Schools to choose if they want a chaplain under Labor – politics live | Australia news

This is one of those policy areas that’s gone back and forward with every change of government and we will go back to the position we had when we were last in government, the funding remains.

Schools can choose to employ chaplains if they wish. Or they can choose to employ a secular youth worker, social worker, someone with adequate qualifications to give support, mentoring, deliver social welfare in the students.

When it comes to the teachers, I wouldn’t want the school chaplaincy program paying for that.

But one of the benefits of the $14bn in additional funding that we will give to public schools and the restoration of funding to Catholic and independent schools is you can hire more specialist teachers to reduce some of the workload on teachers and continuing professional development, feeling like you are on top of what you are doing incredibly reduces your stress load.

Most of the extra funding that needs-based funding brought to our schools last time was doing that, it was bringing in specialist teaching, extra teacher aids, it was giving teachers more one-on-one time with students.

It was giving more opportunity for professional development so that people felt confident in the classroom.

I will give you an example. If you are a teacher who has never taught someone with a particular disability and an eight-year-old comes in that year and you really want to do the best for this child, having the opportunity to be, to get some training, to get some mentoring, to work with other teachers to work out how to best teach that child – that changes – it makes the teaching a joy rather than something that’s keeping you awake at night. That is the sort of opportunity we want to give our teachers.”