What should the State Budget deliver?

The QTU remains firmly committed to ensuring that the LNP government delivers a real financial investment for Queensland teachers, principals and students when the 2014-15 Queensland State Budget is delivered on 3 June.

The Queensland Government’s “Queensland Plan” showed that Queenslanders value education - their number one concern was the provision of “education that is flexible, affordable and accessible to all, including rural, remote and disadvantaged".

The QTU has identified 10 major budgetary recommendations grouped into six critical aspects of education that require action in this year’s budget.

Government funding

1. The QTU calls on the government to commit to increasing the state contribution to the education budget in addition to any received increases in the Commonwealth’s contribution. Across the forward estimates, to 2017/18, the state government proportional spend on state education should be increased by 1 per cent a year to 27 per cent, so that it represents the highest proportion of government expenditure. This would mean increasing the 2014/15 education budget to $12.2 billion.

Enhancing the profession

2. The QTU urges the government to commit to negotiation with education stakeholders, including the QTU, to establish a professional pay scale that aligns with the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership Professional Standards. Providing attractive remuneration with opportunities for career advancement, something primarily addressed through sensible enterprise bargaining, is an important means of attracting and retaining high quality teachers.

3. Additionally, by allocating $60 million in recurrent funding to allow the expansion of head of curriculum positions, all primary and special schools would have access to such an important resource in an ever-changing and dynamic curriculum-driven period. This is necessary given teacher workload through the introduction of the Australian Curriculum.

Providing public education

4. Specifically, the QTU calls on the government to allocate $123 million in recurrent funding to:

• reinstate 272 resource teacher positions throughout the 182 state secondary schools and 90 combined (P-12) state schools
• provide a minimum of an additional 800 FTE teacher positions to meet predicted student enrolment growth
• provide a minimum of an additional 155 FTE teacher positions to achieve a reduction in class size targets for year 10.

5. In addition to the increase in teacher numbers, the QTU would like a funded program established to reduce Queensland’s state school student-teacher ratio to below the Australian average within the forward estimates.

Levelling the education playing field

6. The QTU would like a funding guarantee that all state schools with an enrolment greater than 500 will be allocated a full-time guidance officer. Guidance officers are on the front-line when dealing with the effects of increased mobility, breakdown of families, poverty, drugs and alcohol and domestic violence, and they are an essential component to assist schools and teachers deal with students with learning difficulties, behavioural disturbances and mental health issues.

Building, maintaining and running public schools and TAFE

7. The government should reinvest all revenue raised through the sale of state education assets – assuming the sale is fully justifiable as educationally, socially and culturally beneficial – into public schools, education and TAFE.

8. Also, by allocating $500 million over the forward estimates to create and fund an ongoing program to bring school facilities up to date, students in all schools (including rural and remote locations) will be able to learn in modern and success-driven resourced environments.

TAFE

9. Within the TAFE sector, the QTU strongly calls on the LNP government to abandon plans to make all VET funding fully contestable. The QTU believes a sufficient amount of VET recurrent funding should be tagged specifically to maintain the role of TAFE as the benchmark provider of VET.

10. Finally, the government should maintain TAFE education staffing levels to ensure the capacity of the TAFE system to deliver a wide range of high-quality programs and courses.

All recommendations from the QTU’s budget priorities should be fully funded in the 2014-15 State Budget.

Aleksandr Taylor-Gough
Acting Research Officer

Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 119 Vol 4, 23 May 2014, p12