With the March 28 State Election just around the corner, South Coast candidates have their say on education.
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Amanda Findley - THE GREENS
The Greens have spent the last decade campaigning for better funding for public education. Prosperous foundations for a nation come from quality free public education.
The Greens recently discovered that $85 million of public money was used to fund capital works at wealthy private schools instead of supporting bursaries for the underprivileged.
The Greens want to see this funding stopped and redirected to needy public schools.
Many classrooms in the South Coast don’t have access to interactive white boards and no school would say no to funding to improve their wireless classroom connectivity.
The third industrial revolution is the digital revolution, our children in public schools need modern digital resources to thrive in the future.
The Greens would also fund free pre-schooling for two years particularly in disadvantaged communities; early childhood education should be of the highest quality and has been shown to have a positive effect well into high school.
Fiona Phillips - LABOR
On coming to Government, the Liberal NSW Government cut $1.7 billion from schools and TAFE.
Fifty million dollars was cut from the infrastructure budget for schools and TAFE.
Labor has championed the Gonski reforms, while the Tony Abbott Liberal Government cut Gonski funding.
Labor has a track record of delivering education infrastructure spending in the Milton/Ulladulla area, like stages 1 and 2 of the Ulladulla High School upgrade.
Under Labor and its Building the Schools of the Future policy, we will invest an additional $1.3 billion to build and improve schools and TAFE – and we’ll do it without privatising our electricity network.
Labor will allocate $100 million of new money to replace demountable classrooms, libraries and administrative facilities with permanent facilities across NSW.
Labor has committed to investing $9.5 million to train 200 specialist maths and science primary school teachers across NSW.
Labor will also ensure all new public schools include child care or out-of hours care facilities.
Shelley Hancock - LIBERAL
As a former teacher for 27 years at Ulladulla High School, I am passionate about education and was immensely proud when the NSW Government was the first state to sign up to the Gonski reforms, delivering over $1.7 billion in additional funding from the Baird Government to our schools.
Over 1,250 additional teachers have been hired in our schools since 2011, and the NSW Government has lifted the quality of entrants into teacher education by strengthening the standard of training, enhancing the quality and performance of the existing workforce and providing better support for beginning teachers in their early years.
We have also improved access to preschools with a new funding model that will make available $150 million to community preschools across NSW, a 20 per cent increase since 2011.
The Baird Government is also upgrading and improving our local schools to provide a safe and modern learning environment for teachers and students.