Full funding achieved in Budget

By Maree O’Halloran

The State Budget has fully-funded the teacher salary increases awarded in the Industrial Relations Commission from Treasury, following public education teachers' campaign to achieve salary increases while protecting the public education budget.

The Budget highlights what Federation has been saying all along -- the NSW Government does have the revenue to properly fund public education in this state.

The full funding announcement exposes that the Government's 'incapacity to pay' arguments in the teachers' salaries case were always false, manufactured to lower the final outcome for teachers. Treasurer Egan reinforced this in his Budget speech when he spoke of "the bounty provided by a strong economy".

It's clear the Government should never have held the funding of public schools and TAFE colleges to ransom. Teachers first requested an explicit commitment from the Premier to fully fund teacher salary increases on July 25, 2003.

The Premier's actions, in threatening for a year to slash services and programs to students, demonstrate that this Government continues to undervalue public education and its teachers.

Given the extraordinary amount of government funding that now goes to private schools from state and federal governments, the full funding of salaries increases announcement had to be made. The pain for public education would have been too obvious.

In this Budget the State Government has increased expenditure on private schools from $585 million to $654 million. This represents a far greater increase than that afforded to public schools.

Federation calls on the Carr Government to commit to significantly increasing funding for public education in future Budgets.

In the Budget papers

Teachers' work was not fairly assessed

For further information

June 2004 contents