Categories: News

Australia failing to deliver equitable funding for public schools, says teacher union

<p>The annual Report into Government Services &lpar;ROGS&rpar; provides evidence of the fundamental failure of the Federal Government to ensure that public schools across Australia have the funding needed for their students&comma; according to the Australian Education Union&period; <&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Providing a stark summary of the report this week&comma; the teacher union released the following statement&colon; &&num;8220&semi;In what can only be viewed as complete abandonment of the public school sector by the Federal Government&comma; ROGS has delivered damning statistics which demonstrate the deeply inequitable school funding policies and legislation of the Morrison Government&period;&&num;8221&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<h3>According to the Productivity Commission’s annual Report into Government Services &lpar;ROGS&rpar;&colon;<&sol;h3>&NewLine;<ul>&NewLine;<li>Non-government school funding per student grew 2&period;7 times faster than public school funding per student in the last decade&period;<&sol;li>&NewLine;<li>In the ten years to 2017-18&comma; government funding for non-government schools rose by 33&period;9 per cent&period; Meanwhile&comma; per-student government funding for public schools only increased by 13&period;2 per cent in the same period&period;<&sol;li>&NewLine;<li>Since the Federal Coalition was elected in 2013-14&comma; private school per-student recurrent funding has increased at twice the rate of increase of public schools per student recurrent funding&semi; 21&period;7&percnt; versus 11&period;4&percnt;&period;<&sol;li>&NewLine;<&sol;ul>&NewLine;<p>Australian Education Union Federal President Correna Haythorpe said that ROGS had once again exposed the Federal Government’s failure to ensure fair funding&comma; resources and support for all students and highlighted its ongoing ideological commitment to increasing the funding of private schools&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<blockquote>&NewLine;<p>While private schools continue to enjoy billion-dollar special funding deals&comma; public schools have a &dollar;19 billion funding shortfall and have been denied the funding they need to reach the Schooling Resource Standard by 2023&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<&sol;blockquote>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;ROGS shows that public school enrolments are growing&comma; with 2&period;6 million FTE students enrolled&comma; highlighting the need for additional expenditure on capital works and recurrent funding&comma;” Ms Haythorpe said&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<blockquote>&NewLine;<p>The school funding legislation denies public schools the vital resources needed for our students and entrenches inequality between public and private schools&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<&sol;blockquote>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;National action on the critically important issue of funding for public schools is long overdue&period; The Federal Government must ensure that all public schools are funded to 100&percnt; of the Schooling Resource Standard to deliver the funding and resources needed to provide a high quality education for all students&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;

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