Who will think of the children?
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Because at the moment it seems politicians are only too happy to use the education system as a political football, kicking it around to score points, even though they only seem to be scoring behinds.
That is because the system is behind. Behind in a towering maintenance backlog at State level, behind in projected, and some would say promised, funding on a Federal level, and most importantly behind on international education rankings.
NSW Education Minister Rob Stokes managed to kick a goal in Tamworth on Wednesday, when he announced a $5.4 million maintenance fund for Tamworth schools.
That funding was part a statewide $390 million maintenance fund.
And while that sounds like good news, it will only just cover half of the $775 million maintenance backlog that Mr Stokes inherited when he took up the office in January, while Tamworth’s share will cover less than half of the $12.4 million needed to bring local schools up to scratch.
Meanwhile, Mr Stokes has publicly pledged to deliver on a dozen new schools every year to keep up with the estimated 165,000 extra students that state schools are expecting over the next 15 years. But if the government can’t maintain the schools we have, what chance do they have of delivering on 12 more every year, the same number they have managed to deliver in the past six years combined.
Concurrently at the Federal level, the Turnbull Government’s plan to scrap the remaining two years of the Gonski funding for a program that they have very cleverly labelled Gonski 2.0 hasn’t gone down well in some factions, namely the states.
While the Turnbull government is claiming the new program is needs-based and equitable, the states have been left in the cold after they signed on the dotted line on a promise, and fronted up their end of the funding only to be left in the cold.
The Turnbull government’s argument that the original funding promised by Gillard’s Labor party was never funded has one major flaw. If that is what David Gonski said the education system needed to bridge the gap between city and country, and Australia and the world, then all other arguments should be null and void.
If there is anything that we should fund above all else, it is the future, and that is exactly what the education system is.