2025-01-23
Greens are the only party fighting for public education
By Penny Allman-Payne
A great public education is what strong and fair societies are built on. But under successive Labor and Coalition governments, our public school system has been left to rot.
I’ve seen it myself. As a public school teacher for 30 years, I witnessed first-hand the impact of underinvestment.
Overworked teachers burning out and leaving the profession they love. Schools ramping up fees to pay for classroom basics. No support staff. Crumbling buildings.
The impact of this, and the resulting cost-shifting that sees families forking out more and more, is that kids are less engaged and a growing number aren’t able to fully participate in school.
They’re missing out on excursions, they’re coming to school without the right equipment, or they’re forced out of the classroom entirely because the school isn’t able to cater for their complex needs.
Because public schools are so under-resourced, many parents and carers feel they have no choice but to move their child into a better-funded private school.
This has seen a decline in public enrolments, and a growing share of both public and private spending shifting towards non-government schools.
This is a vicious cycle that will be familiar to anyone who’s paid attention to the past 40 years of neoliberalism: governments cut funding to public services, which causes quality and accessibility to decline and makes people lose faith in those services, making additional spending politically untenable.
And that opens to the door to the private sector.
Under Labor, private schools are banking $51 million each day from the Commonwealth, while 98% of public schools receive less than the bare minimum funding.
It’s pretty shocking when you lay it all out like that.
The Coalition is ideologically opposed to the very existence of public education, while Labor is trapped in a self-reinforcing cycle of small-target incrementalism that renders them incapable of anything more than half measures.
The Greens are the only party of public education, and we believe that every young person deserves to attend a high-quality, inclusive, safe and free public school.
That’s why we’ve made two really big announcements this month.
First, we announced that we would deliver 100% of the Schooling Resource Standard – the so-called “Gonski funding” – to every public school by July 2025, and we’ll create a capital grants fund available only to government schools. We’ll also fund a program to install airborne hazard risk reduction equipment in all classrooms and indoor spaces.
Second, we’ll abolish public school fees by giving schools top-up funding, and we’ll provide families with $800 back-to-school payments for every child in public school. Under our plan, a family with two kids in public school would be about $2,500 better off every year.
Public school teachers, students, parents and carers suffered through a decade of neglect under Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison. Labor promised them that they would end this nightmare by finally delivering full funding.
But, under Albanese’s plan, every single public school that is underfunded today will still be underfunded in a decade, while out-of-pocket costs continue to skyrocket.
In a wealthy country like ours, everyone should be able to afford the basics: a home, food, and world-class health and education.
But it’s not going to happen while Labor and the Coalition take turns at the levers of power.
With a minority government looking likely after this election, I’m looking forward to putting our plan for truly free public schools on the table as part of the negotiations.
Join our campaign:
Read more details of our policy announcements:
Greens plan for “back-to-school” payments and abolishing public school fees
Greens to save our public schools with full funding commitment