A-Infos (en) Avustralya: 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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