From the President

Increased funding and fee cuts benefit students

By Pat Byrne President

GA 2019 update The SSTUWA has received a second offer from the department, which is under consideration by Executive. The department is seeking a formal response from the union by 28 February. While some significant in-principle progress has been made, concerns remain. Executive has requested SSTUWA negotiators to continue negotiations to resolve these concerns. These include the use of DOTT time, the definition of the school day, ICT issues and union rep time. Funds DO matter Yet again the PISA results from 2018 are being used to push various barrows and agendas about education in Australia. Especially prevalent is a comparison to Estonia. Now Estonia (population 1.3 million) has one quality with which the SSTUWA heartily agrees – a free education is actually free. Estonian students also complete a large percentage of their assignments online. Some of our schools will be envious about that when they can’t even get an IT upgrade to make use of additional bandwidth they are being promised.

While here in Australia companies are trying to scare parents into paying for extra books to get better NAPLAN results, there are no costs for text books in Estonia. While under our Commonwealth-state funding agreements politicians are sneaking school bus costs into the school budget instead of funding them separately, there are no such costs in Estonia. The federal education Minister Dan Tehan tries to claim PISA results show funding isn’t the issue. Conveniently he ignores the fact that, as AEU President Correna Haythorpe recently said: “Western Australia and the ACT, the jurisdictions at the top of Australia’s PISA 2018 table for all three domains – reading, maths and science, are also the only jurisdictions in Australia where public schools were fully funded at or above 100 per cent of the SRS for 2018.” As those examples demonstrate school funding most certainly IS the issue. Needs-based funding is the way forward.

Australia should simply not be directing immense amounts of taxpayer money to private schools. What do they do in Estonia? Well, there are no private schools, so all the funding goes to the state system. As this article (bit.ly/2u4sEJv) says, there are many reasons to question the value placed upon PISA results. What should most definitely not happen are policies being developed based on those results that fail to recognise the true problem with education in Australia – far too much funding for private schools that don’t need more money, and not enough for state schools that do. Keep cutting TAFE fees Students flocking to TAFE courses which have had fees cut shows the way forward for the state government to deliver on its promise to create jobs and strengthen WA’s economy – keep cutting TAFE fees; in fact get rid of some fees altogether.

The SSTUWA lobbied long and hard for the state government to cut TAFE fees and welcomed those fee reductions. Now people have voted with their feet to sign up for courses – that should inspire a new round of fee cuts. Indeed, the SSTUWA urges the government to go one step further and remove fees altogether for some courses. Industry wants a properly trained workforce and students want real skills to get real jobs. This is the way forward for WA. The SSTUWA also urges the state government to ensure TAFE has the funding required to ensure lecturers are secure in their jobs, are freed from red tape and able to get into classrooms, workshops and lecture theatres to share their knowledge with students. In memoriam As this issue of Western Teacher went to press, the SSTUWA received the sad news of the passing of a much respected friend and former union colleague, Ann-Marie Heine.

Ann-Marie was the first woman to hold the position of SSTUWA general secretary, which she did from 1984-87.

The SSTUWA staff and its members would like to pass on our condolences to AnnMarie’s friends and family.

A more detailed article on Ann-Marie and her involvement with the SSTUWA will appear in the next issue of Western Teacher.