Tuesday, 15 October 2024

Legal and Social Issues Committee

Inquiry into the State Education System in Victoria

Trung LUU (Western Metropolitan) (13:20): Pursuant to standing order 23.22, I table the report on the inquiry into the state education system in Victoria of the Legal and Social Issues Committee, including appendices, extracts of proceedings and a minority report, and present the transcripts of evidence. I move:

That the transcripts of evidence be tabled and the report be published.

Motion agreed to.

Trung LUU: I move:

That the Council take note of the report.

Education is something that all of us care about. Parents and young people, most obviously, are deeply invested. So too are governments, policymakers and everyone interested in ensuring that we live in a fair and prosperous society. The challenge for all of us is that education is more complicated than it ever has been. The rapidly changing nature of technology and its place in our lives, combined with evolving social expectations about the role of schools, made this important area a fascinating subject for the parliamentary committee. This is reflected in the broad terms of reference the committee worked with for this inquiry. As such, this report is the most comprehensive look at our state education system in many years – certainly since the dramatic impact of the COVID‑19 pandemic.

The committee approached the terms of reference by weighing them against the Department of Education’s current policies and programs. In doing so, the committee hoped to achieve two outcomes: to help explain to the public the complexity of issues and challenges facing Victorian government schools and how the department responds to them and to help the department understand how its work is perceived in the community and suggest improvements. The structure of this report reflects the five key areas the committee focused on: learning outcomes, support for students, the teaching workforce, student welfare and funding.

Learning outcomes are clearly the most important way of measuring how our schools are performing. The committee looked at the NAPLAN system to identify both what it can reveal and its limitations. Critical to this discussion as well is the debate around pedagogy – how we teach our young people – and what should and should not be included in the Victorian curriculum. The committee investigated these issues informed by the support that the Department of Education provides to those young people who need it most. Not everyone learns in the same way and not every young person turns up to school ready to learn – two key factors that help us understand why some of our young children disengage from education. It is therefore vital that we are flexible in how we teach all school students and that we remain committed to giving them help when and where it is needed.

The committee has included the stories of parents and young people we met during this inquiry throughout the report. We thank them for taking the time to explain how important education is to them and their families. Victorians should be proud of what our school students achieve, consistently performing well across most fields. We should be equally proud of our teachers and the commitment they show to their students. Teaching is one of the hardest professions. To succeed as a teacher, you must combine a high level of skill with a strong dedication to helping others succeed.

When the committee looked at the issues around attracting and retaining teachers, it found that this problem is not unique to Victoria. The great challenge for government is how to attract more teachers and ensure that they stay teaching for longer. The wellbeing of our students – especially following the huge disruption of the pandemic – was a constant topic of discussion throughout this inquiry. Student behaviour, attendance and engagement are all factors that schools consider when addressing the academic and wellbeing needs of the young people in their care. The committee appreciates that the department is very active in this area and hopes that the firsthand evidence it included in this report guides further improvements.

Finally, the committee tackled the issue of funding. Everyone agrees that our public schools are underfunded and that we should look into this area. It is a longstanding debate between governments – Commonwealth, states and territories – and the debate has gone on for far too long. It is imperative that governments confine this debate to the past and give government schools the funding they need to ensure that every student has the opportunity to reach their full potential.

On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank everyone who made a submission to this inquiry or spoke to us through our public hearings. The committee greatly appreciated hearing from parents, students, teachers and experts in the field. I would also like to thank my fellow committee members for their hard work and cooperation throughout the inquiry. Can I also take the opportunity to thank the secretariat – Jo Clifford, Julie Barnes, Alyssa Topy, Jessica Summers, Ben Huf, Kieran Crowe and Patrick O’Brien – for their assistance. I commend this report to the house.

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (13:25): As the deputy chair of the Legal and Social Issues Committee, I will make a brief contribution on this quite comprehensive and timely report on the state education system, which shows pretty clearly that Victorian schools are continuing to perform well, particularly in our standardised testing. But we can do better, particularly for some marginalised and disadvantaged groups. The system is working well overall, but we can do better for some groups, and aspiring for excellence, both at academic and vocational levels, is something that I will continue to be an advocate for. As I said in my inaugural speech to this place, we can support our public schools while admitting that our kids need to be better taught reading, writing and maths. I will continue to be an advocate for doing more to improve our schools.

The committee report and the committee’s inquiry took place when the Deputy Premier made an announcement of the government’s decision to introduce structured synthetic phonics education for reading in our schools. The overwhelming evidence that this committee received was that that is the right policy approach, and we absolutely welcome the government’s move to introduce this approach to reading in our schools. The committee heard of the significant challenges, which the chair has mentioned, on issues such as teacher retention. We heard evidence on the need for better alternative settings for students who have got difficulties in the system.

As a last point on funding, the committee received evidence that since 2011–12 the current funding of government schools here in Victoria has increased by 23.4 per cent – well above the Australian average of 10.8 per cent. There has been a lot of investment in public education in the last 10 years. On capital investment, in the last five years half of all of the new schools built in Australia were built here in Victoria, and that was at a time, from 2017 to 2023, when the Commonwealth contributed nothing. This state is making strides as the Education State.

Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (13:27): Our state schools are under pressure like never before. We heard in the committee that the Department of Education overwhelmingly makes noises of ‘continuous improvement’ and ‘nothing to see here’. The many, many submissions and hearings that we had in both regional and metropolitan Melbourne painted a different story. Our hardworking and dedicated teachers are facing pressures like never before. We are facing a teacher shortage at present. Over 1500 vacancies exist today, and there will be a shortfall of 5000 in the coming year. Our committee heard about the targeted financial incentives, which are producing short-term outcomes at best and are highly divisive at worst, particularly in regional Victoria.

