January 2023

Welcome to 2023 – a year of immense challenges for the State School Teachers’ Union of Western Australia and of great opportunity for public education. In this, the SSTUWA’s 125th anniversary year, it is an incredible honour to succeed Pat Byrne as president of the SSTUWA; though I will admit it is also a little disconcerting to follow such an inspiring and dedicated servant to public educators and public education.

In a recent radio interview with 4BC, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said students should learn about the atrocities suffered by Indigenous people in Australia. Historical events such as massacres should be part of the Australian history curriculum. Mr Albanese added it was something that should be done without feelings of shame from non-Indigenous teachers.

In this story, I share my personal trajectory as a teacher experiencing public- private partnerships (PPPs) in the Brazil countryside and urge stakeholders to reflect on the problems involving such partnerships to education. In addition, I reflect on how such PPPs are a result of the lack of financing in education and on how important it is for stakeholders to advocate for enlarged budgets in the sector in the context of the Transforming Education Summit.

Amid a string of national and state-wide award nominations and multiple wins (including the top school prize at last year’s Australian Education Awards), it’s safe to say Bunbury Primary School had a good 2022.

Every election, state and federal, is an opportunity to draw attention to the gross inequity of Australia’s bizarre schools funding system. No other developed country funds schools the way we do. We are the world leader when it comes to giving public money to private, fee- charging schools. And we languish near the bottom of international rankings when it comes to the percentage of education funding we give to our public schools.

Last year saw a succession of headline- grabbing climate disasters, from unprecedented heatwaves drying Europe’s rivers to catastrophic floods in Pakistan and Australia and the most powerful storms to hit Cuba and the USA

We had the most incredible year in 2022 with one of toughest and most unusual General Agreement processes I can recall.

As the new school year dawns upon us I am delighted to take up the position of your new SSTUWA senior vice president. I am excited and looking forward to representing all of our members, and advocating for public education, working alongside the senior officer group which comprises of SSTUWA President Matt Jarman, General Secretary Mary Franklyn and Vice President Sharmila Nagar.

Did you know the words you are reading are printed on recyclable paper? We did the maths to ensure we made the paper choice with the smallest environmental footprint for our magazine, using a Perth-based printing company to reduce transportation mileage.

The State School Teachers’ Union of Western Australia welcomed the announcement of a new Education Minister in December’s cabinet reshuffle, with the division into separate ministerial portfolios of early childhood education and training suggesting the state government is giving education a higher priority.

The state government’s desperate plans to fix the state’s teacher shortage will not address the underlying issues in the public education system, according to the SSTUWA. The union said the government’s plan to send under qualified teachers into short- staffed schools (announced late last year) was a short-sighted move which had the potential to cause more harm than good.