Tuesday, 16 May 2023

 Matthew BACH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:20): (211) I was filled with trepidation when I looked at my diary last Thursday – not as much as I was when I looked at my diary last Friday, but that is a different story. On Thursday I saw –

Members interjecting.

Matthew BACH: Well, on Thursday things actually went quite well, because I saw that in the middle of the day I had a scheduled meeting with the secretary of the Victorian branch of the Australian Education Union Meredith Peace. Ms Peace and I do not agree on everything, but we actually agree on a great deal, and I respect her immensely for the important role that she plays and that her union plays. She is a great warrior on behalf of Victorian teachers. We talked about a range of matters. We talked about school funding here in Victoria. We are nowhere near the minimum standard set many years ago federally, here in Victoria, for the funding of our state schools. It is simply a matter of fact that the Andrews Labor government spends the least per pupil of any state or territory. So we spoke about school funding.

We also spoke about the crisis in our schools at the moment. There is a retention crisis that I fear the government is not focused on enough. We know we do not have enough teachers. I am on the record as previously saying that I do not have a problem with some of the measures that the Minister for Education is taking in seeking to get more teachers into the system. Advertising campaigns are obviously things that this government likes. I think in this instance an advertising campaign is perfectly reasonable, but what Ms Peace is calling for, and I do agree with her wholeheartedly, is a really thorough retention strategy. So for the benefit of Ms Shing tonight, the action that I am going to seek from the Minister for Education is for her to outline to me the government’s retention strategy.

Ms Peace and her senior staff wanted to talk with me about some of their ideas – ideas like retention payments and ideas like studentships. I confess that given the scale of the crisis right now I am not against looking at really interesting ideas like studentships. My mum received a studentship many years ago and was assigned by the Department of Education to then go and teach at the old Footscray tech, which she loved doing for many years. We need to be innovative and creative, especially when it comes to retention. It is all very well to focus on the front end, but we have got so many fabulous, sometimes older, teachers who I do not think we are doing anywhere near enough to retain, which is one of the reasons why I just cannot wait to debate Ms Bath’s broad-ranging motion tomorrow.

We have the budget upcoming, and I am really mindful that the budget is blown. Victorian taxpayers are having to spend $10 million every single day just to service this Labor government’s debt, and so I do not think that we can ask for much in that context. Yet retention is critical and school funding is critical. I would love a response on those matters from the Minister for Education.