NSW Education Minister, Rob Stokes, has talked-up the State Government’s $6 billion investment in NSW schools, which has been labelled woefully inadequate by an education expert and the Labor opposition. From The ABC:
Students across New South Wales head back to school in the next two weeks and about 9,000 of them will be walking into brand new schools and classrooms.
The six new and 11 renovated or upgraded schools are part of the NSW Government’s multi-billion-dollar strategy to ease the squeeze in overcrowded schools.
Education Minister Rob Stokes said the strategy is about future-proofing schools.
“We’re talking about a $6 billion spend over the next four years — bigger than we’ve ever seen in NSW,” he said.
“It provides a pipeline of new schools and upgrades right across NSW and it’s calibrated to where we know the growth is going to occur.
“These 17 projects … will add around 9,000 places for students across NSW and provide more than 400 new permanent classrooms.”
The Government’s total school infrastructure plan aims to eventually build 2,000 new classrooms across the state and create places for an additional 43,500 students.
But education policy analyst Blaise Joseph said the Government’s plan was “a very small step towards solving the long-term problem”.
“There’s going to be a massive increase in students going into public schools in NSW, especially in Sydney, and the problem needs to be solved soon otherwise there’s going to be lots of kids who can’t find schools,” said Mr Joseph, from the Centre for Independent Studies…
Labor Opposition spokesman, Jihad Dib, said the Government had failed NSW school students.
“In 2016 the Minister promised that he would deliver 12 new schools a year, in 2018 they opened two,” he said…
“As kids return to school next week there will still be a record number of kids sitting in demountables — more than we’ve ever had before.”
In 2016, the Grattan Institute estimated that NSW would require 213 new schools by 2026 to cope with a projected 175,000 (14%) surge in students:
Moreover, this schools requirement is only the tip of the iceberg given the ABS’ latest medium (Panel B) population projections have Sydney’s population ballooning by 94,000 people a year to 9.7 million people by 2066 – driven entirely by mass immigration:
Remember, Infrastructure Australia’s modelling shows that access to schools let alone hospitals, jobs, roads and green space will all decline as Sydney’s population balloons to a projected 7.4 million people by 2046 (let alone 9.7 million people by 2066, as projected by the ABS), irrespective of how Sydney builds-out:
All of this, yet again, highlights Australia’s dysfunctional population ponzi in action.
The federal government’s mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ policy has committed to a turbo-charged migrant intake ad infinitum:
And states like NSW and VIC – which take the lion’s share of migrants – are left to deal with the fallout, with residents’ amenity destroyed.
Former NSW Treasury boss, Percy Allen, had the right idea when he noted the following last April:
The Australian government is fiscally broke. It’s running a huge budget deficit that is adding to its interest bill…
To alleviate demand pressure on social services, education and health the government should halve the permanent immigration intake.
To avoid any racist overtones the humanitarian component should be expanded. Significantly slowing Australia’s population growth would also reduce pressure on house prices, city congestion and stagnant wages.
Exactly. The NSW Government and Opposition must step-up pressure on the federal government and demand that it lower the immigration intake.
It must seek to remove the demand pressures causing the overcrowding in the first place.
