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Challenge put to state and federal governments
by Kerri Carr State and federal governments should give public education priority in their legislative and funding decisions, Greens Senator Kerry Nettle told Federation annual conference delegates on July 2. "Clearly, we all know, that means a massive shift in the way in which they currently fund education," Ms Nettle said. "If you had a government that set as its objective prioritising public education and then delivered every funding model on the basis of that priority framework that they had set for themselves, then you would not get funding models like the SES [socio-economic status] funding model, but you also would not get the AGSRC [Average Government School Recurrent Costs] model." (As more students enrol in private schools, the average cost of educating a student in public schools increases as a larger proportion of those public school students are those with disabilities, located in remote areas, and of lower socio-economic background. This increases average government school costs which then result in huge increases to private schools beyond the indexed increases.) Ms Nettle said the "fundamental challenge" was to get "all political parties to recognise the priority for public education that exists within the community". She said that being armed with the information that came out of the Australian Education Union polling about how the community understands the issue (see page 3), put public education advocates in a good place in putting pressure on both of the major parties to put forward policies that reflect the view of the community that the priority of government needs to be funding public education. "I really think it's possible in circumstances where you know that the bulk of the population understands it is the government's job to fund public education to get to a point where both of the major political parties recognise that, and it is reflected in all of their policies and their legislative decisions," she said.
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