that the students are protected and that what is going on in the school is correct or indeed if that school should continue.

Similarly there is some increase in penalties, so if there is a prosecution or an action taken against an unregistered school, there are strong penalties for those unlawful things or things that they are doing that they ought not be doing. Similarly there are provisions in here to allow that if a school itself voluntarily closes or is not in operation anymore, there is a loosening of the requirements that they have to go through in order to wind up, so it is not the same as a forced closure when of course it is a voluntary closure.

In talking about education it is always great to look at the area that you represent and see how things are going there, and I have to say, under the Allan and Andrews Labor governments we are up to about six brand new schools in just the Thomastown electorate alone in the new suburbs of North Epping and Wollert. There have also been around – and I am continuing to count – eight or nine existing schools in the older, established areas that have either been rebuilt or had really major upgrades to their facilities. It was only, I think, on Monday last week that I attended Lalor Secondary College. That is a fantastic building, and the principal talks about the changes that he has seen in the students being able to have such an incredibly modern and beautiful facility. There is a rooftop garden; there are all sorts of specialist learning areas and breakout areas. He was saying how in particular the year 12 students have most of this new learning area and how it is almost like they are university students rather than secondary students because of the way that they are feeling so much more respected in the surroundings they have. They are all looking after them and it really is, he said, an incredible change in the behaviour of all the students.

When you hear stories like that you can see how we can change people’s lives, especially young people’s lives. If we give them the right facilities and the right environment, then they will thrive, and I am really looking forward to seeing how they are all going this year for the exams that are coming up for year 12. I would like to wish all the students well and of course the school itself well in its journey to provide the best possible education for students. This is a school that is a school of choice in the centre of the suburb of Lalor, and in fact many students have come and done some sort of work experience with me and some of them have then later on worked with me on a casual basis while they are studying at university, which brings me to another change that this amendment bill is going to provide.

That is around freeing up – and again, small things added together are big things. We do hear from a number of the principals, and I have heard over recent times in particular even more from principals, how much of a burden has been put on them in terms of administrative work and paperwork. And so one of the changes that this legislation if passed will provide is that principals, when it comes to work experience and other learning arrangements, can actually delegate that authority in terms of any sort of signing off or agreeing to such an agreement to other staff members at the school. Again, we might think, ‘Well, that is, you know, a small part,’ but these sorts of things all add up. If you have got 50, 60 or 100 students all doing work experience, you have got to sign each one, and these are things that all take up the principal’s time, when of course they have much more important things that they can be doing while other staff members can sign off. Their skills are not so much more important but different skills that they can use rather than signing off arrangements like this.

So again, the Thomastown electorate has had a lot of investment when it comes to school capital, and on top of that there was a recent announcement of yet another breakfast club extending to the Wollert schools. That is on top of breakfast clubs in pretty well all of the schools in the older and established suburbs.

Again, you go into those areas – the kitchens, the meal areas – in the morning, and they are just a really good, fun place to be. The students are happy, everybody is eating together, they are talking about school, they are talking about other things and they are talking to the teachers, who are often in there as well, and the principal, as well as other staff, about issues that are concerning them at the time. And of course that is such an important way of making sure that we are monitoring what children are worried about and seeing if we can help them. Another big shout-out which I did not talk about with Lalor Secondary is their wellness and wellbeing centre, which is another really great place where there will be a lot of support for students that need that, and I am sure they will have great times there.

Cindy McLEISH (Eildon) (15:41): Acting Speaker O’Keeffe, it is a pleasure to see you in that role. Firstly, I want to give my thoughts to the staff, students, families and friends of those involved with the tragic incident at Auburn South Primary School yesterday. Like many others, they have been in my thoughts, particularly the family who have lost their young son.

The Education and Training Reform Amendment Bill 2024 that is before the house today is fairly well a technical bill, making a number of amendments to the act. These amendments are around the regulation of schools and other educational institutions in the main. This is a bill that no stakeholders are screaming out and calling for, but it is one that I think the department have decided to put forward. This appears to be aimed at strengthening deterrence mechanisms against unregistered school and school boarding premises. There is no actual definition of registered schools and unregistered schools, but clearly there has been an issue with organisations masquerading as schools when they are in fact not actually schools and not working with the curriculum as is anticipated and expected. It makes these changes mostly through the authority of the VRQA, the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority. Part of this bill is also around empowering school principals to delegate their current authority to make work experience arrangements, and I will talk about that a little bit later.

I want to tackle the bit on unregistered schools, and there have been examples raised where people have come together pretty well during the school day, as I understand it, during the week, gathering and pretending that they are a school, giving the impression that they are a school when they exactly are not a school. This is quite concerning, because if you are a school there are requirements and obligations that you are required to meet to be able to deliver education and expectations as well of what you will do. There has been a concern that this has not been the case in a number of instances. The department and the government are looking to tackle that particularly.

To do this, the bill increases the maximum penalties for entities found to be conducting an unregistered school or school boarding premises in Victoria. I probably should say the boarding premises are not necessarily teaching, but they may have some components in the evening where the kids get together and do class revision, but this bill extends to those. I guess the government is saying, ‘We are very serious about this, and this is why we have the penalties that are in place.’ The penalties that are being brought forward are in line with those 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. So this is all very much around approvals.

