[Greens-Media] State budget ? another big let-down for education - Pennicuik

[Amanda.Sharp at parliament.vic.gov.au]

State budget ? another big let-down for education

Friday 9 May 2014
 
The state budget is another big let-down for everyone who cares about 
education, Victorian Greens Education spokesperson, Sue Pennicuik has said 
today.

"Victoria has been the lowest spending of any state government on 
education for many years. This Coalition government has taken millions of 
dollars out of in-school programs, such as EMA and VCAL and closed 
regional offices that provided much needed support for schools. This 
budget does nothing to repair that damage or lift our education spending 
above the national average," Ms Pennicuik said. 

"The government announced before the budget that it would build eleven new 
primary schools. It is always good to see more schools, but the government 
should release education department advice on where new schools are most 
needed, so Victorians can be assured that schools are going to areas of 
most need first.

"The budget papers show $190.6m committed for these new primary schools, 
which are to be constructed under PPP's, but there is no actual allocation 
of funds to any of them and twenty million dollars has been earmarked for 
a new secondary college in Prahran, but only $1m is allocated at present, 
presumably for the taskforce ? the rest is on the never, never," Ms 
Pennicuik said.

"There is $290m for school ?upgrades and modernisation? for approximately 
75 schools, but only $85m is to be spent next year, with completion dates 
3 to 4 years away. This is woefully insufficient to address the 
maintenance backlog across the state, with so many schools needing urgent 
repairs that they have no money for.

"Base funding for early childhood currently shows a decline, while there 
is some money for COAG commitments in maternal and child health service 
and workforce development," Ms Pennicuik said.
 
The assault on TAFE continues. 

"In order to restore the public TAFE system to primacy as the provider of 
Vocational Education and training in Victoria, the funding cut by this 
government needs to be restored, including the restoration of the full 
service payments to TAFEs that were abolished in 2012-13 and the failed 
market contestability experiment introduced by Labor needs to be 
abandoned," Ms Pennicuik said. 

"However, the VET budget for 2014-15 is lower than the revised expenditure 
for 2013-14. Whilst thirty million has been allocated to support 
retraining of car sector workers over two years, which is welcome, this 
probably represents less than $1,000 per person - not a lot of training 
support, and the funding window is very narrow. 

"While the government is pouring another $447.5 million to add 871 beds to 
the prison system, with 2,900 more beds planned for the future and total 
spending on expected to grow from $746.1 million in 2013-14 to $9421.1 the 
following year, education funding continues to fall well below what is 
needed," Ms Pennicuik concluded.


For further comment: Sue Pennicuik ? 0409 055 875 / 03 9530 8399


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Parliament of Victoria                                                                                                                    . 

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