State and territory education ministers have joined forces to demand the commonwealth implement a suite of major reforms to fix the nation’s teacher shortages, after all jurisdictions except WA rejected a landmark education funding agreement.
The majority of Australia’s education ministers have called for the Albanese government to consider waiving Hecs debt for teaching degrees, increasing the number of commonwealth-supported university places and boosting the number of scholarships for students.
The federal education minister, Jason Clare, on Wednesday announced a five-year deal in which the commonwealth and WA will jointly pay to lift the state’s public schools to the schooling resource standard (SRS) by 2026 in return for the state implementing teacher quality and student wellbeing reforms. But all Australian states and the ACT have rejected the proposal, calling on the commonwealth to lift its contribution and close the gap faced by public schools.
Guardian Australia has obtained a letter co-written by education ministers in Labor-led NSW, Victoria, Queensland, ACT and South Australia as well as Liberal-led Tasmania to Clare this month. It outlines a series of major commonwealth reforms the ministers argue would help attract and retain the teaching, health and wellbeing workforces, including those outlined in the national teacher workforce action plan.
The letter called for incentivising students to study teaching by expanding the supply of commonwealth-supported places, investigating ways to reduce or eliminate Hecs debt through fee waivers or expanding federal government scholarship programs and providing income-support for teaching students undertaking work experience.
The ministers requested the commonwealth consider increasing its contribution to 25% – up from the current 20% – of the SRS required for government schools and provide additional funding above the current contributions to support disadvantaged students. The group also requested long-term funding for school infrastructure as recommended in the original Gonski review.
“Our respective jurisdictions are experiencing unprecedented pressures from ongoing population growth, resulting in the need to build new schools, support additional infrastructure and upgrade existing facilities to manage growth,” the letter said.
“This would complement the significant investments that respective jurisdictions make in school infrastructure across these areas.”
The letter requested the commonwealth provide “clear guidance on the negotiating pathway” for the schools funding agreement, with the current deal expiring at the end of the year.
“There are several intergovernmental agreements due for re-negotiation in 2024 which require states and territories to have whole of government visibility,” the letter said.
On Wednesday, Clare and the WA premier, Peter Cook, announced a deal for each government to provide an extra 2.5% of the SRS, lifting the commonwealth share to 22.5% in two steps in 2025 and 2026.
Government schools in WA will receive an extra $777m under the deal.
The Turnbull government’s Gonski 2.0 education reforms required states to fund public schools at 75% of the SRS on top of the federal contribution of 20%, leaving a funding gap of at least 5%.
Currently no public school in Australia, except for schools in the ACT, is funded at the SRS level – a benchmark for required funding based on student needs. The letter said that while public schools in the ACT were already funded to 100% of the SRS, the territory supported and advocated for the reform outlined.
Federal Labor was criticised by the Australian Education Union for its vague commitment ahead of the 2022 election to put schools on a “pathway” to full funding and again in December 2022 for extending the existing schools funding agreement to the end of 2024.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said the “landmark agreement” was the first of its kind but the federal government “will be working this through with every state and territory government”.
The scale of the WA deal, if replicated nationwide, suggests an extra $1.5bn to be spent on public schools by the commonwealth, matched by each of the states.
The Australian Education Union federal president, Correna Haythorpe, applauded the WA deal but said it would only see the state’s public schools reach 96% of the SRS.
She said this is due to a provision in the current deal that allowed state governments to include costs such as capital depreciation and transport – that are not directly related to the education of students – in their funding contributions.
