Parents have always had to make a lot of noise and develop political clout in order to obtain, maintain, and save their public schools. Even middle class inner city parents are discovering this. They are on the move. DOGS received this email from the City Schools for City Kids group.
For decades, it was assumed that people, couples and children would not live in inner Melbourne. Schools would no longer be necessary. They closed most of the schools inherited from previous generations. Short-sighted, crazy Kennett led the charge, and in the case of Richmond secondary college, local parents and teachers (not the union and certainly not Trades Hall) saved the school.
International Capital - Hedge Funds are wandering the world for a safe profit making haven. Public school systems are fair game. In the USA they have invented the Charter School movement.
Public school supporters in Australia and especially members of public school Councils in Australia should beware hedge funds bearing gifts.
Birmingham and Turnbull and looking to the UK and America for models of privatisation.
The time has come to pull the plug on the State Aid mythologising. Public funding of Catholic education does not save the taxpayer any money. Rather in some areas, Catholic schools cost the taxpayer MORE than Public Education .
Ofuscation and misinterpretation of even public statistics by the Catholic Education Office is finally being exposed.
Both State and Federal Budgets leave Private enterprise and sectarian education as the quiet winners in their 2016-17 Budget papers.
DOGS, as usual, discover that Government Budget papers are designed to obfuscate rather than inform taxpaying citizens.
How much is Public Education worth to the Victorian government – really?
The Age, April 27 claims that the 2016 Victorian Government funding budget provides $1.1 billion for education. The Australian April 28 mentions $924 million and the Treasurer at https://www.budget.vic.gov.au/priority/education-state says :
$747 million from the start of the 2016 year .
When it comes to the exposure of corruption and mismanagement of public funds, it seems that some religions are more equal than others. The Catholic certainly take precedence over Islamic systems.
AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE OF GOVERNMENT
SCHOOLS
PRESS RELEASE 652#
Wendy McCarthy Treasures the Opportunities Provided by
Her Public School Education
Funding of Public Education, as opposed to private sectarian education has just become a key election issue.
Last week Mr Turnbull said that, if state governments were given a share of income tax revenue, the federal government could withdraw from funding public schools, while continuing to fund non-government schools.
His thought bubble was pricked by State Governments at COAG. The Labor Party and the electorate reacted. Opinion polls turned against the Coalition.
The Federation has been under fiscal strain and unbalanced since the Second World War when income tax was taken from the States by the federal government. But the States resisted Turnbull’s temptation.
Why?
Supporters of public education in Australia are not alone in their concern that mega-rich oligarchs and religious establishments are engaged in an all-out assault on one of our most basic democratic institutions. The problem has been recently analysed by David W. Hursh in a recently published book.
David Hursh’s new book ‘The End of Public Education: The Corporate Reform Agenda to Privatize Education, Routledge, 2016, 123 pp., $49.95.
is a devastating, spot-on, detailed, documented survey of the crescendoing assault on public education, teachers and teacher unions.