With a federal election looming later this year, Bunbury Bishop Gerard Holohan has urged the Federal Government not to let Catholic schools fall behind.
Bishop Gerard Holohan has called on the Commonwealth Government to guarantee funding to Catholic schools will be maintained in real terms from 2013 to 2016. His call came as he opened and blessed extensions to the Dawesville Catholic Primary School that had been built with the federal Government’s Building Education Revolution funds.
He condemned as a myth the impression that only government schools serve the less well-off, pointing out that of the six most disadvantaged schools in Western Australia, four are Catholic while the other two are independent.
Bishop Holohan also called on the government to guarantee that funding:
l continue to be indexed according to the cost of educating a student in a government school
l be distributed by the Catholic school system to its schools on a needs basis.
He said he was “a bit anxious” that in a recent statement Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard promised only that no school would be better off in dollar, rather than real terms.
He said the new post 2011 funding formula would not be known until after the next federal election and pointed out that, historically, Catholic schools were established before state schools in an era when education was restricted to children whose parents could afford tutors.
He asked that funding be increased for Catholic schools serving those suffering real disadvantage. Important examples were Kimberly Catholic schools and Care schools.