Budget boost for education?

Press, 27 July 1989, Page 5

Budget boost for education?

By

JENNY LONG

Education is certain to be a winner in tonight’s Budget.

While other public sectors have faced cuts, the Government has made clear that education is a priority.

Pre-school education, earlier described by the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, as the “Cinderella of the system,” has been promised a significant boost.

Mr Lange has said there will be no reduction in levels of kindergarten funding, and that other pre-school services need increases.

This evening's Budget should show whether the Government has accepted the $250 million spending recommendation from the early childhood working group, chaired by Dr Anne Meade.

The Meade report said spending should rise from $9B million. Mr Lange declined last year to endorse the report’s funding recommendations, saying that the spending level could not be announced until all Budget needs were known. At the other end of

education spectrum, Government attention has focused on expenditure in the tertiary sector.

Pleas by universities and polytechnics for compensatory funding for increased student numbers have largely been ignored by the Government. Universities say they will be forced to respond by further curtailing the traditional open entry to university courses.

The Associate Minister of Education, Mr Goff, has told institutions that they should function more efficiently, and examine new ways of coping with more students. This could include opening for longer hours each day, or running a semester system. Tertiary students know they will have to make a greater contribution to the costs of their study next year. The extent of their fees rise, or the way it will be levied, is not likely, however, to be announced in the Budget. Primary and secondary

schools, grappling with the implementation of “Tomorrow’s Schools,” already have the broad outline of their funds for next year. Schools do not expect to be furnished with much detail this evening. Many school principals have said, however, that on the funding information they have so far been given, they will have less total money next year than has been provided in the past. More funding is needed for “at risk” children, such as those whose parents are unemployed, or who come from one-par-ent families.

The lack of help for children for whom English is a second language is also of concern to some principals. They say that classroom teachers have to spend a disproportionate amount of time with such children, and other pupils can suffer.

Further funding for the one to 20 teacher-pupil ratio is wanted by all principals.