Several hundred people have staged a mock funeral in Darwin to protest massive school funding costs. Source: AAP
SEVERAL hundred schoolkids and their parents have laid flowers on a coffin in front of the Northern Territory parliament at a mock funeral protesting massive funding cuts to schools.
The Country Liberal Party-led government will cut education funding by $250 million over the next four years, along with teacher positions, grants for special needs students and for extreme behaviour management.
The Labor opposition says this will promote overcrowding in schools across the NT and reduce the individual time and attention teachers can dedicate to each student.
"How anyone can say that special education should be stripped of teachers is a joke," said Matthew Cranitch, spokesman for the Australian Education Union's NT branch.
"How can you justify cutting teachers from schools that haven't had a drop in enrolments?"
Cutting funding from schools would increase the need to fund prisons and hospitals, said Tabby Fudge, a parent with two primary school-aged children in Darwin.
"The CLP may think they're saving $50 million, but what will be our future costs in regard to welfare, incarceration and health?" she said.
"Do we want to be a society that builds prisons or a society that builds schools?"
She said the added pressures on teachers would see them abandoning the Territory.
"If we allow the government to under-resource unopposed, this will result in burning out teachers, who will just move on," Ms Fudge said.
"It's hard enough to get professionals to work here in the Territory, we should not allow the government to punish those that do."
Opposition Leader Delia Lawrie said she never thought she'd see a NT government reverting to decisions that would entrench disadvantage.
"This isn't about savings, this is sheer and utter stupidity," she said.
The government has refused to sign up to federal Labor's school reforms, saying it's based on faulty financial modelling, and doesn't want the education of NT schoolchildren to be dictated by bureaucrats in Canberra.
Shadow Minister for Education and Training Michael Gunner said the government was playing politics in the lead-up to the election, but afterwards would most likely sign up to federal funding.
"It's terrible to kids in the meantime - they're making really bad decisions, the priorities are wrong," he told AAP.
"You should not cut into education; that's not where you should make your savings."
Education Minister Peter Chandler did not attend the rally.
He said in a statement that his invitation had been a "thinly-veiled threat".
Changes to teacher ratios were announced with the budget in May and discussed at length throughout the Estimates process where the net reduction was estimated at 66 teachers, he said, which has been revised to 35 as more student enrol.
"We're now seeing a conveniently-timed rally, three months after the announcement, but just eight days out from a federal election," he said.
"Scare tactics such as saying 180 teachers will be sacked and claims that schools... will be closed down are not only wrong, they're completely unfair."
