News
It’s time. For your voice.
As I drive the children to school every morning, it is hard not to see the election candidates’ corflutes on every street corner.
On one drive, my primary school son asked what they were, what they meant, and what each person stood for.
As we lead towards the election on March 19, I urge you to take the time to review each political party’s promise, with a strong interest on their stance on education. Catholic Education South Australia (CESA) has been a strong advocate for ensuring fair funding models are met and that all matters that are important to Catholic school communities are heard by each political party.
CESA are seeking seven-party promises:
- Recurrent funding
- Capital funding
- Preschool education
- Fair access to rural and regional buses
- Year 7 transition funding
- COVID-19 responsibilities
- Vocational education and technical colleges.
As the key parent body for families within Catholic schools, CSPSA support the position CESA has outlined of the commitments sought from the elected political party looking to form a government.
The recurrent theme emerging for the parents centres around the government commitments to maintaining and increasing recurrent and capital funding.
It's not a secret that navigating economic recovery from COVID-19 has been difficult. Parents and caregivers have faced uncertainty, unemployment, and major financial implications. As we lead towards the polling booth, families require the elected government to continue a commmitment to funding structures, that enables them to have confidence their children’s education will remain accessible.
Therefore, as the key parent body, accessibility to education is a strong factor we continue to be calling for. Fair access to regional buses, with a commitment to increasing the state government contribution to regional and rural bus services, is strongly supported by parents who face the practical day-to-day issues in accessing this service.
CESA has always been a strong advocate for Catholic school families and ensuring they receive the funding that they require.
As the upcoming election nears, CSPSA will be seeking a commitment that the elected parties’ policies and procedures provide a pathway on how their elected party will be the party for each child.
When developing education and funding policies, it is our position that the government should have every child’s education in mind. Therefore, fair funding processes need to be created to ensure that each child, who is looking at faces on the corflutes of stobie polls, knows that the faces looking at them, will be supporting them. And every other child through education.
As we teach our children the importance of the election, we are teaching our children the importance of having a voice. To have a voice we need to understand the issues.
The election is also an opportunity to work with the elected government to achieve the goals we have for Catholic education. Whilst we continue to advocate with CESA for these commitments, we take it as an opportunity to work together. So that the elected government and each stakeholder walk a pathway ensuring each child has the best opportunity to access an education.
So, as we drive to school and the questions continue, CSPSA invites you to think about how you will answer those questions and how you can ensure those faces on the corflutes you see, will be looking out for all those faces around you.