Campaigners met at Keira High on Monday to kick off a week of action to highlight the impacts of the $1.9 billion funding cuts to Australia’s public schools.
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NSW Teachers Federation Illawarra organiser John Black said Fair Funding Now! supporters will spend the week educating parents and the rest of the community about the importance of fair public school funding for their children.
“$1.9 billion right across the country short of where schools would have been under the original funding model and that's just to take schools to the schooling resource standard,” he said.
“Effectively the federal government is saying they are happy leaving public schools below the schooling resource standard and we believe that is not good enough.”
The Week of Action includes a national advertising and social media campaign.
Sharon Bird, the Federal Member for Cunningham, called on Illawarra residents to get tweeting on Monday night from 7.30 to 9.30pm and let new prime minister Scott Morrison know how they felt about the funding cuts.
“Don’t forget to tag Mr Morrison and tell him to do the right thing and reverse the cuts to ensure every school is operating at the proper schooling resource standard,” she said.
Mr Black added while the deck chairs have changed and we have a new PM and federal education minister, the policies remain the same.
“Mr Morrison was treasurer when they cut $1.9 billion from schools and gave it to big business and banks in the form of tax cuts, so that’s a bit scary,” he said.
“But it is not too late for him to change his mind and show through his actions that he supports education and our students ahead of the big end of town.”
NSWTF Illawarra secretary Trystan Loades added that it was important that the final two years of that original Gonski model was delivered to bring all schools up to the minimum resource standard.
Mr Loades said many local schools, including his at Keira High School, had “felt the pain” in recent years.
“For a school like ours at Keira, that makes a $900,000 difference to the budget over 2018/19,” he said.
“That makes a huge difference to the programs we were running and it is our students who suffer most.”
The week of action wraps up with community door-knocks throughout Kiama on Saturday and Sunday..
Agron Latifi
Wollongong born and bred. I love reporting about the Illawarra region and have been doing it for more than 20 years. I've moved into sport recently after covering the education round for the last five plus years for the Illawarra Mercury. It's been a great pleasure.
Wollongong born and bred. I love reporting about the Illawarra region and have been doing it for more than 20 years. I've moved into sport recently after covering the education round for the last five plus years for the Illawarra Mercury. It's been a great pleasure.
