Income raising is a labour-intensive process that is re-imagining the role of school staff and parents. Raising money relies on entrepreneurial principals, savvy PR staff, engaged parents and parent committees, as well as the work of intermediary organisations like Schools Plus. This is a problem, especially when it comes to public schools.
Research from the United States and United Kingdom cautions that an over-reliance on private income could lead to governments shirking some responsibility for resourcing and supporting schools.
Tag: Funding
The immediate problem is to ensure that the non-government system isn’t gutted and the government system isn’t inundated. The risk of that happening seems likely to grow, and to go on growing, along with unemployment, under-employment, and fear of debt. If it does the cost of a quick fix will grow too, and that will compound the big problem.
The way out has three parts.
First, the government must help schools help parents, immediately. In doing so it should remember that government schools lean on parents to make “voluntary contributions,” often quite substantial ones; they’ll need help too. The government should establish a fund to which all systems, government and non-government alike, can apply, and it should commission an urgent analysis of the likely trajectory of the problem.
Second, it should make clear that this is an interim measure only. It should announce an in-principle intention to move to full public needs-based funding for all systems and independent schools willing work within a common charter of rights and obligations. The core principles and objectives of that charter would include: no fees, the right to faith-based schooling, the obligation to reduce within-school segregation, and full transparency as to performance and compliance.
Third, it should set up the machinery to turn these principles into a well-designed proposal.
What McCoy had done in Huntington was exactly the kind of thing Republicans claim to celebrate. She wasn’t a Washington bureaucrat telling people to do it her way, or no way at all; she was a well-intentioned local who had figured out what made sense for her community and acted on it.
Jane Black explores the complexity associated with school meals. Although Jamie Oliver argued that it was simply about providing students with healthy food, Black explores the challenges of standards, funding, equipment, and training.
The Morrison government has threatened to withhold billions of dollars of funding earmarked for Australian public and private schools next year if states refuse to sign up to its new education funding deal.
I agree with James Merlino:
“If Mr Tehan were serious about education, he would work with states and territories to provide fair funding for every child rather than come up with solutions that pit one sector against the other.”
This feels like Groundhog Day. I am a little sick of the politics associated with state education. The way this is going I might threaten to vote Labor in the next election 🤷♂️
Long story short: I’m a realist. Teachers are never going to make a fortune. It’s not fiscally responsible — and the fact of the matter is that we HAVE to be fiscally responsible.
But let’s quit pretending that teachers who are using their voices to draw attention to the sad state of funding in our public schools and to the impact those funding choices are having on kids are bad people trying to fleece America.
Many preschool teachers live on the edge of financial ruin. Would improving their training — and their pay — improve outcomes for their students?
Jeenen Interlandi provides a view into the problems associated with preschool in the USA:
Teaching preschoolers is every bit as complicated and important as teaching any of the K-12 grades, if not more so. But we still treat preschool teachers like babysitters.
This reminds me of the work of Bronwyn Hinz.
Via Ian O’Byrne’s TLDR Newsletter