Teachers to protest in the streets against school funding cuts

Teachers furious at a state government plan to underfund public schools for another six years will take to the streets in a mass protest personally targeting Premier Jacinta Allan as a parliamentary inquiry is launched into the growing scandal.

The Australian Education Union on Friday wrote to Victorian teachers calling for immediate action against the government’s school funding “con job” which will strip $2.4 billion out of public schools by pushing back its commitment to fully fund the Gonski reforms by three years.

The campaign outlined by the union’s state leadership will involve paid advertisements, flooding the email inboxes of Allan and Education Minister Ben Carroll with letters from outraged teachers and school parents and public rallies targeting the pair and Treasurer Jaclyn Symes.

Treasurer Jaclyn Symes, Premier Jacinta Allan and Education Minister Ben Carroll will be targeted by teacher protests.Credit: Justin McManus

The Greens this week established a parliamentary inquiry to examine the impact of the funding cuts on students, teachers and the state school system. The inquiry, backed by the Liberal Party and not voted against by Labor MPs, is due to report by 30 April next year, seven months before the next state election.

Cabinet-in-confidence documents provided to this masthead uncovered a secret government decision taken in March last year to delay until 2031 additional funding needed by public schools to deliver the Gonski education reforms.

In the three weeks since the funding cuts were exposed, Allan and Carroll have refused to publicly acknowledge the decision or canvass the implications for public school students and teachers.

The documents show that Carroll argued against the delay, warning it would damage the state’s reputation, entrench Victoria as Australia’s lowest per-student funding jurisdiction for government schools and aggravate the funding gap between government and non-government schools and disparity in outcomes between advantaged and disadvantaged students.

Allan and Carroll, when questioned about the decision in parliament, have pointed to a 34 per cent increase per student in funding for public schools since Labor came to power 11 years ago and $17 billion in capital investments in new and upgraded schools.

Victoria previously had a publicly stated target of fully funding its share of the Gonski school funding reforms by 2028. This requires the state to provide government schools 75 per cent of the total funding they are allocated under a needs-based model knows as the Schooling Resource Standard.

The federal government has agreed to provide the remaining 25 per cent once the states reach this benchmark. The Gonski model is calculated on recurrent funding and does not include capital investments in schools.

This masthead sent Carroll a series of questions on Friday asking whether he would acknowledge the decision taken last March to delay its commitment and whether, given his opposition to the cuts, he would push for his government to reverse its decision.

Carroll did not provide direct answers.

“We will fund the government schools at 75 per cent of the SRS, delivering the increased funding in stages during the term of the agreement,” he said.

The heads of agreement Carroll and Allan signed with the Commonwealth in January stretches to 2034. Greens education spokesperson Tim Read said school parents should treat with scepticism any government promise to provide additional funding beyond the next election.

Read said it was time for the government to fess up. “The most important thing is some transparency,” he said. “The decision to delay the funding increase was made behind closed doors. We want to make clear what has been agreed to and what hasn’t and what is the impact on Victorian schools.

“We know that if Victorian government schools are missing out on $2.4 billion in funding, that is less money for teachers who are already the lowest paid in the nation at a time when there is a national teacher shortage and a big problem with retention.”

Greens education spokesman Tim Read at the Greens’ election night party earlier this month.Credit: Paul Jeffers

Opposition education spokeswoman Jess Wilson urged Carroll to be upfront about the cuts when he appears at budget estimates hearings next week.

“The Allan Labor government needs to stop dodging the question, own up to their secret $2.4 billion cut to public schools and provide the detail on what students will miss out on because of this decision,” she said.

“At next week’s budget hearings the education minister must provide answers to school communities around the state, including how much less will flow to public schools each year between now and 2031 as a result of this funding delay.”

Jacinta Allan has defended her government’s record on school funding.Credit: Simon Schluter

AEU Victorian branch president Justin Mullaly said his members were outraged Victoria wasn’t intending to properly fund government schools for another six years. He noted this month’s state budget has $12.6 billion in unallocated funds set aside over the next four years as a contingency to cover additional costs in health, education, and other service areas with growing demand.

“The resources are there,” he said. “Clearly they are making decisions that are serving in someone’s interests, but it is not in the interests of kids in public schools.”

The planned protests, which will not affect classes, are comparable to the campaign teachers waged for more schools funding in 2015 after Labor returned to power. The AEU council representing members in primary and secondary schools last week passed a scathing resolution accusing the Allan government of being “duplicitous” about schools funding.

The AEU will shortly begin negotiations on a new enterprise bargaining agreement aimed at bringing teacher salaries in Victoria into line with their NSW counterparts. Under the current pay deals, a graduate teacher earns $78,801 in Victoria compared to $87,550 in NSW. Victoria’s funding cut leaves less money to hire more teachers or pay teachers more.

Victoria will negotiate a new, 10-year bilateral agreement with the Commonwealth to ratify the terms agreed to in-principle at the start of this year. The agreement will include a year-by-year breakdown of how Victoria intends to increase its SRS funding from the current level of 70.43 per cent to the 75 per cent benchmark.

The campaign by teachers is timed to increase pressure on the Victorian government to reverse the cuts when it negotiates the Commonwealth agreement.

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