Topical Teaching

Another scare campaign from the unions!  This time they are targeting chocolate.  The Australian Education Union’s President claims that ”Public schools are so poorly funded, they rely on Caramello Koalas to pay for basics …”

I have a number of points to make about this:

1.  Where does all the school funding go?  Education Minister Peter Garrett, claims, “This is a government that has provided almost double the investment that we have seen previously in education since 2007 – over $60 billion that we are investing in education, right around Australia.” Surely there must be a huge misappropriation of money if  schools cannot afford to buy the essentials without chocolate drives.

2.  School fundraising is an institution.  It will go on regardless of increased funding and it is not confined to just public schools.  Private schools also fundraise, and always will.

3. I wouldn’t be surprised if the chocolate reference is a sneaky device to link funding with childhood obesity (an issue I am very passionate about and draw upon in my unpublished novel, “My Favourite Comedian”).  The title of the article above (which was not written by the union of course) clearly belittles the important issue of childhood obesity.

4.   I have no problem with the union taking an interest in public school funding, but not at the expense of private school funding.  Both sectors should be given priority.  It is not good enough to prop up the public schools if it is in any way at the expense of private schools.

If we are going to improve our schools we have to avoid the petty private vs public debate.  It’s distracting and juvenile.  Private education saves State Governments incredible amounts of revenue, which is then spent on vital services and infrastructure.  What we should be vocal about is where is all our taxpayer dollars going?