Tuesday, 29 July 2025

Education system

Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:46): (1757) My adjournment is to the Minister for Education, and the action I seek is for the minister to meet with me to discuss measures that can be taken to address Victoria’s education crisis. Our so-called Education State has lost its reputation for effective, appropriate education under Ben Carroll and the Allan Labor government. I am determined to see this turn around, and the most important step we can take is to set high expectations for students, teachers and schools.

The first recommendation of the inquiry into Victoria’s education system is setting a long-term goal for 90 per cent of students to achieve proficiency in reading and numeracy. This means hitting or exceeding bands across years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Disgracefully, the minister flatly refuses to commit to this, and adjustments to NAPLAN testing make it difficult to do annual performance comparisons. Then there is the VCE exam fiasco which forced an independent review, which found no board-level oversight over exam paper production, weak risk management, poor project delivery, inconsistent compliance, ineffective change management and not a shred of crisis planning – not a shred. In years past a minister would have resigned or got sacked. This is called ministerial responsibility. Clearly, the Premier cannot afford to put this minister offside by demoting him. After all, he is slowly building the numbers in her party room.

On staffing, the teacher shortage is getting worse. Stakeholders tell us previous EBAs have favoured conditions over pay. But what does this mean to Victorian teachers? They are the worst paid in the country in Victoria, while the number of available teachers is becoming fewer and there is an increase in casual relief teachers rather than permanent teachers. Many Catholic and independent schools cannot match government pay and are dealing with the outrageous school tax, a tax which the Liberals will scrap. Then there is bloated compliance and inconsistent rules, outdated IT and burdensome bureaucracy that are taking up teachers’ precious time, not to mention a number of schools with old classrooms and even portables. And if that were not enough, the minister quietly slashed $2.4 billion from public schools. It is so disastrous in this state that even relief teachers in my area have been asked to bring their own supplies, including paper, to the school for the students because the school does not have enough. The promise to fully fund schools has been kicked out to 2031, leaving Victoria dead last in its funding per student, as confirmed in the recent state budget. This is the cost of 10 years of Labor’s waste, mismanagement and spin. Only a Battin-led Liberal government will clean up the mess and restore pride – (Time expired)