5,000 signatures reached
To: Ben Carroll, Victorian Premier
Ben Carroll: Reverse your cuts to disability funding in public schools immediately!
The Victorian Government’s decision to cut funding for children with disability attending public schools is disgraceful and must be reversed immediately.
The Disability Inclusion (DI) program supports students with complex learning and wellbeing needs.
Ben Carroll and the state Labor government have decided to cut DI funding, leaving students with disability without the support they need and Victorian schools hundreds of millions of dollars worse off.
The cuts will leave too many students with complex learning and wellbeing needs in Victoria without essential supports, undermining equal opportunity in the classroom.
The cuts include:
- an estimated 7,000 students losing all their individual support funding over the next two years
- funding reductions of $3,400 for around 23,000 students in mainstream schools
- a 2.5% reduction in student-level funding rates.
All from a government that claims Victoria is the “Education State”.
Why is this important?
The cuts also create unfair workload expectations on already overburdened public school teachers, education support employees and principals. The government is once again relying on the goodwill and unpaid work of school employees to make up for inadequate funding.
With just six weeks of the school year remaining, the government is only now informing schools of the funding cuts. The cuts were made without consulting school principals or the AEU.
This decision is a disgrace and Australian Education Union members demand a reversal of the decision immediately.
Please sign the petition urgently.