Sliced Bread

Maralyn Parker, education writer for the Daily Telegraph reported on a major issue facing Public Education, adequate and/or equitable funding. 

Some of the best minds among public school supporters met in the NSW State Library on Saturday for their own 2020 Education Summit. Its sole purpose was to discuss how to fight the growing divide between Australia’s public and private schools. …. if all schools were staffed as generously as publicly funded Montessori and Steiner and independent schools another 40,000 teachers would be needed right now.

 

Maralyn Parker Profile

Only 2 per cent of the nation’s private schools are audited but they were given over $30 billion in the last federal budget- no questions asked. In no other industry in no other part of the world where public funds are involved would this be acceptable. If you read about it it happening anywhere else you would assume it was a junta rorting public coffers to benefit its own children. Perhaps that is what is happening in Australia – it certainly feels like it.

In another recent article Maralyn highlights the great divide over education priorities and funding.

30th June Daily Telegraph
The threat is real enough for advisers to Federal treasurer Wayne Swan to suggest a secret deal with NSW

But expect the COAG meeting on Thursday to have some fiery clashes. And so much for the new federalism putting an end to “the blame game” .

The reality is NSW government schools do not have classrooms with the proper air conditioning and wiring to house the computers.  They do not have sufficient in-school technical support (there should be full-time technicians employed in every school) nor widely available professional development for their teachers on how to use the computers and they cannot afford the insurance to insure them.

In fact most NSW schools have classrooms that are demountable and pose a security problem or many are so old they are too small to fit in a computer for every child.

It is time for the federal government to provide funding to government schools to a level where they can educate their children to a 21st century standard.

Australia is in the middle of a resources boom where we have untold wealth sitting in federal government coffers ( while some states, NSW included, miss out) . We should be using this unique time to invest in our most precious resource – Australian school children.

Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have to address the very real poverty of public schools in NSW.

I hope Michael Costa’s threat is a serious one. NSW is in dire need of a special catch-up state school funding deal.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS