Reply #6: “What is happening right now is deliberate underfunding in order to starve our schools and be given [View All]

[Fire Walk With Me]

“What is happening right now is deliberate underfunding in order to starve our schools and be given away to corporate,”

I've seen this before. Note the final sentence:

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/9869

Wednesday, February 15, 1995 - 11:00

"SYDNEY — A report presented to the national conference of the Australian Education Union on January 20 revealed that corporate sponsorship of schools is expanding in all states, 'virtually unmonitored and unregulated'.

Insufficient government funding has forced schools to seek out, and compete for, corporate sponsors. This has led to growing inequalities between schools.

The report, by a University of New South Wales researcher, Jane Coulter, found large sections of the school curriculum were being privatised. Coulter said that the contracting out of education services was often more costly. In some instances, education departments were paying $6000 a day for consultants and up to $300 an hour for academics to conduct training previously undertaken by employees.

Coulter was quoted as saying, 'The term privatisation does not capture what is happening to state education — it is really more deregulation by the government's withdrawal from provision of services'."