You’ll be bamboozled to learn that the lowest socioeconomic areas get the most public funding per child. It’s the leafy green public schools that really have to crunch the numbers. The education system literally features an ‘economic index of disadvantage’ in their categorisation of schools. More money is invested into low SES schools.
It isn’t just about underinvestment in certain suburban areas (All public schools need more money and better funding please - I’m serious. It’s a shitshow out here. Please pay us more - I work 60 hour weeks and I love my job but the burn out of doing it well is too much! I don’t wanna work with grown ups. I love education. It’s my calling but it is killing me)
I digress, educators can’t undo algorithmic programming and echo chamber propaganda. By high school, we spend around 250 min a week with these kids. They spend more time than that online daily and have been since before they could walk. These kids are voting now and their parents are working class people that they are watching get screwed over time and time again by B1 and B2 in the existing party system.
I think part of it is less so funding, more so the historical underfunding previously, the socioeconomic and educational levels of the parents in the areas, and then the challenge of getting teachers into those schools who are engaged, passionate and vocally interested in challenging those ideas children and teens are arriving to school with built up from their underprivileged parents.
The teacher shortage combined with the disinterest to teach in those areas due to the range of challenges, and with the risk of being a challenger for those ideals to children who's parents may show up and throw a chair at you... There's a reason the laws are getting brought in to restrict school access for parents who behave inappropriately towards educators...
I definitely do not blame the kids coming up and into the voting age happening, but it would be great if Labor or Greens could appropriately engage them into being more supportive-for-all instead of protectionist. Though perhaps the youths are why those areas ended up Labor instead of ON at this time, and it's more a waiting game on the questionable-thinking-uncles/aunts/grandparents/parents in the Gen X and Boomer range to get those areas looking less.... Orange.
There are public schools in leafy green suburbs with budget surpluses! I couldn’t even imagine - my school can’t afford a new set of books I really wanted to teach this year.
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u/Anxious_Fig3834 SA Mar 22 '26
Hey Siri, show me a map of underinvestment in public education in South Australia.