The penalties here are reasonably sizeable, from 10 penalty units to 120, and it ranges between $2000 and $24,000 under the current penalty unit rate. For body corporates, this is about 600 penalty units, which is about $120,000. The opposition, the Liberals and the Nationals, clearly believe in diversity of education and that parents should have a choice. We have very much supported educational choice across the public, independent and faith-based sectors and even homeschooling. But if there are organisations out there who are touting themselves as schools and they do not meet that basic criteria, I think that is something that definitely does need to be looked at.

I want to talk about the work experience arrangements, because at the moment the principals are the ones that have to sign off and authorise work experience. That might be okay if you are a small school with 20 kids in your year 10 cohort; you might be able to manage that. But if you are a school that has got six classes at year 10 level with 25 kids in each, it becomes quite onerous to know all the details. There are provisions here to delegate that, because as we know, the principals have a pretty tough workload, and I want to touch on the principals’ workload. As I have said, if you are a principal in a small school, it is quite different to a larger school, because you have less resources. You still require the same level of compliance as a larger school, but you do not have anyone to delegate it to. Large schools may have two assistant principals. At a smaller school they do not have the budget luxury to do that, so it is the principals that are doing a lot of the work. I have many small schools in my area. I have got about 50 schools in my electorate, and I know at the smaller ones the principals are there late at night doing so much work after-hours and at home because of the demands that they have. They do not get that level of support.

It is certainly not all rosy out there in education land, and I want to talk about principal workload in a bit more detail. Not only in smaller schools do they have to manage the same levels of compliance as larger schools, but all the principals now are dealing with a lot more mental health, not just from the students but also from the teachers. For some of them this is a little bit foreign, and they are finding that they are having to have a greater level of understanding. There are some discipline issues that we hear consistently as well that they have to deal with. In any of the upgrades or new builds at schools the principals find themselves as project managers, and this is not what they are skilled in. Usually when there are builds, people in major construction projects become project managers, and here the principals find themselves as project managers. There are workforce shortages, and we are seeing classes consistently being brought together because they cannot cover somebody being sick. Sometimes they cannot cover the range of subjects that they previously have.

We have seen the federal government report on the COVID-19 response which was just released, which was actually pretty scathing – more so than the states anticipated – and it slammed approaches towards lockdowns, vaccine mandates and school and border closures, saying that they lacked transparency and compassion and were not evidence based. In Victoria we saw a huge issue because the schools were locked down for so long. Kids were not at school for a couple of years and missed out on so many basic skills. They were not learning how to interact with each other and with adults in and out of the classroom. They were not understanding how you behave in social situations and navigating the play in the playground. It has been exceptionally difficult. That report goes on to recommend avoiding school closures at all costs in pandemics. Why is that? We know in Victoria it was the worst outcome for our school students. I found the lessons learned from COVID-19 were the findings on the experience of remote and flexible learnings in schools, which was conducted by the Parliamentary Secretary for Schools before he was elevated to the Parliamentary Secretary for Men’s Behaviour Change. Nowhere in that did I see them tackle the issues of kids not having been able to have access to friends, socialisation and learnings in informal settings within a schoolyard – and no recommendation, so that is particularly disappointing.

The Legislative Council’s Legal and Social Issues Committee had an inquiry into the state education system and found that the Victorian curriculum is overcrowded. The teaching and learning model needs an update to improve clarity and usability. There are increased workloads, burnout, remuneration and lack of career progression which are factors that are responsible for teachers leaving the sector, and that is crucial. The teacher-shortage crisis is a serious issue for the Department of Education.

There is nothing about the effectiveness of the financial incentives because of insufficient data. I saw at one of the schools where students in my electorate go that the kids were being geared up in year 11 to be able to study Italian, and they were advised with a couple of days notice that, ‘Actually we’re not going to be offering that as a VCE subject in Year 12, and you’ve got to change your decision.’ There were a number of students there, and this had implications for them because they had chosen absolutely to study Italian with the understanding that it would be available in year 12 and that it would be one of their VCE subjects. The advice given to the students was ‘Why don’t you try biology, perhaps?’ and that was something that none of them had a background in or perhaps were not even that interested in.

These teacher shortages are impacting on students in a number of ways. The government has failed the mental health of so many students through their handling of COVID and beyond and has more work to do.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Kim O’Keeffe): The member for Narre Warren North.

Belinda WILSON (Narre Warren North) (15:51): Thank you, Acting Speaker, and it is lovely to see you in the chair as we head towards the MPI and as I am the last speaker before we have a bit of a break.

I would also like to send my love and support and prayers to the beautiful community of Auburn South Primary School. I think the whole chamber on both sides has been touched by the absolute tragedy that happened yesterday, and we cannot even fathom or imagine how the family and the community must be feeling. I know that we all send our love and thoughts to that community today.

Education – this is something that I could stand up and talk to you about for hours. We are very, very proud of our education program, of our schools and of what we offer. I think that is why we have been known as the Education State. It is very difficult when you go through a world pandemic. Things happen and things change, and hindsight is an incredible thing –

Cindy McLeish: Just ask Gladys; she got it right at the time.

