Peter Garrett's School Chaplaincy program will be expanded to an additional 1000 schools next year at an additional cost of $222 million. These school chaplains require no qualifications in education or psychology. Instead, they have to be endorsed by a religious organisation.
The debate about the separation of church and state, reports of proselytising and the distribution of homophobic publications to students have been reported many times in the press.
On top of this is the degree of waste of limited education funding. School chaplains have no ability to support schools in meeting their core goal - education students. They are not teachers, they cannot assess learning disorders, they have no qualifications in developing Aboriginal Education programs and they have no commitment to public education.
Deputy State Coroner Malcolm MacPherson recommended that every NSW high school with at least 500 students should have a school counsellor after a student's suicide. At the moment there is one school counsellor for every 1000 high school students (and one per 1500 primary students). Rural schools share school counsellors and receive no additional school counsellor time to compensate for time lost to travel between schools.
If Peter Garrett and Federal Labor were truly committed to their so-called 'Education Revolution', the first step would be to redirect School Chaplaincy funding to programs that make a real difference to children's learning, such as qualified school counsellors.
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