Revealed: secret plan to slash public education budget - Education - 4 April 2011

One of the biggest public education news stories in years beamed from the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald on March 19: “Secret cuts to schools”, the headline read. Although ruled out for implementation by both sides of state politics, the scale of it was appalling:

“More than $1 billion in cuts has been targeted in a secret NSW Education Department blueprint that proposes closing more than 100 schools, axing 7500 teachers, selling surplus land and slashing the costs of programs for disadvantaged students.

“The blueprint, large parts of which are already under way and which are modelled on Victorian premier Jeff Kennett’s education reforms in the 1990s, would save $800 million a year.”  Underpinning the sweeping cuts is the ideology of devolution — the strategy to reduce funding for schools under the guise of ‘flexibility’, ‘choice’ and ‘autonomy’.

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