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| Peter Garrett (Photo credit: KatieTT) |
Prime Minister Julia Gillard's hopes of securing a landmark deal to overhaul school funding have suffered a setback, after Australia's biggest states baulked at a demand to sign up to school improvement reforms.
Federal School Education Minister Peter Garrett insisted the states and territories endorse the reforms on Monday.
These include higher entry standards for teaching, annual performance reviews for teachers, greater autonomy for schools and a new funding model - without knowing how much money they would be asked to chip in.
Mr Garrett said only South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory - all governed by Labor - endorsed the plan. He claimed the other conservative governments had refused to do so.
However Victorian Education Minister Martin Dixon said Mr Garrett's public comments were extraordinary when he had specifically told education ministers not to discuss the outcome of a meeting on Monday.
He said all states and territories were very close to endorsing the plan, with just two remaining sticking points that were expected to be resolved by Friday.
''We went into this meeting wanting to engage and make a contribution, which we did. For Minister Garrett to then throw that back in our face is hugely disappointing,'' he said. ''Basically he spat the dummy because he didn't get his way in the meeting.''
Mr Dixon said 11 days before the Council of Australian Governments meeting on April 19, when Ms Gillard hopes to finalise the school funding reforms, Victoria still did not have the details on school funding it had requested. ''It is very unfortunate. This is not about outcomes and policy for Minister Garrett, it's about politics.''
The Australian Greens warned the school funding reforms were now ''in serious jeopardy'', while Australian Education Union federal president Angelo Gavrielatos pleaded with political leaders to understand the ''enormous'' economic and social costs of failing to introduce a fairer school funding system.
The setback comes less than a fortnight before the Prime Minister's do-or-die meeting with state leaders, where she hopes to settle a deal that would see an extra $6.5 billion a year in combined state and federal funding injected into schools by 2019.
Mr Garrett said the federal government was not going to hand over billions of dollars without a plan in place for how that money would be spent. ''States and territories can't claim that they don't know what we want to do and they haven't got the detail. They do,'' Mr Garrett said.
''Education ministers who refused to endorse [the reforms] today need to go back to their communities and explain to schools and to parents exactly why they haven't supported them.''
NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli said he was disappointed the federal government politicised the negotiations. ''It is not helpful to … leak information and play politics at this crucial stage in the negotiations,'' he said.
Greens' schools spokeswoman Penny Wright accused Mr Garrett of ''serious mismanagement'' in leaving negotiations so late and still refusing to give funding details, while premiers were also playing politics at a crucial time.
Coalition education spokesman Christopher Pyne said most states and territories had refused to ''sign on the dotted line without knowing the price tag''.
''It is beyond a joke that a week before the Council of Australian Governments meeting … state governments still do not have the details,'' he said.
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