Today, while chairing a Budget Estimates hearing, Abigail pressed the Minister for Education on public school funding cuts impacting staffing and accessibility for students with disabilities.

The CHAIR (Abigail Boyd): I've spoken with principals who have told me that the problem is not that they didn't expect the funds to go but that they didn't expect the funds to go when they did. Because of that, they were caught short. For example, I spoke to one principal who was saying that he had earmarked funds for a particular project, they had signed the contract and then they weren't able to pay for that and so they had to fundraise and find money elsewhere. It was expressed to me that this has really disproportionately impacted on the poorer schools that are not able to fundraise from parents and haven't been able to plug that gap. Can you explain to us what happened with that surprise element?

The other one I heard a lot about was SLSOs, where people had got funding for, say, 1.7 SLSOs and then they were topping up the rest of that with that local money and then suddenly had to let those SLSOs go. How does that happen and what was put in place to try and stop that happening?

Ms PRUE CAR (Minister for Education): That shouldn't have happened, actually.

Where we need to get to, Ms Boyd, is that we need a situation where the entitlement of a school to say, "This is how many teachers you get. This is how many APs and DPs and SLSOs you get", is actually fit for purpose so the entitlement that they get under the previous administration is not so small that they have to find their own way of funding extra staff.

What we believe in as a government is actually funding the system to support the schools. What sets the New South Wales public school system apart? We are one of the biggest systems in the Southern Hemisphere, if not the world. We have 2,200 schools. We should use our systemic might to support what happens in schools. Principals can't be left—under the previous Government, they were left basically to fend for themselves.

The CHAIR: And we agree on the scrapping of the Local Schools model.

Ms PRUE CAR: The devolution didn't work.

The CHAIR: In terms, though, of that funding of SLSOs, it looks like we are making a lot of progress in relation to teacher pay and teacher retention. I have a real concern—again, from that Disability portfolio perspective—that we have SLSOs that are unsure as to whether or not they are going to have a job the next year because it's dependent on how many children need them at that time.

Is there something in place to look at retention of SLSOs to have that more constant funding stream for SLSOs in the same way as we have for teachers?

Ms PRUE CAR: You make a very good point in that so much of the work that is done to support our students with disability—increasing numbers of kids with disabilities as well—in the public school system is done not just by teachers but also by SLSOs in the classroom. We are very proud that we made a large number of them permanent. So many were temporary. That number of 20,000-plus teachers and support staff we made permanent, a lot of them were SLSOs. Now, if I hear about schools that are losing SLSOs because we may need to work through some of those issues in terms of the allocation of a budget, then we can work through that. We do not want to see that happen; I personally do not want to see that happen. In fact, with the Commonwealth changes to the NDIS, we are going to need more and more support for our students in public school systems, remembering that 80-plus per cent of kids with disability in public schools are in mainstream settings. SLSOs are actually crucial in ensuring that we fulfil our obligation to every child in New South Wales—their right to public education.

The CHAIR: Is that something you will be looking at in the next part of your term, then, in terms of trying to increase that workforce and give them the security of tenure to know that they are going to be at that school for a period of time, not just for the coming year?

Ms PRUE CAR: One criticism that you couldn't make of our Government is that we are not focused on workforce. I think in Education we are viewing absolutely almost everything through the prism of the workforce that delivers that essential work. When I talk about reviewing entitlement, it also includes things like SLSOs to ensure that we are actually providing schools with the staff they need, including support for kids with disabilities. One of the biggest challenges we face also is teachers for special education. It's another thing we inherited that's a complete basket case.

The CHAIR: I look forward to your response to our report that the Committee provided just last week.

Ms PRUE CAR: Yes, we are considering it now.

The CHAIR: Can I ask you about the $1 billion in the budget that was for funding for school maintenance and minor upgrades? How much of that is for disability accessibility upgrades?

Ms PRUE CAR: A lot of it will be going to things that have been ignored for years and years that aren't really sexy to talk about—things like toilets.

The injection will be used to do things like that, but let me take on notice for accessibility upgrades. Of course, when a student comes to a school with a particular need and enrols in that school, we are obliged to upgrade the school so that child can access education.

The CHAIR: This Committee was lucky enough to go and visit a number of schools as part of our inquiry. We went to one particular school that was in a heritage building, and they were unable to put ramps in because of that heritage, and yet it was a special purpose school. I found that quite shocking that we didn't have full accessibility at a school like that. Is that something that you will be looking into?

Ms PRUE CAR: We have an obligation to every child in New South Wales. It's the law that they can access education. So when a child enrols—and you're talking about a school for specific purposes. Of course we need to find a way to make that accessible. I tell you what, some of the most incredible places I've been to over the past 18 months have been SSPs. The work that they do in there is just absolutely mind-blowingly transformative.

The CHAIR: We have obviously not just students but also parents and carers and teachers that also require accessibility upgrades.

Ms PRUE CAR: And staff.

The CHAIR: Shouldn't those schools just be completely accessible as a matter of course?

Ms PRUE CAR: We have to find a way to do this. We are committed to inclusion. We are committed to ensuring that students and staff and parents can access our schools—their public schools.

27 August 2024