VICTORIAN GOVERNMENT'S DEFORM OF PUBLIC EDUCATION

1 November 1998

Mr Nilsen, President for the Council for Defence of Government Schools today noted the latest attack on our Victorian State Education system by the Minister for Education, Mr Gude.

Victorian State (Public) School principals may be given the power to both hire and fire State (Public) school teachers. This will lead to ane ven greater demoralisation of our teachers as well as forcing them to become an ever more docile, underpaid, and overstressed workforce.  And this in spite of the fact that our State is facing a shortage of teachers by 2000 AD.

This is part and parcel of the attempts to cause the decentralisation and disintegration of our once proud and powerful State ( Public)  State Schools centralised system in which the public servants at  the centre could efficiently provide educational resources across the State and offer a quality education to all our childrenb in Victoria, regardless of their class, crred, race or economic opportunity. It was also responsible for the expenditure of large sums of public money and was held accountable for such expenditure. The statistical, curriculum, historical and policy research of this bureacracy was second to none.

Some have been abolished and others decimated.

Individual schools are being forced into a privatised model, with their own, inadequate budgets; their own fund raising; multiplying responsibilities and very few powers. The principals took the carrots offered and went into "Schools of the Future". Now they are faced with "Schools for the New Millenium" which the DOGS call "Schools for the New Delirium."

It was generally accepted sociological theory that it was difficult to destroy a bureaucracy. Until Mr Kennett learned from Mussolini and Hitler. Bureaucracies can be, and have been, destabilised, politicised, and taken over from on top!

Our once proud centralised and publicly accountable State (Public) School system evolved in the nineteenth century and was the result of many hard learned lessons. It was a source of wonderment and congratulation for Dr. Freeman Butts, a world renowned American educationist who observed it in the 1950s.

It has, since its inception, been the victim of many snide remarks from the supporters and hierarchy in the private system, in spite of the fact that the Roman Catholic system has been centralising at an ever increasing rate, and looks for its raison d'etre to the most centralised commercial and religious multinational in the world.

It is time that State School supporters went back to the 1860s and discovered why our forefathers:

    a) centralised the State School system ( it was and is more efficient, effective, and gave children more opportunities)

    b) withdrew public funding (State Aid ) to Church Schools. ( Public funding of private (CHurch schools leads to sectarian, sectionalist teaching of the few at the expense of the many .)

IF OUR STATE (PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE TO SURVIVE, THEN SUPPORTERS MUST FIGHT THE ONGOING ATTEMPTS TO DECENTRALISE, FRAGMENT AND PRIVATISE THE PUBLIC SYSTEM ITSELF!