The Australian Education Union welcomed the Federal Government’s budget commitment to extend a highly successful literacy and numeracy program for schools with an investment of $240 million over 18 months. “This interim measure is necessary because the Literacy and Numeracy National Partnership was due to end this year,” AEU Federal President Angelo Gavrielatos said. “But the Federal Government must now turn its focus to the comprehensive overhaul of school funding recommended by the Gonski Review.

Read more: Literacy and Numeracy Funding a Good Interim Measure

THE federal government appears to have reneged on commitments not to impose a training market on the states, which must now consider extending public training funds to private colleges.

Under an agreement signed at last Friday's Council of Australian Governments meeting, the new national training entitlement must be ``accessible through any registered training organisation, public or private, which meets state-based criteria for access''.

Read more: Gillard, Evans and Combet show their true colours on TAFE funding.

THE Australian Education Union says a plan to increase training and remove the up-front costs, through HECS-style loans and a new training 'entitlement', could achieve the opposite of the stated policy intention.

Last week’s Council of Australian Governments meeting agreed to guarantee training up to certificate III, the typical level of apprenticeship qualifications, and to introduce HECS-style loans for government-supported diplomas.

Read more: Loans a 'wholesale' funding shift: AEU

The Australian Education Union said education ministers meeting in Sydney today needed to commit to the overhaul of schools funding arrangements and the urgent injection of $5 billion recommended by the Gonski Review. “This is an opportunity for ministers from across the country to demonstrate to students and families that they are serious about ensuring that every child receives a high quality education,” AEU Federal President Angelo Gavrielatos said.

Read more: Ministers Must Support Gonski Funding Reforms

Leaders of a national education reform movement, including Joel I. Klein and Michelle Rhee, the former schools chancellors in New York and Washington, have formed a statewide political group in New York with an eye toward being a counterweight to the powerful teachers’ union in the 2013 mayoral election. The group, called StudentsFirstNY, is an arm of a national advocacy organization that Ms. Rhee founded in 2010. Like the national group, the state branch will promote the expansion of charter schools and the firing of ineffective schoolteachers, while opposing tenure.

Read more: USA: Group Aims to Counter Influence of Teachers’ Union