Responding to government claims: Education In a letter to parents, and reported in today’s West Australian, the Department has threatened that ‘unauthorised absence’ will be recorded against their child’s name. They want parents to send their children to school, even though they know many teachers won’t be available to supervise students and many schools will be closed. This is highly irresponsible behaviour from a government department whose responsibility is the duty of care of the children who attend public schools. Parents wjo choose not to send their children to their State School because of the union action or to protest funding cuts should object to any Unauthorised absence mark, and pursue it vigorously with the Minister. This is an opportunity to teach children about the right to take industrial action, the right to protest and the duty of care shared by parents and teachers. Also, the Department of Education has placed an advertisement in today’s West Australian giving a set of figures designed to make the current Education union campaign look unreasonable. The advertisement states: That WA teachers are the best paid in the country. Fact: This is true but irrelevant in the context. They are the least badly paid in the country. That ”Experienced Teachers” are paid $106,000. Fact: Only Level 3 teachers are paid this. There are only 1100 of these in the system. That government expenditure on education has increased from $2.1bn in 2008 to $4.4bn in 2012. Fact: Using raw figures in this way does not give a true indication of how much money is actually available in schools. For example, there has been an increase to the compulsory years of schooling – kindergarten, and 17 and 18 year olds; the introduction of NAPLAN testing; the widespread introduction of IT use for administrative and educational purposes; the large increase in the numbers of students eligible for disability funding. All these add significantly to costs. None of this advertising and messaging to parents by the Barnett Government should take away from the fact that $180 million has been cut from WA public schools this year.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 10:37:32 +0000
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