WORLD WORLDWIDE AUSTRALIA - news journal UPDATE - en) Australia: Our schools are in crisis - Picket Line (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 For over a decade, Liberal and Labor governments have deliberately

underfunded public schools. Governments have entrenched inequality and
condemned a generation of working-class kids to a sub-standard
education. ---- Public schools are in crisis. Hundreds of teaching
positions are vacant. Educators are leaving the profession due to
psychosocial hazards, low pay, and burnout. This is not a coincidence.
As governments have underfunded schools, teachers have been left to
cover the gap, paying for classroom resources, and plugging staffing
shortages with unpaid overtime.

Teachers and school staff must act. We cannot wait for the Labor Party
to save public education.

The crisis has been a long time coming. In 2012 the Gonski Review set
minimum funding standards for schools. It found that public schools were
woefully under resourced. To meet the minimum funding standards, public
schools would need an additional $5 billion a year. Successive
governments have failed to meet this benchmark. In the 13 years since
the Gonski Review, only the ACT has ever met the minimum funding levels.

Governments have deliberately withheld billions of dollars from
working-class children. In Victoria, three-quarters of private schools
get more public funding than public schools. At the same time, these
private schools charge tuition and receive alumni donations.

This is class war. Some children are stuck in run-down portable
buildings with inadequate heating and cooling. Others have access to
state-of-the-art facilities, Olympic swimming pools, and orchestra pits.

This inequality is deliberate and designed to undermine public
education. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. As public schools
decay, any parent who can afford to flees for the private system.
Governments justify funding private schools because of increased demand.
Over the last five years, private school enrolments have increased
18.5%, whilst government schools have increased by just 1%. Australia's
population has grown 8.6% over the same period.

Public education has long come under attack from reactionary forces. The
capitalist media - in particular the Murdoch empire - latch onto the
perceived deficiencies of public schools to attack and denigrate
teachers. The ideal of public education promises a working class that
can think. Historically, teachers have been a highly unionised
workforce. An unequal education system, in which the children of the
rich go to exceptionally well-resourced private schools, and the
children of the working class are confined to a substandard public
safety net, helps reproduce the class structure of our society.

In March, the federal government announced a "pathway to full funding"
for public schools. All public schools would finally receive the minimum
funding they need to educate students. But disappointment was just
around the corner. A federal Labor government announces full funding for
schools; a state Labor government snatches it away. The Victorian
government's budget locks in underfunding for at least another decade.

Funding delayed is funding denied. Every dollar denied to public schools
is being taken from working-class children and their right to an
education. Another whole generation of public-school students face
decaying schools and teacher shortages.

We cannot lobby our way out of this problem. For over a decade the
Australian Education Union has lobbied for "Gonski" and campaigned to
elect Labor governments. Lobbying and elections have not delivered.
Educators need to organise and force governments to fully fund public
schools.

The way to fight for public education is with industrial action.

The COVID pandemic revealed that teachers are essential. Capital and the
state need teachers to educate the next generation of workers.
Governments might underfund schools, but capitalists still need workers
with a level of education. More immediately, without schools, our
society grinds to a halt. While we are teaching children, their parents
are freed up to work in other industries. Teachers and school staff have
significant potential power.

Teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions.
Educators deserve better pay in their own right. But when teachers fight
for pay and conditions, they are also fighting for better learning
conditions. Striking and fighting for improved pay and conditions is one
of the few ways that workers in schools can force governments to spend
more on public education.

Australia has restrictive laws designed to make effective strikes
illegal. However, we are not going to win the kind of change we need for
public education if we rely on symbolic action, mobilisation, and
negotiation. We need to organise deeply within our workplaces and across
schools. We need to convince our colleagues that lobbying isn't going to
solve our problems, and to achieve meaningful change we must be active
participants. We need to organise for strikes that will force
governments to make concessions.

The most immediate challenge is in Victoria, where the current pay
agreement expires at the end of 2025. Educators are raising significant
demands around pay and conditions.

Because teachers play an essential role in society, the kind of strike
action we need to win these demands will significantly impact other
workers. This is not only unavoidable, it is necessary. Whilst educators
must lead this campaign, we also need other workers. Solidarity from
other unions will be essential, as will support from school communities.
We need a clear message to combat the inevitable backlash from the
capitalist media: while we are fighting for educators' pay and
conditions, we are also fighting for your children's future education.

Educators have a long and difficult fight ahead of us. We need the rest
of the working class in our corner.

https://ancomfed.org/2025/07/our-schools-are-in-crisis/
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