AUSTRALIAN GREENS EDUCATION POLICY

Guiding Principle

The Greens SA support a vision of education as lifelong personal and social development, taking place in a variety of formal and informal settings, and aimed at empowering people to live purposeful, satisfying lives, to develop communities that are peaceful, just and ecologically sustainable. It is a process of intellectual, cultural, ethical, physical, and emotional development. Sustainable lifelong education can enable all citizens to make an ethical and creative social contribution within and across communities, locally and with other peoples of the world.

The Greens SA believe that it is an entitlement of all students to participate and achieve success in a high quality, well resourced public education system. The Greens SA are working for high-quality, public preschool, primary, secondary and tertiary educational facilities and improved opportunities for lifelong learning.

The Greens SA believe in a vision of public education as an investment, not a cost, and will work towards ensuring that governments make provision for increased resources to all levels of public education in their budgets.

1. Funding and Equity Issues:

The Greens will support:

• Optimising government funding to the government/public sector to ensure that principals, teachers, Schools Services Officers and School/Governing Councils can meaningfully achieve educational outcomes that are accessible to all students.
• Raising the level of educational expenditure and abolishing government school fees, to provide free, equitable education to all students.
• Ending inequitable funding systems that unfairly disadvantage and discriminate against public schools.
• Introducing an accountability framework for government funding of non-government schools, requiring full financial disclosure and achievement of core educational standards as applies to public schools.
• An end to funding through sponsorship or any other external private sources.

2. Class Sizes

The Greens will support:

Reduction in class sizes to achieve the following actual, not average, maximum class sizes:

Differential class Size:

Modification of class size based on student complexity to target OHS&W risk. This would be based on a loading factor which gives a student multiplier rating for all those students identified as having a complexity rating who are placed in mainstream classes.

• The Greens SA recognise the improved learning and teaching outcomes from reduced class sizes, as validated by national and overseas research.
• Achieving a staffing ratio of 1 AEW for 10 Aboriginal students.
• Maintaining the current staffing ratios for trained to untrained staff in preschools, on enrolments of at least 1 adult to 10 children.
• Restricting TAFE classroom-based general classes to a maximum of 20 students. Practical classes – maximum of 15 (and less in areas involving high risk/OHSW factors). Literacy and numeracy classes – maximum of 10.

3. Staffing Issues

The Greens will support:

Retention of appropriate, centralised conditions of employment for teachers, including the principle of tenure.

• Rejection of the insidious practice of contract appointments to fill vacancies. Permanency should be the major way of employing teachers. The Greens SA would support the implementation of converting all contract and short-term appointments to permanency, in all sectors. Minimum conversion rate of at least 50% of contracts to permanency over the life of the next government in schools, preschools and support services.
• Salary increases for education workers, bringing them into line with national benchmark claims that have been pursued interstate.
• Limiting teacher contact time. Overwork, low morale and increased symptoms of stress for teachers was noted in the ACTU survey of 1999. These issues will be addressed by limiting the contact time in all sectors – 22.5 hours maximum in primary, 20 hours maximum in secondary and a maximum of 21 hours face-to-face delivery in TAFE per week. Flexible Initiatives Resources (FIR) should be increased to $50 million per year to assist in alleviating existing workloads and address new areas of need.
• Changes to the school staffing formula to provide teacher support for individual case management of student learning.
• Introducing a fully funded scheme for professional development that provides for paid release.
• The important contribution of School Service Officers (SSOs), Early Childhood Workers (ECWs) and Aboriginal Education Workers (AEWs) and other support staff in schools. However, an increase in the formula for allocation of support staff hours is needed to deal with workload increases in all areas.
• Education unions as industrial representatives in all education matters. The Greens SA support the principle of a contribution to be made by non-union members who gain the benefits of union-registered agreements.

4. Local Management

The Greens will support:

• Measures that ensuring equitable and adequate funding to all schools irrespective of their previous P21 status.
• Local management that enhances participation of teachers, parent/caregivers, and students in the setting, implementation, and ongoing evaluation of educational goals. Local management should be used by government as a mechanism for bringing schools closer to parents/caregivers and local communities rather than to escape responsibility for proper resourcing and support of schools. (SRCs) to promote democratic practices and student rights Staffing, major new works, and major maintenance should remain the responsibility of the education department.
• Training for students to enable them to participate in Governing Councils confidently and effectively. The Greens SA support strengthening the role of Student Representative Councils in educational institutions.

5. Curriculum Development

The Greens will support:

• Development of an awareness of global interdependence and commitment to the development of a peaceful, just, and ecologically sustainable world.
• Acknowledgement and support of cultural diversity and representation of the perspectives of diverse groups within Australian society.
• Education that strengthens democratic, participatory citizenship.
• A balanced concern in schools for all dimensions of human development – intellectual, physical, emotional, ethical, and cultural.

6. Tertiary Education

(see National Education policy for Tertiary Education which is federally funded)

Technical and Further Education Goals

The Australian Greens will:

• ensure that TAFE is funded and resourced to provide for the vocational education and training needs of all Australians;
• ensure that the increased demand for courses can be accommodated and is fully funded;
• achieve free TAFE education;
• Protect TAFE from the application of the Competition Policy with the aim of increasing the proportion of Vocational Educational Training funding that goes to the public system
• Ensure that TAFE teachers have secure career structures and reasonable workloads, and are well remunerated
• Ensure that educators play a key role in the development and review of training packages
• review AUSTUDY and the Youth Allowance with a view to providing an allowance for all full-time TAFE students, regardless of their age, parental income or level of independence;
• establish and expand the role of TAFE in research and innovation.

TAFE Short Term Targets

The Australian Greens will:

• reform the Australian National Training Authority (ANTA) agreement to ensure secure federal funding for TAFE that respects the vocational educational and training needs of local communities and the costs of growth in service provision;
• extend funding and other support to suitably accredited community groups and Adult and Community Education programs and facilities, including those catering for interests and segments of the population not catered for by conventional and formal educational provision;
• ensure that public funding of private providers of vocational education and training and businesses supplying training opportunities is never at the expense of, nor damages the viability of, public TAFE services, expertise or facilities;
• phase out the public funding of privately provided vocational education and training where TAFE could provide the same educational and training outcomes;
• continue to support the role of the community sector;
• ensure that all providers employ suitably qualified personnel;
• ensure that all providers practice non-discrimination in the class room and in employment practices;
• improve funding for TAFE to achieve reduced class sizes, growth in student numbers, appropriate remuneration and professional development for teachers and enhanced outreach services;
• substantially increase annual Commonwealth funding of the TAFE systems to:
• meet the demand for vocational education and training and to ensure that there is a place for every suitably qualified applicant
• significantly increase per student funding, and
• provide one-off payments to address the adverse impacts of funding cuts since 1996;
• that, as soon as practical, there be a guaranteed TAFE (or University) place for every school leaver;
• support universal student unionism;
• abolish all fees and charges for educational services, and strengthen the system of living allowances;
• establish a pilot program of Research and Innovation Centres in TAFE linked to high quality skill formation;
• amend the Australian Quality Training Framework to ensure that teaching quality is taken into account by explicitly working towards a benchmark of 80 percent of teaching being undertaken by permanent teaching staff throughout public and private VET providers.
• end the casualisation of TAFE teaching and work towards a benchmark of 80 percent of teaching being undertaken by permanent teaching staff.

Download the Greens SA Education policy as a PDF file.