Save OUr Schools has made a substantial submission to an inquiry on the Victorian education system being held by the Legal and Social Issues Committee, Legislative Council, Parliament of Victoria. The submission can be downloaded below.
The Victorian Labor Government claims that Victorian is the education state. This is a complete misnomer. Victoria is a failed education state. It has failed disadvantaged students and public schools.
- Many disadvantaged students do not achieve minimum literacy and numeracy standards;
- There was virtually no learning improvement by disadvantaged students between 2010 and 2022 and several declines.
- There are large achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students.
There were a few successes, most notably in some Indigenous outcomes, but they are few and far between. In addition, there have been a significant increase in the proportion of students completing Year 12, although too many still do not achieve this.
School funding failures by the Commonwealth and Victorian governments are a major factor behind these education failures. Public schools in Victoria face a funding crisis. They are massively under-funded while private schools are over-funded. Funding increases over the past decade have heavily favoured private schools. Public schools are defrauded by the current Commonwealth-Victoria bilateral funding agreement. The result is that public schools have far fewer resources than private schools and large learning gaps persist between advantage and disadvantaged students.