School means test for parents back on the table

The Minister for School Education, Peter Garrett needs to come clean on whether Labor intends to means test the incomes of parents with children in non-government schools, said the Shadow Minister for Education, Christopher Pyne today.

At a forum hosted by the Australian Education Union last night Mr Garrett described ‘a capacity to pay measure which takes into account the socio-economic background of the parents sending their children to a non-government school’ as being ‘appropriate and fair’.

Mr Garrett also flagged cuts to the ‘amount of money for a school where the capacity to pay is high’ suggesting parents with children at schools the Government decides have high incomes will be slugged by additional fees to make up funding shortfalls.

“Parents need to know before the next election the income thresholds Labor intend to introduce – will it be $75,000, $100,000 or $150,000? What will the impact of this be on each individual school?

“How can Labor’s supposed commitment to ‘no school will lose a dollar’ be true, if some schools will receive less under this new model, or is the Government offering a funding guarantee to all schools going backwards?” Mr Pyne said.

“Leaked Gonski panel modelling shows 3,254 schools would go backwards under the Governments school funding changes, meaning a funding guarantee would cost $1.4 billion a year in new money on top of the $6.5 billion already floated,” he said.

“If Labor expects Australians to believe they can find an additional $8 billion a year or $36 billion over the forward estimates from 2014 then they have seriously miscalculated how much credibility they have in the electorate,” Mr Pyne said.

November 21, 2012