the fight for fully funded education is reaching tipping point

By Penny Allman-Payne, Senator for Queensland & Greens Spokesperson for Education (Primary & Secondary) 

You might be hearing a lot about education funding in the news recently and be wondering what all the fuss is about.

We live in a country that values our children’s education, right?

But being able to send your kids to high quality, free public schools hasn’t been a reality for a long time now in Australia.

Successive governments have refused to fund public schools, leaving us with overworked teachers, crumbling infrastructure, and increased out of pocket expenses for families who are already struggling in a cost of living crisis. 

Unfortunately, Labor’s new federal proposal for school funding shows that they are walking away from public education – leaving a critical funding gap that will leave another generation of kids without the fully funded education they deserve.

The other week, Labor’s Education Minister announced a new proposed school funding agreement called the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement. And, to this government’s shame, it again falls woefully short of the bare minimum funding that is required for our public education system.

Off the back of a funding deal with WA (where the federal government has agreed to increase its funding of public schools from 20 to 22.5%), a similar deal has now been put to all remaining states as a ‘take it or leave it’ offer, with calls from those states for an increase to 25% falling on deaf ears.

Let’s be clear: a 2.5% funding bump from the federal government does not fully fund our public schools.

In states like Queensland, where public schools are only funded to 89% of the bare minimum, Labor’s 2.5% bump doesn’t scrape the surface.

And even if this deal did propose to get all states and territories to 100% of the Schooling Resource Standard, that funding model was only ever designed to get 80% of kids across the line! It’s not good enough.

Last week, state Ministers, unionists and advocates descended on Parliament House to make it clear to the Albanese Government that this agreement simply won’t cut it.

These are Labor state Ministers, fighting their own colleagues for a better deal! There is no reason why our state and federal governments cannot work together to fully fund our public schools tomorrow, other than choosing to line the pockets of their mates in the mining industry instead.

We live in a resource-wealthy country and our governments are continuing to let billionaires and corporations pull in record profits, while the average family is struggling to pay the bills.

As your Greens voice in parliament for primary and secondary education, I will continue to use my voice to tell Labor that this is not good enough. We need genuinely fully funded public education, now!