Belinda WILSON: Well, it is interesting to talk about Gladys, isn’t it, because Gladys does not have a job any longer for a number of different reasons.

I am really blessed to have over 19 schools in my electorate – an incredible community, which is really, really amazing; they are amazing people. Recently we had a morning tea with all of our principals and with the Minister for Education, which was a really, really great success. It gave them the opportunity to talk about all the wonderful things that they are doing in their schools and how thankful they are to the Labor government for the great programs that we are giving and offering them. It was really insightful to hear from a real range of principals and teachers, some that have been working for over 40 years as teachers and some that have only been principals for a couple of years, and also to hear about the challenges they are facing – you know, everything is not always perfect; they do face a number of different challenges. But it was a really great way of collaborating together.

It was really interesting to hear from especially the high schools about how they develop relationships with the universities to get teachers straight from when they are learning in university. I know the amazing team at Hallam Secondary College have got a great relationship with Deakin University and their teaching program, where they actually collaborate with them while they are doing their degrees. I know that Simon Sherlock, the incredible principal there at Hallam Secondary College – where we are just about to turn the sod on an incredible $24 million build there, which I am very excited about – said that program works really well because they are working with the student-teachers while they are doing their teaching. It has been very successful for them. I know that is something that a lot of other schools are looking at doing as well.

I know a number of people on both sides of the chamber have spoken about the breakfast program. Every single one of my primary schools and in fact my secondary schools in my electorate – my state schools – all do the breakfast club program, which is incredible. Like the member for Laverton, I too love going along and handing out the juice boxes and making cheese toasties, which are all very popular, and seeing the delight on the kids’ faces. I think it makes a real difference to parents if they have got to drop their children off at school early. A lot of my families have lots of children. We have a very big multicultural community, which we are really proud of.

Lots of our families have eight, nine, 10 or 12 children. When you are trying to drop off at high school, primary school and often kinder, it is really great to be able to know you can drop your child at school and they are going to get fed, so that program works really well. And I know how much the teachers actually enjoy it and the parents and friends associations. I was on the PFA with my kids for over eight years. The PFAs – the parents and friends associations – make a really great contribution to that program as well, helping out and having a chat to the kids. I think one of the things that I enjoyed the most was actually having a chat with the kids and seeing what was happening for the day, if they had anything going on and how excited they were about the program. It is a really, really great program.

The PFAs and school councils make a huge difference to schools. I know the school councils in my electorate really work well with their principals together to come up with great ideas not only to make a difference in their community but also to do fundraising, community events, colour days – all amazing, wonderful things like that that they really, really enjoy – which I know makes a difference to all schools.

The other thing that I love in my schools is my community hubs. I am really blessed to have two of those in my electorate. The community hubs work simultaneously and in hand with a school to really bring the parents in, especially those new arrivals or parents that do not know many people. They also run little kinder programs, so if you have got a little two- or three-year-old and you do not know any local people, you can actually come along to the community hub and have an integration and meet other members of the community. That was a really great initiative for the Allan Labor government to introduce. I think what is really great about these community hubs is that you can also have English language classes. We have some amazing English language classes that operate in a number of our schools, and it is a really great way of keeping the community together. I know I have spoken about this on a number of occasions, but school is really the heart of the community. It is where everyone is on an equal playing field, where opportunity is given to everybody. We work really hard to make sure we provide our schools with all the opportunity that they need.

We have spoken a lot today about not only the schools but also our feeders – our three- and four-year-old kinder programs that we are bringing into place, which is incredible. I have got a couple of those hubs that are happening as well. Having a kinder on the same site – as a mum who had three kids under four, one at kinder, one at playgroup, one at school – to think that I could have had them all in one precinct would have been an absolute godsend for me. It makes such a difference. I know some people think that that is a small thing, but really with families and working families these things make an absolutely huge difference to the community and to the families dropping off – especially when you got lots of children. As I was saying, many members in my community have eight, 10 or 12 children, which I find astonishing. I think three was more than enough for me, but having that amount of children is fantastic too. And I love going to schools and seeing all these families running around and enjoying themselves.

I have spoken about Hallam Secondary College and the incredible upgrade we are doing there. We are also doing an amazing upgrade, putting some fencing and also some taps and some wonderful things at Fleetwood Primary School. My other great project, which again we are also looking at turning the sod on in the next three or four months, is at James Cook Primary School. The team there are just so excited about the renovations that are going to happen there, which is really, really exciting. I have also got my special school, which is in the midst of having their renovation finished. That should be finished in the next few months. One of the great things that I love about the special school is they have cut out little viewing blocks for all the kids at all different heights, because some of the kids are in wheelchairs and they are all different heights depending on what mobility they have got, and they can actually see the building going on from the school. So it is really nice for them to be able to see that.

At this point in time, and looking at the time, I would like to say that we have had a very broad conversation about this bill. This bill does fix up a number of different elements for education. I know we have all spoken a little bit about work experience, which is another great thing that many of us in this chamber do. At this moment I would like to commend the bill to the house.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.