It took just 10 days for the Victorian government to water down its proposal to remove payroll tax exemptions for some of the state’s wealthiest private schools.
Could you imagine the progress we could make on adequately funding public schools if all political decision-making was that rapid?
Perhaps the swift response was not such a surprise given the scale of unbalanced media coverage and confected outrage that was dedicated to the issue. But what has been lost in the unsubstantiated uproar is the hundreds of thousands of students in public schools who appear to have been dealt yet another cut to their funding.
-
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup
Public schools are a public good. As the universal provider, they serve all those who enter, regardless of their background or postcode. The overwhelming majority of children who need additional support or come from disadvantaged backgrounds attend public schools. So why is it that as a community we allow the public discourse to be dominated by those who serve no such public good, despite their protestations, and who seem to simply want to protect their privilege?
Despite the irreplaceable and vital role public schools play in our society, they have for decades remained underfunded.
The schooling resource standard is the federal government’s measurement tool that exposes the staggering scale of this underfunding. The SRS is an estimate of the minimum funding a school requires to meet its students’ educational needs. It was devised as part of the school funding review chaired by David Gonski in 2011 and was agreed to by all Australian governments. Unfortunately, successive federal and state governments have chosen to make changes to how this model should have worked, to the detriment of public school students.
Cut to more than a decade later, each Victorian public school student is missing out on $1,800 on average of their fair share of SRS funding every year. Yet some private schools in Victoria are overfunded up to 20% beyond their SRS entitlements.
Instead of taking action to end this shameful underfunding and ensure that every public school student has the resources they require, the Victorian government chose to further cut public education funding by 2.7% in real terms in last month’s state budget, according to Australian Education Union analysis.
This cut comes at a time of a crippling teacher shortage in Victoria, which in no small part is caused by teachers leaving the profession due to a lack of funding and support, and unsustainable workloads.
Chronic underfunding of our public schools means bigger class sizes, fewer teachers and fewer necessary supports including welfare coordinators, psychologists, speech pathologists and support for student health and wellbeing.
after newsletter promotion
It means narrower curriculums and an overworked, burned-out workforce spread far too thinly while desperately trying to make up the shortfall for the students to which they remain dedicated and committed.
The sheer outrage over a modest tax measure for the state’s wealthiest private schools, and the swiftness with which it is being reversed for some schools, sits in stark contrast with the relative silence over the real scandal – the complete inequity in education funding. Of all OECD countries, Australia has one of the most inequitably funded education systems in the world.
It’s time for a different conversation. One where the needs of the majority of our children in public schools are put first. One where the community demands that federal and state governments deliver on their promise to fund public schools fairly and properly. One that results in public schools having funding to ensure every child gets the high-quality individual support they need from their teachers.
We all need to stand up and call for real equity when it comes to funding our schools instead of the false economy and nonsense we’ve endured over payroll tax.
-
Meredith Peace is president of the Australian Education Union Victorian branch