Paralowie School being used to promote Fair Funding Now, but it lost funding under that campaign

A SOUTH Australian school is bizarrely being used as a poster child in the latest teachers’ union campaign despite losing funding under the very model it wants to bring back.

A SOUTH Australian school is bizarrely being used as a poster child in the latest teachers’ union campaign despite losing funding under the very model it wants to bring back.

Paralowie School is one of six schools featured in the Australian Education Union’s new Fair Funding Now campaign making use of money Labor delivered under its string of deals. But Government figures reveal three of the six schools being used had funding cut.

MySchool shows that in 2014, the first year of Labor’s model, Paralowie School funding dropped $33,791 from 2013.

In 2013, the school received $2282 per student from the Federal Government but that fell by $46 in 2014 to $2236. It still got less than the 2013 rate in 2015 at $2270 per student, before funding finally grew in 2016 to $2490 per student.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham said the work of outstanding teachers, principals and school communities was being misrepresented on the national stage for political point-scoring. “This is either an embarrassing blunder or straight out deceit,” he said.

AEU president Correna Haythorpe stood by the union’s campaign and accused Senator Birmingham of attacking principals’ claims about their schools’ funding.

“This shows how desperate the Turnbull Government is to hide the fact that it is stripping funding from students who need it the most,” she said.