Press Releases

Despite all the evidence of the Gonski Report, funding of

Since 1964 diversion of billions of dollars of public funding from the public to the private education sector has undermined public education.

Since the 1990s -with

private/public partnerships;
shared facilities;
independent public schools;
and refusal to build new public schools in developing areas

attempts are being made to privatise public education. Australian parents are expected to mortgage their children’s future in a ‘user-pays’ economic system in which ‘choice’ - with ‘no choice’ for the poor - reigns supreme.

BUT

In 2013 conservative Australian governments are going one step further.

They are considering blatant profiteering in the primary and secondary as well as the tertiary sector of education.

Katherine Feeney brisbanetimes.com.au urban affairs reporter and blogger reported on 28 January 2013 that the Queensland Newman Government’s Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek is considering the introduction of for-profit primary and high schools. He sees the outsourcing of the educational opportunities of a nation’s children this as a logical extension of the principle of ‘choice.’

The current debate over the Federal Government’s proposed anti-discrimination legislation has thrown into relief the inevitable result of entanglement between religion and the state.

The draft Human Rights and Anti-discrimination Bill is currently being examined by a Senate inquiry and some church leaders claim that the Prime Minister had assured that that she has no intention of limiting religious freedom –code for their freedom to discriminate on the basis of religion and lifestyle.

The Australian Education Debate is top-heavy with facts, figures, testing procedures and statistics.
Yet there is a crucial figure that is constantly left out of the private school funding equation: taxation expenditures which generally go by the name of taxation exemptions.
Julia Gillard is looking for at least $4 billion for Australian public schools. Perhaps she should be looking at the non-for profit profiteering sector to find it.