We also know that principals and teachers are facing a great uphill battle. In Bairnsdale, teacher Matt Kell said to us:

Public education is on the brink of collapse in the regions …

Almost 30 per cent of students are failing to meet standards in literacy and numeracy, and it is no coincidence that the Minister for Education came out and finally supported phonics after three terms in government. Why? Because the Nationals and the Liberals put a motion up to put this inquiry up and forced him kicking and screaming to do it. It was a policy position for two successive election commitments – 2018 and 2022.

We also know that this committee wholly and solely told the government to support all of the 42 Let Us Learn recommendations from the Commission for Children and Young People. We also heard from parent Catherine Civelle, who said:

They need to put children first. At the moment they put the department first.

This government is letting children slip through the cracks, particularly if you are in the disability sector and a special needs student.

I commend the report. I thank the committee members and thank the secretariat for their work. There is much to be done by this government to support better education in Victoria.

Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (13:35): With the tabling of this report I would like to thank all of the committee staff who have worked so hard on this inquiry – to Patrick and to every single one of the team who have done wonderful work, as they always do. I would also like to thank everyone who appeared at the hearings and made submissions to this inquiry process; without your personal experiences, your accounts, we would not have learned what we did about the state of public education here in Victoria right now.

This inquiry was an important review of the Victorian public school system, which is experiencing significant pressures. We heard from people in both metropolitan and regional areas about what it is like to be in a school community right now, from challenging teacher working conditions to the difficulties of attracting and retaining new teachers and school staff, through to student wellbeing and learning outcomes. There were many serious challenges that the system right now is facing.

The evidence, I think, was resoundingly clear in this process that the Labor government has not gone far enough and has not done enough yet to tackle these issues that are causing such struggle for the public education system. From conversations around education and the issues before the committee, there is often a lot of focus on testing – on scores, on test results, on who is passing and failing when it comes to literacy and numeracy and so on – but really I think it is the politicians who are failing. They are failing our students, failing to step up and provide the funds necessary for our public schools to thrive.

So many of the issues raised throughout the inquiry could be addressed if schools received their full Gonski resource funding. This should be the minimum level of funding, and yet Victorian public schools remain some of the lowest funded schools in the country. The flow-on effect of this is significant, and it is experienced by teachers, by students and by school communities everywhere. We call Victoria the Education State – it is time the Labor government stopped shirking its responsibility to fully fund schools.

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (13:32): I also rise to share a few comments on what is a very thorough and comprehensive report that those of us on the Legal and Social Issues Committee are presenting into the house today, which is on the state education system in Victoria. I will, in doing so, echo the words of both our chair and our deputy chair in acknowledging that the overall trends are indeed very positive and that the education system is by and large performing and delivering for Victorian students. But as our inquiry has outlined, and in particular as the deputy chair Mr Batchelor outlined as well, there are certain areas where we can make some improvements.

One of the good things about conducting inquiries in live environments is that you can do a litmus test of changes that come into place, and one such change that came into place during the course of our inquiry was the teaching of phonics. A very exciting announcement was made by the Deputy Premier, the Minister for Education Mr Carroll, who has shown considerable leadership on that. It was very good to see the overwhelmingly positive feedback from the various stakeholders and academics who spoke to us on the issue of phonics as well.

Of course in order to deliver the best educational outcomes for Victorian children, we need to be investing in those children, and that is why I am also pleased to see the final recommendation of this inquiry, recommendation 54, which calls on the Victorian government to continue its advocacy to the Commonwealth government to deliver that full 25 per cent of Gonski funding to Victorian school students, which they absolutely deserve. It also discusses capital funding, and I have spoken many times in this place about the vast array of new schools being built, indeed just in my electorate alone.

It is a very comprehensive and a very good report, and I encourage members to engage with it. In closing, I wish to very much thank Patrick O’Brien and the entire secretariat team for assisting us with such a good report.

Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (13:34): I too rise to speak on the inquiry into the state education system. Firstly, I too would like to thank the secretariat staff that worked quite tirelessly to bring this report to fruition.

There are a lot of challenges identified in the current state education system, primarily around teachers – their workload is unbelievable. The difficulty attracting and retaining teachers has been extremely significant – we heard a lot of evidence to that effect – particularly now that schools are almost entirely reliant on CRTs to plug the gap. That is a big challenge that a lot of school principals are dealing with.

Phonics – it was great to see the minister concede on that point and during our inquiry announce that phonics would actually be included. I dare say he would have had to read the report and find that was a recommendation had he not done so beforehand, so I am glad that that has occurred. NAPLAN – inconsistent. And I have got to say the report here only looks at the Australian jurisdictions. It does not look at international jurisdictions, so there is no comparison between Victoria and any other international jurisdiction, where I dare say we would probably have results not so positive. But at least amongst the Australian jurisdictions there is some positivity to see.

Student behaviour continues to be a significant issue that pushes teachers out of the system, and an inability to deal with that has caused a lot of challenges which at this point now remain unresolved. I hope that there is some way in a systemic sense that we can deal with that. Time-in-lieu arrangements are causing difficulty in managing excursions and extracurricular activities, and we are finding and we heard evidence to the effect that there are many schools that just will not run programs because of these extremely restrictive arrangements.

At the heart of this, students have to be first – they always have to be – but families also need to be included in discussions around what the future is of that young person and how they go forward, and I think bringing families into the conversation is so important. I know that as a teacher in my former life as well. I hope everyone has a good chance to read the report.

Motion agreed to.