Turnbull's secret funding deal with States must include full Gonski
Any pre-election education funding deal Malcolm Turnbull signs with the States must include the full six years of needs-based Gonski funding, the AEU said today.
AEU Federal President Correna Haythorpe said that if Mr Turnbull was considering a short-term deal with the States on health and education, as indicated by media reports today, this must be used as an opportunity to deliver schools the funding they needed.
“Malcolm Turnbull must deliver the full six years of Gonski,” Ms Haythorpe said.
“Anything less will be selling our children short with a deal that leaves some disadvantaged schools short of the resources they need for their students.
“He needs to match Labor’s commitment to deliver the full six years of Gonski funding, which will invest an extra $4.5 billion to schools in 2018 and 2019.”
“The Gonski Review was clear. We need the full six years of Gonski so all schools have enough resources to support their students”
“Anything less means that not all students will be able to get the support they need to succeed at school and be prepared for work.
“The last two years are crucial because that is when the majority of the extra resources are due to be delivered to disadvantaged schools.
“The Gonski funding delivered so far is already lifting results.
“Schools are able to invest in more one-to-one support, smaller classes and targeted literacy and numeracy support, which are helping students to achieve.
“Schools need long-term certainty over funding, not a quick pre-election fix.
“Since he became Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull has simply copied Tony Abbott’s position of stopping Gonski funding after 2017, and only indexing schools funding to inflation.
“He needs to commit himself to the funding our schools need to equip students for his innovation economy.
“In addition to its failure to commit to Gonski, the Turnbull Government is still yet to meet its commitment to properly fund schools for disability from 2016, ensuring that every child with disability gets funded according to their need.
“The Federal Government’s own data collection has found that over half of the children with disability who need funded support at school aren’t getting it – a total of over 250,000 students”
“This shameful situation needs to be fixed urgently.”
Media Contact: Ben Ruse 0437 971 291