Plagued by teacher shortages and staff burnout, Victorian public school principals are ratcheting up a campaign for more federal funding.
Victorian Education Minister Ben Carroll, Treasurer Tim Pallas and other Labor MPs were meeting with more than 50 public school principals at state parliament on Thursday.
The group is demanding their schools be funded to 100 per cent of the schooling resource standard (SRS), set out by the landmark 2011 Gonski review.
The federal government is negotiating new school funding agreements with states and territories.
Under Gonski 2.0 reforms, states are required to fund public schools at 75 per cent of the SRS and the Commonwealth chips in 20 per cent.
It leaves a five per cent gap.
In January, the Commonwealth reached an in-principle deal to give WA an extra $777.4 million over five years - upping its public school funding from 20 to 22.5 per cent.
WA would have to at least match the contribution under the deal.
It was the first of eight agreements that must be brokered by the end of 2024.
Australian Education Union Victorian branch president Meredith Peace said Victorian government schools were funded to 90.4 per cent of the SRS, the lowest in the country.
In Thursday's meetings, the union boss said principals made it clear to Labor MPs that Victoria's next school funding agreement must hit the 100 per cent funding benchmark to make up a $1.7 billion shortfall in 2024.
"We are losing teachers every day," Ms Peace told reporters.
"We need the federal government to step up."
Keilor Downs College principal Linda Maxwell said bridging the gap would provide an extra $3.2 million for her northwest Melbourne school of 1300 students and 100 teachers.
While she is not short of staff, Ms Maxwell said the funding boost would cut down on the amount of administrative work teachers are being saddled with.
"It's a waste," she said.
Kennington Primary School Principal Travis Eddy said his school of 620 students and more than 100 staff had missed out on more than $1.6 million a year over the past decade because of the shortfall.
His staff are leaving the profession due to workload-related burnout and it is proving extremely difficult to find replacements.
"Our recruitment numbers have gone from five years ago, pre-COVID, 100 applicants for teaching jobs to two," Mr Eddy said.
Latest figures in the Victorian Teacher Supply and Demand Report, released this week, show there were more than 26,000 vacancies across the primary and secondary government schools in 2022.
That was up from 16,600 the previous year.
The problem is predicted to get worse, with a shortfall of 5036 teachers across sectors forecast by the end of 2028.
Mr Carroll said about 8000 more teachers were registered in the state than three years ago and the Victorian government would make a "strong case" for a bigger slice of federal schools funding to go to the public system.
"We want to see the Commonwealth come down from 80 per cent (of its funding going to private schools) to 75 per cent," he said ahead of Thursday's meeting.
Australian Associated Press
