AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE OF
GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS
Press Release 1034
Should Public Schools be Pathetically Grateful for anything they get?
There has been great relief among the public school supporters because
South Australia and Victoria have now signed on to the government's school funding agreement.
Finally, the Albanese Government has agreed to increase its contribution to the public school sector to 25%. But is their gratitude pathetic ? Jane Caro suspects so. In an article published in the Saturday Paper of February 8-14 entitled School Funds Delayed are Funds denied she quotes Professor Helen Proctor, Sydney School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney :
“School funding has become such a politically poisonous area that public schools have to be pathetically grateful for anything they get.”
Jane Caro charts her own reaction to the recent announcement:
Perhaps it is a symptom of my own pathetic gratitude, having fought for public education for decades, but I am prepared to believe that Anthony Albanese and his education minister, Jason Clare, are sincere in their concern for public education. Which is a positive change. Clare started well with his Better and Fairer Schools review and agreement. And I was in the audience when Albanese spoke to public education stalwarts at the Public Education Day celebration last year. He is the first Australian prime minister I have ever heard talk in glowing terms about the wonderful public school education his son received. A small thing, perhaps, but it meant a lot to everyone present. So many of us are pathetically grateful.
Unlike the previous Morrison government, which actively exacerbated the funding gap under the cover of the pandemic – giving as much as $10 billion to the fee-charging sector – at least Labor has paid some attention to the gross and growing inequality.
But it should be noted that, like a lot of Labor policies, this funding deal is ‘pie in the sky’. Full funding to even 25% will not be achieved until 2034!
DOGS POSITION
The Public system is under threat from the old, divisive denominational system. This religious system which segregates children on the basis of class, creed and colour is driven by the lust for greed and power of social and religious elites. It is a system for an aristocracy or plutocracy.
If Jane Caro and her fellow public school supporters are really serious about the future of public education they should be prepared to take on the sectarian lobby and be prepared to be vilified and called ‘sectarian’ themselves.
The DOGS are speaking from hard experience.
The only genuine way forward for public education is to learn from our nineteenth century forebears and demand that public money should be for public schools only.
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