Communities of Faith, Hope and Love.
We have had a successful Catholic Education Week with the highlights being the Dance Performances and community gathering on Thursday evening and our Catholic Education Week Liturgy on Friday. My observations in my time in Weipa, is that you are certainly a community of faith, hope and love!
We are often challenged as Catholic communities to be stewards of a sustainable future, to celebrate God’s creation and to commit to protect and sustain it. In my role as Principal, I have so much faith in the future because of the qualities I witness in the students I see daily. I see faith in their eyes, love in their touch and hope in their attitude. I believe in children: the fragile dreams of yesterday, life’s radiant reality today, and vibrant substance of tomorrow. I see children at work trying to make this world a better place for everyone – wonderful stewards!
I did want to address some information regarding funding that parents may not be aware of.
Catholic schools have been providing a quality education for Australian children for over 190 years. There are 1800 Catholic schools in Australia, with over 750,000 students (312 schools and 160,000 students in Queensland). Roughly one in five students in Australia are educated in a Catholic school.
However, when all forms of government funding are considered (that is, both Federal and State), Catholic school students receive substantially less funding per student than government school students.
This means parents and parishes have to contribute more through fees and levies despite Catholic schools striving to keep fees low so that they remain accessible to all children. Even when these contributions are taken into account, on average, Catholic schools operate at about 85% of the resourcing level of government schools.
So, when someone says that Catholic schools get more government funding than public schools, this is transparently wrong and should be challenged.
