More school budget cuts for 2015

More school budget cuts for 2015

Hundreds of Western Australian public schools have been told by the Barnett Government that their budgets for 2015 will be drastically cut, State Member for Fremantle Simone McGurk said today.

On the last day of school for 2014, school principals at hundreds of WA public schools were informed they will lose more money in 2015 than they were already anticipating.

WA Labor has been informed this information was prepared by the Department of Education two weeks ago, the Premier decided to delay its release until the last day of school.

Ms McGurk said it’s understood some schools will lose as much as $500,000 next year.

“This is a disgrace. It is a drastic new cut for hundreds of schools that they were not anticipating,” Ms McGurk said.

“Over the summer holidays school principals will now be forced to rejig their staffing and secondary schools will need to readjust complicated timetables for 2015.

“Principals now have no way to properly communicate with parents, students and staff how these cuts will impact them in 2015.

“It is deceitful and disgraceful that the Premier chose to hold this information back.”

Ms McGurk said the Premier chose to hide these drastic cuts because he did not want parents to know about the bad news.

“How is it that this new model is so flawed that the final figures could not have been prepared earlier,” she said.

“In 2014 Colin Barnett and Peter Collier presided over the worst year that public schools have experience in more than 30 years.”