Western Australia's education minister announces smart glasses will be banned from all state schools.

Australia’s wealthiest private schools continue receiving public funding despite mounting budget pressures, raising questions about whether government spending on education reflects need and the broad...

Australia’s wealthiest private schools continue receiving public funding despite mounting budget pressures, raising questions about whether government spending on education reflects need and the broader public interest.

At a P&C meeting at my kids’ school last year, it came up that our P&C was covering the cost of things that I would consider essential: literacy teaching resources. A motion was made for the P&C to cover this substantial cost (close to $10,000), and of course every parent in the room agreed. But I was appalled to learn that education funding could not cover essential resources – what happens at schools without an active P&C? The thought came up again recently as I was undertaking a personal project: writing a 25,000+ word research essay on school funding in Australia. A friend pointed me to the P&C’s Queensland 2024 submission to the _Better and Fairer Schools (Funding and Reform) Bill 2024_. There, I learnt that in 2024, P&Cs across Queensland contributed $75 million to the education system, with most of this funding used to cover systemic funding gaps in public schools. **The submission provided a list of what these Queensland P &Cs purchased or contributed to in 2023, with highlights including:** * 81% of P&Cs contributed to school infrastructure (playgrounds, tuckshop renovations, sheds, shade sails) * 69% contributed to books and learning resources * 51% contributed to furniture and fittings * 36% of P&Cs provided a donation to the school budget. When in this wealthy country did public schools stop being government-funded and start being propped up by community fundraising? Or has it always been so? And what happens in communities and schools without these means? Recently, a local school launched a P&C fundraising campaign to raise money for clean, safe bathroom facilities. The campaign highlighted the impact that worn-out school infrastructure can have on students, with some children reportedly avoiding the bathrooms because of their disgusting condition. As a result, students experienced discomfort, difficulty concentrating in class, and, in some cases, health complications from delaying bathroom use. You can still donate if you’d like to ensure children can use sanitary toilets at school; in fact, I know of two other Brisbane schools with similar campaigns currently – so you’ve got your pick of options! I heard from a P&C executive member at another Brisbane school that their P&C was funding basic school costs to the tune of $300,000 annually, contributing to cover resources, basic maintenance, and even staff. Now this leads to the next question: just who is running most of the cake stalls, fetes, tuckshops, book drives, uniform shops, Father’s Day stalls, Trivia Nights, Scholastic book clubs and after school snack stalls to keep books in the library and toilets flushing? Well, Mums of course! Once again, it is women taking on most of this unpaid, essential labour because public schools are widely and systemically underfunded, won’t be properly funded until 2034 (unless there’s a government change of course; then it may never happen at all), and are trapped in a biased and broken school funding system. **Women dominate across volunteer P &C positions** **in Queensland** I couldn’t easily find information on who is doing the on-the-ground volunteering at P&C fundraising events, though if my kids’ school, and schools around me are anything to go by, it’s mainly mums, some lovely nannas and a few dads who pitch in. Looking across the P&C websites for 50 schools across Queensland, I found that out of a possible 217 Executive P&C roles, all voluntary, 172 of these roles were filled by women, and 45 by men. Meaning 79.3 per cent of the P&C executive volunteers are women, and 20.7 per cent are men. While I haven’t run the numbers, it’s a state that’s likely repeated across all states and territories in Australia. This means that, yet again, women are holding the broken system together. Women spend nights, weekends, and holidays trying to understand the school budget, what is needed, how we can get it, and making sure the children don’t miss out. We already have language for the mental load inside a household, but we don’t yet have it for the mental load of a public institution, and P&Cs, run in vast majority by women, fitting this in around paid work and their own kids, are exactly that: an unpaid, unrecognised, largely female workforce that Australian governments have quietly come to depend on to keep public education running. It is deeply unfair, and it is also completely unsustainable, with cost-of-living pressures and more families having both parents working full-time, meaning the capacity to volunteer is diminishing. When that runs out, who will fill the gap, or will we finally fund schools properly and stop relying on the goodwill and mum-guilt of thousands of women? **_You can read Cate’s full comprehensive investigation onAustralian school funding here._** Share this P&Cschool fundingwomen's work by Cate Gilpin 11 hours ago ## Stay Smart! Get Women's Agenda in your inbox * Email * Email This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Δ ## Latest news ### 7 in 10 Australians say government has responded too slow to ‘national crisis’ of domestic violence ### Our new report reveals a workplace visibility gap for ambitious Australian women ### The taxpayer-backed AI startup leaving Australia, as women’s health founders push to stay ### Australia is taking aim at social media algorithms. Could it help protect women and girls? ### My uterus has wrecked my mental health for two decades. At 36, I’m finally evicting it. ### Podcast: Why it’s time to quit being nice

