Regulars

Educating on values crucial

By Pat Byrne President

Abraham Lincoln, a man of many memorable quotes, once said “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next”.

If he was right we teachers have some work to do.

During first stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was perhaps easy to gloss over some of the actions of the federal government when it came to education.

In the areas where the Commonwealth held sway, the contempt for higher education was obviously concerning. Universities and their staff were pretty much abandoned by Scott Morrison and company.

Of course, we are in familiar territory with the Coalition’s view of TAFE. Its ongoing contempt for the nation’s most respected training provider has been evident for some time.

On a national level $3 billion has been cut from TAFE and training, widespread skills shortages have emerged, and 140,000 apprentices and trainee places have gone.

In WA, under the Barnett Government, we saw $110 million stripped from the system, course fees rise by 650 per cent in some courses and student enrolments plummet.

The Morrison Government also allowed its true face to emerge from behind the Morrison mask of ‘typical Aussie dad’ when it used blackmail and bribery to try and bring private schools into line by threatening them with the withdrawal of funding if they persisted with online delivery, no matter what the risk may have been in opening schools. This is a government that likes to use funding as a power mechanism. We have already seen that with community groups. Here on full display was “do as we say or your funding gets cut” in the education sector.

The Prime Minister’s passive aggressive speech to teachers about schools reopening barely concealed his frustration at not being able to take his standard bullying approach into the state sectors.

It took a pandemic for our Prime Minister to suddenly discover face-to-face teaching is important for anyone attending a government school. Both he and the federal education minister blatantly ran lines of equity, fairness and access, as a strategy to pressure states and territories into a full return of students, despite overseeing possibly the most unjust funding system in the world.

It reminds us that in Australia we have a serious problem when it comes to political support for public education. A series of decisions from politicians and comments from the media tended to suggest few of them have, or have had, any level of interaction with the state school system.

This Prime Minister, a now ardent supporter of kids being in the classroom (well not his own, but that’s a different story) leads a government that has long abandoned any pretence on equity in funding and indeed – through the current schools funding model – allows the WA and ACT governments to actually slash funding to state schools, while leaving in place protections for private school funding.

Billions are allocated to private school funds that the state system cannot touch. While Olympic-sized pools and performing arts centres go up in some schools, teachers in the state system are using their own money to buy basic materials for their students.

Throughout this pandemic, not a single additional dollar has been allocated to public schools by the federal government, while tens of millions of extra dollars have gone to private schools.

Sadly, the major political party that should be shouting from the rooftops about the benefits of public education, and putting forward an aggressive policy position in support of it, remains embarrassingly silent.

Yet again, this debate is left to be carried by educators and parents in an environment where the social, cultural and democratic purposes of education – are overlooked in a system which is overwhelmingly skewed towards individual and economic purposes.

To make sure this generation of students and their parents know why fighting for fairness in education funding is so crucial, we need politicians, educators and community leaders who care about equity and understand the importance of the public good.

The article on page 20-21 shows us what can occur when we don’t have that support and understanding.

We must value, defend and improve our public institutions, including maintaining a strong public curriculum.

Educators – especially those in public schools – are of critical importance in ensuring this happens.