Education Minister denies claim of perceived teaching numbers decline

Ms Farina said the reduction of teachers and education assistant numbers stemmed from the Barnett government’s cuts to education numbers.

The regional NAPLAN results showed students were not able to meet national average results, she said.

Mr Collier said her claims were wrong, stating SW schools combined have 109 more teachers this year than at the same time last year – 3372 and 3263 respectively.

There were seven more education assistants than at the same time last year – 1394 and 1387 respectively, he said.

He said there have been no cuts to education funding, with an increase of $19.2 million, even though there has been an overall decrease of 521 in the number of funded students enrolled.

“The 2016 Productivity Commission Report on Government Services showed that recurrent expenditure in Western Australia schools was 20 per cent higher than the national average – our schools are the best resourced of any state in the country.”

Ms Farina said the 2015 NAPLAN results were an indication that students in the SW were not achieving to the levels they should, and said schools needed more resources to improve the education outcomes they were able to deliver.

Her figures claimed 255 less people were employed as teachers at SW schools this year than were employed last year, and the number of people employed as education assistants had declined by 200.

“The Barnett government has made a mess of school funding, first the cuts meant specialist programmes in essential areas like literacy and numeracy were lost, now it has become so bad generalist teaching positions are being lost,” she said.

“The WA education system cannot afford four more years of a Barnett Liberal Government.”

Mr Collier said the NAPLAN assessment was not a pass or fail test, but a measure of achievement which gives an indication of how students were performing and what areas needed to be prioritised for improvement. 

“In general, more than 90 per cent of students in the SW achieve nationally agreed minimum standards.”

Western Australia had been one of two states to show the most improvement since the introduction of NAPLAN in 2008, he said.

“The NAPLAN results in the SW do show that SW schools aren’t performing as well as we would like.

“However, the people who are best placed to determine how to address this are the principals and the teachers in the schools.”