Federal funding of schools and TAFE: It’s a matter of choices
Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 126 No 7, 8 October 2021, page no.10
The next federal election is going to be important in determining, once and for all, how Australia and Australians value public education.
As educators in state schools and TAFE, we know the transformative power of public education, but we also know how much better it could be with an even playing field in terms of resources and facilities.
That’s why QTU members across Queensland are engaging in activities promoting the Every School, Every Child schools funding campaign and the #RebuildWithTAFE campaign, which aim to see public providers of schooling and vocational training funded fairly.
This is not a new concept, as educators across the country have long campaigned to see funding increased to ensure that, no matter where a child lives or their family circumstances, they receive a well-resourced free public education.
Government funding is always a matter of making choices in terms of funding allocations to particular portfolios or projects. The key difference between allocating funding for education and other government funding is that education funding produces long-term economic and social benefits. It might be a crude way of looking at it, but a properly funded public education system also leads to an increase in the number of tax paying citizens, less unemployment and less expenditure on the health, welfare and the justice systems. But why do our political leaders not see the value in it?
One explanation is the challenge of our three-year federal electoral cycles. Politicians are always looking for the short-term political “sugar-hit” that will see them re-elected. A new road project or building can be completed across an electoral cycle, but transforming public education with additional resourcing and investment in new facilities on a large scale is much more challenging.
We know that the children and young people we teach only get one chance at their education, and addressing the funding inequities should be a national priority. Seeing Queensland’s state schools only able to achieve 89 per cent of national schooling resource standard (SRS) by 2023, while many non-government schools achieve 100 per cent in combined state and federal funding should make our political leaders hang their heads in shame.
To see state schools achieve 100 per cent of the SRS and our TAFE system funded properly to meet the economic challenges prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to mobilise teachers, parents and other allies to get the message to our local Members of Parliament that now is the time for them to act and fix our education funding models.
QTU members are organising delegations to their local federal Members of Parliament and Queensland Senators to get this message across. We need commitments prior to the next federal election that our elected representatives will stand up for local state schools and TAFE in their communities.
If you would like to be part of that process, contact your local Regional Organiser. You can also sign up as a supporter of our two federal campaigns: