Our local schools will suffer if the Abbott government walks away from the Gonski reforms.
Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne need to put in place a needs-based, sector-blind school funding system around the country.
If they don’t, it will be another broken election promise from this government.
The coalition went to the election on an education ‘unity ticket’ with Labor.
At every ‘meet the candidates’ forum during the federal election campaign for Richmond, we were told that the coalition would uphold the Gonski reforms.
It would be a betrayal to their voters and to children all around the country if they backed out now.
The need for school funding reform is widely recognised. Currently, the most disadvantaged kids perform as much as five years behind the most privileged children by early high school.
We can do better than this. Teachers and principals of our local schools have long been speaking in support for Gonski reforms.
Senator Wright, Australian Greens spokesperson for education, warned against Mr Abbott’s rhetoric about ‘streamlining’ the reforms, saying it would reduce transparency.
Much of what Mr Abbott is calling ‘red tape’ in education reform is ways to make sure taxpayer money is spent well in the schools that need it most.
Scrap this and there will be no way to make sure our kids are getting the resources they need to reach their potential.
Mr Abbott needs to keep in mind any political point scoring in education is at the expense of Australian kids and also risks the economic future of our nation.
Dawn Walker, Tweed Greens
Well said Dawn.
I don’t know why anyone in the electorate believed for a moment their words of a ‘unity ticket’, when historically this type of expensive apolitical reform was never to their liking.
The Coalition made it abundantly clear that they didn’t believe the old broken and opaque funding model for education was, in fact, ‘broken’!!
As poorly behaved as the last federal government was, it had done a lot of policy development, especially in education. And the Gonski model was embraced across the board, no matter what school type or what political allegiance.
The country, unfortunately for all of us, just wanted the hyperbole and slander in the media to go away, and voted in a government with no policies except slash and smash.
I really don’t know what anyone can do to turn things around in the meantime.
This government is doing exactly what they said they would do – throw out all the babies with all the bath water and go back to Howard’s policies. Backwards into the future. But we were warned.