CSPWA Meeting with Minister Buti
As Marina has mentioned in her welcoming letter, staff and members of Council continue to regularly meet with our local politicians, both to ensure that they are aware of the challenges that face parents today but also to hear about the positive stories that abound in our system. Whilst not denying that teachers are having to deal with more and more negative behaviour from children and sadly from their parents, it is not all bad news. Many parents take their responsibility to engage in a positive way with their child’s school seriously, knowing that this will in fact lead to better outcomes for all. We need to pay attention to this and promote the positives as well as addressing the negatives.
CSPWA also take seriously our role in advocating for families who choose a Catholic education for their children in this state and so seek to bring to the attention of our elected members, the challenges that exist.
In recent weeks we have met with amongst others, Hon Tony Buti MLA, Minister for Education and had a very open and frank conversation. We questioned the Minister as to why WA is the only state in Australia which does not provide capital grants for Catholic schools? Capital grants are vital to ensure that not only can we build new schools where they are needed, but also to assist in maintaining and upgrading the schools already part of our system. The only way this can currently be achieved is to levy parents over and above what they already pay in school fees. You will all be familiar with the ‘building levy’ as a line item on your school fee schedule.
In an effort to assist you in having a say around some of the issues you may feel government should support us with, we are arranging a ‘Political Forum’ as part of our 70th Anniversary Conference on Saturday 8th June. We have invited politicians from the Labor, Liberal and National parties to participate both State and Federal. You will no doubt be aware that we are entering into election mode for both State and Federal governments and so it is vitally important that we ascertain from our elected representatives how they will continue to support Catholic education in Western Australian.
Whilst we should remember that we are indeed fortunate to live in a country will allows parents to have a choice in selecting the education which best meets their children’s needs, we also request that we are able to access a fair share of the taxpayers (which includes parents!) dollar to enable us to provide the best that we can for our children.
Lastly, we were delighted to receive from the Minister when we met, confirmation of our successful Lotterywest grant application. Nicole Beresford, CSPWA Liaison Officer did a fantastic job in writing the grant and we are grateful that we can once again, offer financial assistance to parents in schools outside the metro area to attend the conference weekend. To find out more about this please don’t hesitate to call us in the office.
As mentioned above it is so important that we take the time to celebrate our achievements both at state level but importantly within our school communities. We look forward to welcoming you all to our conference events and in particular to the Awards of Excellence in Building Positive School Communities for which nominations are now open.