Teachers to protest in the streets against school funding cuts
Teachers furious at a state government plan to underfund public schools for another six years will take to the streets in a mass protest personally targeting Premier Jacinta Allan as a parliamentary inquiry is launched into the growing scandal.
The Australian Education Union on Friday wrote to Victorian teachers calling for immediate action against the government's school funding 'con job' which will strip $2.4 billion out of public schools by pushing back its commitment to fully fund the Gonski reforms by three years.
The campaign outlined by the union's state leadership will involve paid advertisements, flooding the email inboxes of Allan and Education Minister Ben Carroll with letters from outraged teachers and school parents and public rallies targeting the pair and Treasurer Jaclyn Symes.
The Greens this week established a parliamentary inquiry to examine the impact of the funding cuts on students, teachers and the state school system. The inquiry, backed by the Liberal Party and not voted against by Labor MPs, is due to report by 30 April next year, seven months before the next state election.
Cabinet-in-confidence documents provided to this masthead uncovered a secret government decision taken in March last year to delay until 2031 additional funding needed by public schools to deliver the Gonski education reforms.
In the three weeks since the funding cuts were exposed, Allan and Carroll have refused to publicly acknowledge the decision or canvass the implications for public school students and teachers.
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The documents show that Carroll argued against the delay, warning it would damage the state's reputation, entrench Victoria as Australia's lowest per-student funding jurisdiction for government schools and aggravate the funding gap between government and non-government schools and disparity in outcomes between advantaged and disadvantaged students.
Allan and Carroll, when questioned about the decision in parliament, have pointed to a 34 per cent increase per student in funding for public schools since Labor came to power 11 years ago and $17 billion in capital investments in new and upgraded schools.
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