The next Federal Election will be held on Saturday 3 May and it is important to consider how your vote will impact your child’s education.
In calling the election, the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese MP highlighted a number of key issues for Catholic Education including school choice and “fair funding for every school”.
National Catholic Education Executive Director Jacinta Collins said Catholic Education will focus on these issues as well as ensuring Catholic schools can continue to operate and teach as faith-based schools, support for disadvantaged students, student mental health and wellbeing, teacher workforce issues, and building and innovating for the future.
“We have a two-pronged approach under the banner, ‘Catholic Education benefits all Australians’, which highlights the value of Catholic schools to the community through educational excellence, serving disadvantaged students, building educational infrastructure, and saving billions of dollars for taxpayers,” Jacinta said.
“At the same time, we will draw attention to our key priorities with both sitting members and candidates.”
In summary, the priorities are:
- Ensure affordability and choice
- Address hardship, wellbeing and disadvantage
- Build and Innovate for the Future
“To help ease cost-of-living pressures, Catholic schools will seek funding certainty and a review of parental contributions to keep the choice of a Catholic schooling affordable for families. We will also call for expanded mental health support, a review of loadings for disadvantaged students, and greater investment in early childhood and school infrastructure,” she said.
“We welcome the recent agreements between the federal and state and territory governments to work towards 100 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) for government-run schools. This is an important step towards the needs-based, sector-neutral funding recommended by the Gonski review.
“However, without continued support for choice and affordability in non-government schools, the flawed settings in the current ‘Capacity to Contribute’ measure could force some Catholic school families to pay an unreasonably high share of their child’s educational costs, adding to their growing cost-of-living pressures.
“Cost-of-living is the number one election issue across every state and territory and while we try to keep school fees as affordable as possible and provide financial relief, Catholic school families have to make significant sacrifices for their choice of schooling.”
Jacinta said the election campaign falling during the Easter school holiday and ANZAC day period and with the increasing preference for early voting, it is critical for school communities to communicate with their families and staff ahead of the election.
“We will ask school principals and our parent associations to send home our two page document that highlights Catholic Education priorities for the election. We will also seek responses from the major parties, the Greens and the Independent candidates on these priorities and make a scorecard available so families and staff can more easily identify whether their candidates support Catholic education.”
More information about the election will be available via the NCEC’s website
A reminder that voting is compulsory for those over 18 and new voters need to ensure they are correctly enrolled by 8pm local time Monday 7 April. This includes updating your address if you have moved. To check your details or register to vote online, head to aec.gov.au/enrol.