Thank you very much Dr Nelson, Your Eminence, Brother Canavan, Monsignor Rayner, the Principals of the two schools, Casimir College and St Brigid';s, School Captains, Ladies and Gentleman.
Firstly, may I thank the school community for allowing us to come here to make this very important announcement. It is always a wonderful experience as Prime Minister of this country to visit the various schools of our nation. They are rich in variety, all of them have a common vitality and a common commitment to the future wellbeing of their students. The most enduring principle that I have tried to bring to the education of the young in the schools of Australia in the time that I have been Prime Minister is the principle of choice.
As the very proud product of the New South Wales state education system and as a parent who sent, along with my wife, his children, to both government and non-government schools, I do believe very passionately in the principle of parental choice when it comes to education.
As a national Government we recognise that the day-to-day administration of the school system rests under our Constitution with the states. The states, by and large, set the curricula, they work in cooperation not only with the principals of their own schools, but also with the National Catholic Education Commission and its various components and the remainder of the independent school sector. But we do support very strongly, the principle of choice and there are more than 600,000 Australian children educated in the schools run within the Catholic systems and today';s announcement is very much about the rights and the interests of those children and of those schools.
Today, I';m very pleased to announce that for the quadrennium commencing in 2005 through to 2008, after several months of negotiation with the National Catholic Education Commission, the Catholic systemic schools will enter the socio-economic status model, which has been the model adopted for the funding of other independent schools within Australia. This will have a number of very important consequences. Very importantly it will essentially unify the funding treatment of all non-government schools within Australia, according to the same set of principles.
Specifically, for the schools within the systems it will mean an additional $362 million over the four-year period over and above what would have been available if the current deemed funding formula, whereby all schools within Catholic systems are funded according to a fixed percentage of the average cost of educating a child at a government school.
As was the case in the year 2000 when we adopted the SES model for other non-government schools, any school within the Catholic system which, through an application of the SES formula, might have received less funding, will have its current funding maintained and indexed according to the same formula that applies to other independent schools and it has been calculated that something in the order of 40% of the schools within the Catholic systems will receive additional support through the application of the SES formula. And that of course produces the increase of some $362 million throughout the quadrennium for all of the schools within the Catholic systems.
Can I say that I welcome the very successful conclusion of the discussions conducted on behalf of the Government by Dr Nelson with His Eminence and representatives of the National Catholic Education Commission. I think that it is important that as far as possible the same funding principles are applied to all schools within the non-government sector.
None of us has an interest in argument or competition between different school sectors for the available government dollars. We all believe in good schools for all Australians. The Government passionately believes in freedom of choice. Many in this room know far better than I, the struggle that the Catholic community of Australia had for more than a century to maintain a school system without any government financial support. More enlightened days came some four decades ago and I am very proud of the contribution that my very distinguished predecessor made Sir Robert Menzies made to the great breakthrough that occurred in relation to government assistance for non-government schools.
It is very important to say to some in the community, I hope a very small minority that would seek to denigrate the principle of supporting parental freedom of choice. But although only 68% of Australian children now attend government schools, those schools receive combined some 74% of the total amount of government funding which is available. And that is an illustration of the fact that suggestions that government schools are being short changed to the benefit of non-government schools is without any foundation.
Can I say that we remain as a Government committed to many things in education. We believe in excellence, we believe in high standards, we value the contribution of teachers whether it be in the public system or the non-government sector. We also place a great emphasis on the importance of building school communities. The best schools in Australia, whether they';re government schools or non-government schools are the schools where there is a partnership between the teachers, the students and the parents. That was my experience as a parent, I';m sure that it is the experience of educators and parents alike who are gathered in this room.
We also will as a national Government, continue to maintain strong support for basic standards of literacy and numeracy. They are very important to the future of our children. I think that it is also important amidst much of the negative and pessimistic commentary that sometimes emanates in relation to the education system of this country. But with its faults, and like any other education system it has its faults, but it is a system, which on world comparisons is a very good one. Recent OECD comparisons in a number of the benchmark areas illustrates that Australian students at the age of 15 and 16 can be compared very favourably to the students at an equivalent age in other like countries. Now that is something from which all of us can take a great deal of credit.
But today my friends is a very important day in the life of Catholic education in Australia. Can I on behalf of the Government pay tribute to the people who over the years have kept the Catholic Education system going. It is system that embraces, as I said earlier, some 600,000 young Australians. They are educated like other Australians according to the curriculum laid down for Australian schools. But importantly that education also reflects the spiritual and religious values which the parents of those children hold dear. Now that is the right that every Australian parent has. It is a right I';ve always supported, it is right I will always support because it is fundamental to the kind of society in which we live.
Ladies and Gentleman thank you again to the school for making its facilities available. I wish its students well, particularly those in Year 12 as they travel all too rapidly, the remaining 7 or 8 months will disappear very, very rapidly to the HSC, but I do wish them well and I hope what they and their parents dream of for the future is in relation to every student of this school realised. They are very precious, very important years, they have a lasting impact on the future lives of the students and I hope that the atmosphere of this school of this college is conducive to the very best of results and I do again thank the National Catholic Education Commission for the constructive way in which our discussions were carried out. I would also like to congratulate my Minister Brendan Nelson, for the great energy that he has brought, not only to matters affecting primary and secondary education but of course at the end of the last year, tertiary education which is also so very important for the future of our nation.
Ladies and Gentleman, I thank you.
[ends]