ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
About 43 percent of students in NSW attend a private school. It’s a number that’s growing year-on-year.
The tumbling enrollments at New South Wales public schools are the casus belli required for the State Government to begin slashing budgets, withdrawing services, and future funding.
“Let’s face it,” said the state’s education minister Prue Car today in Sydney.
“If your child isn’t attending a private school, whether it be your local Catholic college or Anglican secondary school or your elite GPS boarding school, then you have rocks in your head quite frankly,”
“Sending your child to a NSW public school is fast becoming a source of great shame for aspirational people. Especially in Sydney. Which is why education budgets have been slashed. There are fewer students going to NSW public schools. They’re not going there because they’re not getting enough funding. You can see it’s a bit of a Catch-22.”
NSW Premier Chris Minns nodded.
“If we pour too much money into public education, then people might think twice about sending their child to a private school. If we pour money into public schools and they don’t end up enrolling, then we’ve effectively poured money on poor people. Like pouring water on a dead plant, really. From a government perspective, that is,”
“Anyone who has a child in public school knows that the majority of the teaching supplies in a classroom are paid for by the teacher. We’ve just given teachers a massive pay rise, which takes into account that teachers often spend thousands and thousands of their own dollars on basic classroom necessities like markers and exercise books. Spend hundreds of unpaid hours a year decorating classrooms, moving classrooms, and preparing for classes,”
“That is what the pay rise is for. The State Government can’t be forking out for everything. Plus, private school parents pay more tax. They pay more stamp duty. They pay payroll tax. Poor people don’t pay tax; they’re just social and economic suckerfish. Well, they don’t pay state taxes, anyway.”
The Advocate reached out to a teacher from the nearby town of Milparinka for comment but has yet to receive a reply.
More to come.
