School funding promises: PV media comment

A recent article in the Age covers the election promises both the major parties are making on education, and mentions Parents Victoria. According to the article:

“Labor and the Coalition have made election promises totalling $5.3 billion on education but ignored a key request from lobby group Parents Victoria to fully fund Victorian government schools.”

The “key request” is in our School Lunch Order document , where we set out what we’d like to see for the future of education in Victoria, and ask the major parties contesting the election if they can ‘fill our order’. The key request is that all Victorian schools are funded to 100% of the School Resource Standard (SRS). The SRS is an estimate of how much total public funding a school needs to meet its students’ educational needs, and is based on recommendations from the 2011 Gonski Review. The Age article points out that: “Currently, government schools are funded to less than 90 per cent of that standard, with the state government having agreed to increase its share to 75 per cent by 2028, and the Commonwealth to 20 per cent. There is no agreement on the 5 per cent gap.”

PV Chief Executive Officer Gail McHardy is quoted in the article. Gail said:
“At the moment, we don’t see our lunch order being fulfilled, but hopefully it’s going to be taken seriously because it impacts everything. All the things that everyone is crying out about, if that [school funding] was just fixed, it would solve a whole lot of problems.”

The photo shows a school building at Sunshine College North Campus, currently so dilapidated that it cannot be used. See the Age article for more details. 

Read the Age article online