“Over $50 billion will be spent on 12 military submarines, one response might be build 11 and give us the money for the full Gonski,” said Gary Zadkovich, Deputy President of the NSW Teachers Federation during a Gonski 2.0 rally in Cowra on Thursday.
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Mr Zadkovich was addressing a gathering of Cowra’s public school teachers who had come along to support the NSW Teachers Federation protest of the Turnbull government’s Gonski 2.0 plan.
Mr Zadkovich said the Federation was at a critical junction with the State Coalition and State Education Minister, Rob Stokes, standing with them demanding the federal government honor its agreement.
“The amount of money we were signed up for was $5 billion to be spent over six years,” he said.
“Of that $5 billion, $4.2 billion or about 83 per cent, of that money is coming into public schools because its needs-based, and because we in public schools have a far greater proportion of students with those additional learning needs.
“In NSW we have the principle groups, the P&C federation and the Teachers Federation all coming together campaigning to convince the Turnbull government that they must honor the commitment made in 2013 to deliver funding for the six year NSW Gonski agreement.”
Mr Zadkovich told the gathered teachers the Turnbull government could not abide the fact they had inherited a commitment to spend $5 billion on public schools.
“What they are introducing is a new plan, that instead of requiring the Commonwealth government of the day to put in 65 per cent of Gonski funding and the states to put in 35 per cent and once you get the total pool of funding 83 per cent of it is coming to public schools,” he said.
“What they want to do instead, under the Turnbull plan, is a 20:80 ratio where their commitment over ten years will be to spend 20 per cent of the Commonwealth funding on public schools and 80 per cent on private schools.
“They are bringing us back to the bad old days when the commonwealth government spent the majority of its money on private schools and state government is left to make up the shortfall.
“Statewide for NSW public schools, $846 million will not be allocated in the next two years to over 2200 public schools across our state.
“National party electorates like Calare and Riverina stand to lose $22 million and $23 million respectively in additional funding, in needs-based funding.
“That funding was designed to lift all schools to a national resource standard and then additional money targeted for students from low income families, students with disabilities, aboriginal students, students in rural and remote locations and students learning English as a second language.
“Those identified groups additional equity funding would also come in addition to the money to reach the resource standard.”
Cowra High School Teachers Federation representative Sean Leyland said it was essential to fund the original Gonski agreement.
“I know how many programs have been set up here during the last few years, how many extra staff that have made a huge difference to teaching and learning at Cowra High that will be lost if the extra money goes,” he said.
“To support the full Gonski is just paramount, it will be an absolute tragedy, a disaster for Cowra High and for the whole of Cowra and the State if we don’t maintain (full Gonski).”
Mr Leyland’s statement was backed by Cowra Public School’s Teachers Federation representative Jess Gardoll who said the gap between students education would continue to grow without the full funding.
“At Cowra Public it was estimated $635,000 would be lost in funding, that would make a huge difference to all the classrooms in our school,” she said.
“The gap between students education would be even furthered and the programs that we run at our school will be impacted by this and we won’t be able to support the children we need to and that we are currently supporting.
“It will make it so much harder for us to create the classrooms we want to without this funding.”
P&C Federal Far West councilor, Natalie Walker, also addressed the gathered teachers saying it was disheartening not seeing the federal government supporting the funding.
“As a parent of students in a public school and as a P&C rep we support the full funding of Gonski and it’s really great to see many of you here today supporting this,” she said.
“It’s really disheartening to see the government not supporting this funding for the impact that it has especially on our regional, rural and remote communities.
“Together we can really make a difference to keep this campaign going and we advocate for the needs of our children,” she said.