Opposition Leader Elizabeth Lee outside Evelyn Scott School in Denman Prospect. “We are the only party that can be trusted to fully fund and fully implement these recommendations.” Photo: Ian Bushnell.
The Canberra Liberals will almost quadruple government funding to implement the recommendations of the independent literacy and numeracy inquiry as part of its evidence-driven plan to improve public school performance.
Opposition Leader Elizabeth Lee said a Liberal Government would spend $98 million over four years, dwarfing the Barr Government’s Budget commitment of $24.9 million to the Strong Foundations program, of which she said only $1.7 million was new money.
The figure is more than the $92 million that the ACT Alliance for Evidence-based Education argued for in its Budget submission.
Ms Lee said the government’s approach was woefully inadequate and brought into question its commitment to implementing the recommendations fully.
“The Canberra Liberals approach is very clear,” she said.
“We are the only party that can be trusted to fully fund and fully implement these recommendations.
“It’s also concerning that the Minister [Yvette Berry] has provided no guarantee that the implementation plan will be available from the government’s perspective before the election.”
The Liberals’ schools plan includes Year 1 phonics checks and a multi-tiered system of support for students, both of which the government has committed to, a strengthened monitoring of progress across all years, a boost to school maintenance, and specific support for teachers.
Ms Lee said her government would equip every ACT Government school with decodable readers and provide the support and training that teachers needed to deliver the Strong Foundations program.
She said there was no reason why Ms Berry could not have begun work on the program immediately, including rolling out Year 1 phonic checks.
The Liberals have also promised to lower schools’ administrative burden, providing each ACT teacher with a $200 voucher at the start of each school year to help with classroom supplies of their choosing and introduce access to an opt-in behaviour curriculum where unruliness was a problem.
Ms Lee said the Liberals wanted to have teachers’ backs when it came to classroom behaviour and provide support if they needed it.
This would be in the form of the Classroom Mastery program being piloted in a couple of ACT Catholic schools.
“We know that disruption in the classroom is not good for the teachers, and it’s not good for the students and we have heard concerns about the level of violence in our schools,” she said.
“In fact, it’s incredibly concerning that the ACT has the highest rates of violence against principals in our schools.”
Ms Lee said it would be up to the individual school or the teacher whether they exercised that option.
“But it was important that there be some other support available to demonstrate to teachers that they are getting the support that they need under a Canberra Liberals government,” she said.
Minister for Education Yvette Berry with children from Ainslie Primary School. Ms Lees says the Minister had ignored the expert evidence for years. Photo: ACT Government.
On the $200 vouchers, which will be in addition to basic school resource funding, Ms Lee said every teacher had their own ideas about what they wanted to see in the classroom and some were spending their own money to top up their supplies.
“We acknowledge that we value the contribution they make, and we want to give the teachers the autonomy to have a bit of flexibility about the additional classroom supplies that they’d like to see in their classroom for their teaching,” she said.
They will also inject an additional $25 million into school maintenance to bring every government school up to minimum standards when it comes to heating, cooling and toilets, as well as bring the ACT’s Property Quality Standards guide up to date ahead of an audit of all ACT Government schools.
Me Lee said this would ensure a systemic and transparent process to futureproof school infrastructure needs.
She also committed to a feasibility study of a vertical or multi-storey school in the inner north where school populations were booming.
“This is an area that has been one of the fastest growing, and we know that there is a landlock, and there’s been concern about some of the schools, including Lyneham High, that are at or reaching capacity.
“We need to make sure that we build the school infrastructure that a growing Canberra needs.”
Ms Lee said a stocktake of available land would be required but suggested Dickson College’s footprint could provide a site for a new high school, which would probably suit a multi-level format.
She said all growth areas would be looked at, including the growing town centres of Woden and Belconnen, where population pressures are also building.
Ms Lee said Ms Berry had been dragged kicking and screaming to agreeing to the literacy and numeracy inquiry after ignoring years of alarms being raised about sliding standards.
She said one in three 15-year-olds in the ACT are not meeting the national benchmark when it comes to reading.
“She has ignored for years now the expert evidence which proved time and time again that explicit instruction is the way to go,” she said.
Ms Lee said Labor and the Greens had let down a generation of students in Canberra.
“We want to make sure that every Canberra student has access to the best education system in Australia,” she said.
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