The recent passing of the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017 (the Bill) by the House of Representatives in Federal Parliament represents the culmination of the reforms to education funding, recently announced by Prime Minister Turnbull as part of the Budget 2017-18. Although the Bill must still pass the Senate to become law, it is interesting to examine certain aspects of the changes proposed by the Bill.

The Bill amends the Australian Education Act 2013 (Cth) (the Act), the principal legislation for the provision of Australian Government recurrent funding for government and non-government schools in Australia. While most of the press coverage of the Bill has focussed on the allocation of Federal funding between government and non-government schools, it is interesting to note the changes the Federal Government has made to other sections of the Act, primarily the Preamble and Objects sections.

Context to the changes

The Explanatory Memorandum provides some context to the changes made to the Preamble and the Objects. The changes were made to:

• better align them with the principles of needs-based and sustainable funding, nationally-agreed goals for schooling and nationally-agreed evidence-based reforms; and
• simplify them, in order to more clearly specify the primary objectives and expectations of the Act, and an overarching, principles-based outline of the objectives for the provision of Commonwealth schools funding.

While these sections of the Act do not directly impose obligations on approved authorities, it is considered desirable for these to provide a snapshot of objectives for the provision of Commonwealth schools funding and the role of the Commonwealth, states and territories in improving educational outcomes. The approved authority for a non-government school is the body corporate approved by the Minister for that school. For government schools, the approved authority is their relevant state or territory.

Preamble: Less focus on accessibility

Under the Bill, the nine-paragraph Preamble, currently at section four of the Act, will be completely repealed and replaced with a new six-paragraph version. While it would be too cumbersome to replicate the two versions of the Preamble in this article, we will instead summarise some of the key points from each. Gone from the Preamble are:

• references to the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (2008) (which are due to be replaced with new objectives from 2018);
• reference to the quality of a student's education not being limited by where the student lives, the income of their family, the school they attend or their personal circumstances;
• the statement that "the quality of education should not be limited by a school's location, particularly those schools in regional Australia"; and
• a reference to it being essential for Australian schooling to provide school students with opportunities to engage with Australia's region, to maximise "economic, cultural and social opportunities during the Asian century."

Instead, the proposed Preamble focusses on:

• a strong and sustainable schooling system - critical to Australia's future prosperity;
• a system which provides children with the skills needed to participate fully in a knowledge-based economy;
• the role of the Commonwealth in providing transparency and accountability to ensure "public confidence in the education system and promote excellence in teaching and school leadership'';
• the Commonwealth delivering "record and growing levels of investment in schools"...which is "transparently distributed and allocated according to need";
• new national objectives and priorities for schools through the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) and Educational Council (to replace the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (2008)); and
• state and territory education authorities must deliver evidence-based reforms in schools.

Objects: Much shorter

Other significant changes are to the Objects in section 3 of the Act. Under the current Act, the Objects focus on aspirational goals for Australian schools. For example:

• by 2025 Australia should be placed in the top 5 highest performing countries based on performance in reading, mathematics and science; and
• for the Australian school system to be considered a high quality and highly equitable schools system by international standards by 2025.

The Objects consisted of eight paragraphs addressing Quality Teaching, Quality Learning, Empowered School Leadership, Transparency and Accountability and Meeting Student Needs.

The new section 3, in contrast, is only one paragraph long and notes:

• providing a Commonwealth needs-based funding model for school education that is affordable, simple, predictable and fair; and
• to support the objectives of inter-governmental agreements on school education.

The fairer funding aim is an endorsement of the Quality Schools Program.

What do these difference mean?

While neither the Preamble nor the Objects of the Act are legally enforceable, their contents provide a useful road-map of what the Federal Government sees as key educational objectives. Both can also be used to resolve uncertainty and ambiguity in interpreting sections of legislation and add context. Noting the substantial changes in the length of the proposed new Objects section compared to the current one, it makes sense to reduce the length of that section for simplicity, as noted by the Explanatory Memorandum. And given the disappointing NAPLAN results for literacy and numeracy skills in 2016, perhaps removing the 2025 targets is a realistic step by the Federal Government.

It will be interesting to see how COAG and the Education Council will work together to produce new national educational objectives and targets.

So while, quite rightly, much of the media focus on the Bill has been on funding arrangements, the information in the Preamble and Objects should not be overlooked.