Let’s celebrate record spending on National Public Education Day

There are many reasons to celebrate on National Public Education Day, with the Australian Government spending a record $70 billion on school education over the next four years.

Commonwealth School funding will increase by 36% for Government schools over the next four years and 28% overall.

This is more Commonwealth funding than ever before and it increases every year.

We have also implemented a needs based funding system including a disability loading and provided a record $5 billion for students with disabilities over 2014-2017 – the same amount committed by previous government over this period.

At the Federal Election the Australian people voted for a Government that promised to dramatically increase school funding over four years and that is exactly what we have achieved.

Australians didn’t believe Labor’s cooked up numbers with funding off the Budget books in the never never.

The Coalition has delivered on our commitments and put in even more funding than Labor.

Labor took $1.2 billion out of the schools Budget of Queensland, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia meaning these jurisdictions would have missed out on additional funding as they didn’t sign up to the model.

This Government put back $1.2 billion, so schools in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia wouldn’t miss out.

While funding is important, school funding has increased by 40% over the past decade, but student outcomes have declined over that period. More funding alone isn’t the answer to arresting this decline.

That is why the Coalition is putting Students First with policies that focus on:

• Improving teacher training to ensure our teachers are fully prepared for the classroom;
• Decluttering the curriculum with a renewed focus on science, technology and mathematics;
• Increasing school autonomy so schools can be more responsive to the needs of their students; and
• Providing parents with the tools to be more active participants in their child’s education.