It can all be ‘undone’ in a heartbeat: new campaign to protect historic education funding

The NSW Teachers’ Federation says the deal will fully fund NSW public schools for the first time in history and transform educational outcomes for the state's 785,000 public school students.

Yet despite opposition leader Peter Dutton confirming on March 4 that the Coalition backs the agreement, many are concerned that a change of government could jeopardise the ‘vital funding’, and have pointed to Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume’s publicly stated doubts about the deal and the previous Coalition government’s education funding cuts in 2013.

In a TV interview on SkyNews two weeks ago, Hume repeatedly avoided committing to the $4.8 billion funding agreement, raising serious questions about the Coalition’s commitment to public school funding ahead of the upcoming federal election.

When directly asked whether the Coalition would maintain the landmark agreement, Hume stated: “that policy is not one that I’ve seen, it’s not one that we’ve considered and potentially it will be one that will be discussed by the Coalition … I don’t want to pre-empt that.”

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare, NSW Education Minister Prue Car, and NSW Teachers Federation President Henry Rajendra joined a vocal crowd of educators and parents on the steps of NSWTF headquarters for the launch of the campaign to protect the funding.

“We now have agreements in terms of schools funding for New South Wales…” Rajendra told those gathered.

“To lift the funding for our schools will mean so much for our students.

“We’ll be able to employ additional permanent teachers to reduce class sizes, to provide that one‑on‑one support that so many of our students need and currently are not getting, to provide the necessary resourcing, to make sure that we have the therapy services that our schools so need, whether it’s speech pathologists, et cetera.”

However, Rajendra emphasised, with a federal election imminent, there is a very real threat that “a Dutton government could completely undo all that has been gained”.

Rajendra suggested that past Coalition governments “have never done anything positive for public education”.

“When we first had the Gonski agreement in 2013 [which should have seen] money coming into our public schools from 2014 onwards, with the election of the Abbott Government, they immediately cut $30 billion from that funding commitment and collapsed the whole funding structure of the Gonski principles.

“Ever since that time our schools have been under-funded and under a significant amount of pressure, putting that pressure on our teachers, and therefore, on our students.”

Clare agreed that there is a real risk if a Coalition government is returned to power.

“…if you look at what Peter Dutton and Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison and the Liberals have done in the past, then you’ll know that if they win this election, they’ll do what they did last time, and rip money out of our public schools, rip the guts out of funding for public schools...

“That’s what they did last time, and we’re still feeling the consequences of that today, and there is no better example of that than the evidence that over the last 10 years since they ripped that money out, the number of children finishing high school in our public schools has gone backwards from about 83 per cent to 73 per cent.”

Rajendra said research shows that 28.9 per cent of public schools have high concentrations of disadvantage compared to just 5.6 per cent of independent schools, underscoring the urgency of full funding.

“Recent research shows that 59.6 per cent of private schools in NSW now receive more combined government funding per student than comparable public schools. This agreement finally addresses this inequity.”

Carr said NSW is “making really great strides” in public education.

“We have seen a 40 per cent decrease in vacancies here, in public school teacher vacancies, because of a campaign led by the teachers of New South Wales and their union, the Teachers' Federation, and actioned by the New South Wales Government, biggest pay rise in a generation.

“We’ve seen thousands made permanent. We’re introducing numeracy checks across Year 1.

She said many people have fought through the generations for this to happen.

“I want to see this roll out for our kids. In order for that to happen, the Albanese Labor Government needs to be re‑elected,” she said.

When quizzed by a journalist about how the State Government intends to measure teachers’ use of evidence‑based teaching and how government meddling and micro-managing might be avoided, Car contended that it’s more about making sure teachers are resourced and have the support to be experts in the classroom.

“…this is not about someone from the government sitting in a classroom telling a teacher how to teach,” she said.

“No one should be doing that. They’re experts. No one would stand over a surgeon when they were performing heart surgery, we are not going to be standing over teachers.

“We will be giving them the support and the resources to teach based on the expert evidence, and that actually hasn’t been done before.”

The NSWTF said the campaign will continue up until the election, and will feature a mobile billboard travelling through target electorates, various advertising, more events and letterboxing.