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.
The Explanatory Memorandum provides some context to the changes made to the Preamble and the Objects. The changes were made to:
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.
Under the Bill, the nine-paragraph Preamble, currently at section four of the Act, will be completely repealed and replaced with a new six-paragraph version.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:
Instead, the proposed Preamble focusses on:
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:
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:
The fairer funding aim is an endorsement of the Quality Schools Program.
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.