Media Release – Monday 1 August 2011
All schools should be transparent and accountable with taxpayers’ money, but school buildings and grounds or money set aside for teacher entitlements should not be included on the MySchool website as they are not up for sale.
The IEU Federal Secretary, Mr Chris Watt said, while we want to ensure schools are held to account for how they spend taxpayers’ money you should not be including things that are essentially not resources used to educate students.
“Land, buildings and any money that is held by schools for wages or long service leave for teachers are not things which should be included in any public listing of the ‘worth’ of a school, which would be misrepresented by hardliners in the education funding debate.
“Schools funded in Australia are not for profit. Comments about ‘private school profits’ are, at best, misleading.
“We need to be talking about ensuring that all schools have the right resources to give the children a good education.
“The worth of an education is in the teacher and the resources that teacher has to teach the children at that school, not where that school is geographically.
“There are government schools in more expensive areas in our cities that will have ‘assets’ that are worth more than many Independent and Catholic schools around the country, but this is not relevant.
“Are we going to be seeing real estate agents going around to government and independent schools and giving valuations? What kind of message is that to send to school communities.
“This is another demonstration of the current debate around education funding getting out of control.
“The MySchool website does open the door for parents and teachers to understand how a school is performing and if further support is needed for that school, and we welcome that.
“The education funding debate needs to be concentrated on ensuring we get more funding for education across the entire schooling sector,” said Mr Watt.
Media Contact: Evan Langdon 0429 020 409