Government response to Education Crisis "deeply inadequate"

Guardian Australia | October 9, 2022 | Mary Mugwort

The High Court's shock decision to declare unconstitutional the Australian Education Amendment (Education Reform) Bill 2022, the centrepiece of the Trask Education Reforms passes earlier this year, has thrown the Australian education system into deep crisis. The Trask Reforms poured $35.3 billion into Australian public education, funding which public schools have used over the 7 months since its implementation to increase teacher wages, expand resources and placements, and engage in new construction projects. The reforms massively increased the student resource standard, which determines how much funding schools receive from the federal government for each student, to $20,000 for secondary students and $15,000 for primary students, and ensured that 100 percent of this funding came directly from the federal government and not the states.

This school resource standard had not been raised for more than 5 years before the Trask Education Reforms, and with the High Courts decisions, funding levels have been gutted. In addition, the reforms increased the wages of every public school employee to 125 percent the minimum pay determined by their respective award, delivering the largest wage rise to school workers in Australian history. Teacher and other education staff are now facing the prospect of a serious wage cut and the return of wage freezes. With these reforms gone, the government faces a public education system "in collapse," as warned by the Australian Education Union in a press release yesterday.

The government has been quick to respond, issuing a flurry of press statements, the latest delivered by yet to be sworn in Education Minister Buttsforpm. In this statement, the government stated its intention engage in dialogue with the Australian Education, made vague illusions to "emergency funding," abandoned its education related election commitments, and announced its intention to once again attempt to pass the controversial Education Equality Bill, rejected by the House of Representatives earlier this. Yet experts, lawyers, and teachers are decidedly unimpressed by the governments response.

"Public schools are going back to school tomorrow with most of their funding essentially gone," said Dr Ryan Eaton, a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia's School of Education, in conversation with the Guardian. Eaton along with thousands of academics across the country, is signatory to a petition urging the government to ensure the levels of funding guaranteed by the Trask Education Reforms. "The government's response here is deeply inadequate. An emergency funding package in a week's time is going to be far too late. The damage will have been done. They need to end the madness and respect the funding system that has been delivering billions for our public schools."

"The Education Equality Bill is a legal monstrosity and would only make matters significantly worse," said Sydney-based barrister Ruby Butler, an expert on education funding legislation and a former legal aide to the Department of Education, in conversation with the Guardian. "It directly contradicts the Australian Education Act, and we would end up exactly where we are now, with the funding being struck down by the High Court. It also has no provisions for funding loading, and if used in place of the associated provisions of the Australian Education Act, would strip billions of loading for poor students, aboriginal students, and disabled students. If the government's intention here was to put teacher's and principals minds at rest, I expect this will have had the opposite effect."

"If the government wants to solve this crisis, the solution is really simple," said Margaret Jones, a teacher at a public school in a low-socioeconomic area in Melbourne's north, in conversation with the Guardian. "Bring back the education reform. I dont care how they do it, whether by appointing new justices to the court who can depart from this decision, or changing the constitution, or simply ignoring the court. This funding has changed everything for our school. We have twice the staff we used to have and workload has decreased. I finally feel like students are receiving the kind of education they deserve. If 12MaxWild and Buttsforpm want to solve the crisis, they need to show some backbone."