Respect the Profession

”Recent comments attributed to Mr Gavrielatos, Federal President AEU, are misleading and offensive” said Independent Education Union Federal Secretary Chris Watt.

“It is a ridiculous and offensive suggestion to make a blanket statement that private school teachers and support staff educate the cheapest and easiest to teach students” he said.

“Try telling that to the hard working staff at Boys’ Town in Engadine NSW, or Key College (Fr Chris Riley’s Youth of the Streets) at Merrylands in Sydney or the Galilee School in Canberra for disadvantaged or homeless students, or Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Catholic School at Wadeye on the western edge of the Daly River Reserve in the NT, or the Autistic Children’s Therapy Centre at Brighton in Brisbane”.

Other non-government schools serving ‘special needs’ students, among the dozens nationally, include in Victoria, Vision Australia School, Larmenier Child and Family Centre at Hampden, Berengarra School for students at risk, St Augustine’s Catholic Special School, St Mary’s College for the Hearing Impaired.  In NSW it also includes Odyssey House Campbelltown, Blacktown Youth College, St Lucy’s School for the Blind, Vern Barnett School for Children with Autism, Bellhaven Special School in Young, Edmund Rice College’s The Annexe campus for marginalized students.  In Queensland it also includes Edmund Rice Centre Education Program at Woodridge, Southside Education Centre at Coopers Plains for girls who have fallen out of main stream education, the indigenous school Wadja Wadja at Woorabinda and the hearing impaired unit at Mt Maria Junior.

“These are not cheap to run or easy to teach in workplaces”.

“It is also entirely misleading to say that ‘get nearly five times more funding per student than public schools’.  No non-government school in the country receives more government funding than a government school” he said.

“We also know that our members in non-government not only work hard to build community and social bridges within and between their schools but they deliver”.

“The IEUA hopes that the future of the school funding debate and more broadly the structure and role of schools in our communities can be noted by considered opinions and not punctuated by the divisive debates of the past and certainly not demean the profession” said Mr Watt.

“We also need to unpack, sensibly and factually, the apparent contradiction between the simultaneous ‘white flight’ and emergence of ‘monocultural’ private schools.”

Contact

Chris Watt                                                       0419259143

Federal Secretary                                           02 6273 3107