Every family should have access to a high quality, genuinely free, local public school.

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The Labor Government is underfunding our public schools. Victoria has the lowest-funded public schools in Australia– underfunded by over $1 billion per year.

This means our public schools don’t receive the funding they need to meet everyone’s needs and the cost of what should be a free education is rising.

This consistent under-resourcing also means school teachers and staff are stretched to the brink, working as much as 16.5 unpaid hours per week, according to some estimates.

We need to be doing more than just saying thanks to teachers for all their work, we need to be offering higher wages and better conditions. 

Smaller classes, more support staff, less administration and teaching hours will all help to give teachers the time and resources to do what they do best: teach. This will also improve the quality of education that students receive.

The Greens’ plan will invest more in our local public schools with more teachers, genuinely free public education and better support for disadvantaged students:

• Investing $1.46 billion more into Victoria’s public schools over the next 5 years.
  
• Pushing for the Federal Government to increase funding to meet 100% of the Gonski standards.
  
• Making public education genuinely free by removing out-of-pocket school expenses for families.
  
• Stop private schools from getting more than their share of public money, by capping their funding at 100% of the school resource standard.
  
• Pushing for an independent school building authority, to ensure funding for new schools and upgrades are delivered transparently and based on need. 

• Establishing Student Voice in all schools – giving students greater participation in school decision-making.