The latest Report on Government Services has revealed WA has the highest overall student-teacher ratios in the nation.
The education section of the Productivity Commission report, released today, shows class sizes in WA have continued to increase at faster rates than other states.
WA primary school classes have the highest student-teacher ratios, while secondary schools have increased from one of the lowest ratios to one of the highest.
“This report is the first to show the effect of the Barnett Government’s cuts to the education budget in 2013/2014,” said State School Teachers’ Union President Pat Byrne.
“It clearly shows that while student-teacher ratios have been increasing in WA since 2010, they jumped significantly in 2014 in both primary and secondary schools.
“Student to teacher ratios in primary schools are the highest in Australia by a significant margin; in secondary schools they have gone from one of the best to one of the worst.
“The consequence of the higher ratios is an increase in class sizes. Teachers have told us that this has happened.
“What this means is less one on one attention for students, which has the potential to directly affect their learning outcomes.”
Ms Byrne said primary school class sizes had increased despite the Barnett Government reallocating $45 million from the secondary sector to the primary sector.
Ms Byrne said the ROGS report also showed that WA had the lowest proportion of students funded for disability in the nation.
“This means either that we have very few students with disabilities in relation to the rest of Australia, or that we are classifying WA students differently from other states and territories and are therefore not funding these students adequately,” she said.
The report showed WA funded 11,343 students with disability in 2014, which was 4.4% of all students in government schools. This compares with 6.4% in NSW and 9.0% in South Australia.