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**Many single women – even if they are content in their singlehood – face a unique set of social pressures that are hard to shake off, writesMaddison Sideris, _Deakin University_ in this article republished from The Conversation.** Being a single woman isn’t the social taboo it once was. Singlehood seems to be on the rise, with more single person households, and more women choosing to marry later in life, or not at all. It could even be viewed as trendy, among growing online movements to boycott dating apps and go “boy sober”. So is the stigma attached to being a single woman well and truly gone? My latest research suggests not. I studied two women’s experience of singlehood over the course of 17 years, from their late teens to their mid-30s. Both Gabriella and Suzy (pseudonyms) spent long periods of their adult lives unpartnered, and their experiences show how the identity of a “single woman” still carries a negative stigma that’s hard to shake. ## ‘I feel that others see me as a spinster’ The stigma of being a single woman dates back to the 17th century. It was around this time the term “spinster” – originally used to describe women who worked in textile spinning – was widely adapted to describe unmarried women. Spinsters were seen as a problem in the patriarchal society of the time. Known as “feme sole” in English common law, they had many of the same legal rights as men, including the ability to own property, whereas married women did not. They also defied the idea that a woman’s worth lay only in her value as a wife. Nonetheless, spinsters who weren’t from wealthy families were at an economic disadvantage and often restricted to lower income occupations. Even those who were financially secure were granted lower social value than their married counterparts. Although the term feels outdated, my participant Suzy described feeling this way in her early 20s: > I am worried about being alone, not having anyone to live [with] because I cannot live with my parents forever. Even though I know I am still young at 22, and I am not ready to settle down, I feel that others see me as a spinster and that I am already off the shelf. I thought things had changed nowadays. Both Suzy and Gabriella worried about societal expectations of them, which they felt were characterised by a linear transition from school to work, to buying a house, to getting married and settling down. Their own lives transgressed these expectations. For instance, when the women were in their early 30s, Suzy went back to studying while Gabriella moved back in with her parents. Research shows traditional markers of adulthood are increasingly being postponed due to economic pressures, changing social attitudes, and people choosing to stay in education for longer. ## Society rewards couples The stigma of singlehood has mostly been researched among older women, with recent work demonstrating singlehood is more acceptable up until the age of 30. This feeling was echoed by my participants. Gabriella described being able to resist the stigma in her 20s, before more of the people around her started to couple up: > I’m in this phase of my life in my mid-30s now, where I think it’s accumulated and now I feel really lonely […] I used to be ably to defy it, never really let it get to me, and I was always very positive and stuff, but now I’m just a bit more sensitive, a bit more conscious of it. Historically, society has been ruled by the tenacity of the “couple norm”, which is the belief that living in a couple is a superior, more natural way to live. Women have more options than ever before, and many choose to stay single. Yet the negative spinster stereotype prevails. Getty Images This norm stems from the construction of a hetero-patriarchal society that has long been upheld by social and legal institutions that reward couples. The legacy of this norm is upheld daily through culture, including in the plethora of books, TV series and films centred on finding “the one”. This culture helps to perpetuate economic inequalities for single people. For instance, Gabriella, who moved back in with her parents during COVID after a break-up, worried she wouldn’t be able to attain her dream home on a single income. > Everyone that I know is in a couple, and I think their success in building their house and their nest and all that stuff, has happened because they’ve been able to leverage each other. Similarly, Suzy described getting financial help from her parents to freeze her eggs at age 34. Both participants explained how singlehood also sustained an emotional burden, such as through them having to continually defend and justify their single status. As Suzy said: > [People ask], ‘Oh, why are you still single?’, I guess just implying, ‘what’s wrong with you?’. And I never really know how to answer that in a way that isn’t going to cause drama by me saying something really sassy back, or in a way that doesn’t make me feel or look real sad. Although a growing number of women today are choosing to be defiantly single, the couple norm remains pervasive. And many single women – even if they are content in their singlehood – face a unique set of social pressures that are hard to shake off. **Maddison Sideris, Associate Teaching Fellow, Sociology, _Deakin University_** **This article is republished fromThe Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.** Share this relationshipsocial stigmasociology by Women's Agenda 2 hours ago ## Stay Smart! Get Women's Agenda in your inbox * Email * Name This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Δ ## Latest news ### We stood up against Big Tobacco. Gambling, alcohol and junk food should be next ### Skyrocketing rental costs stop women and children leaving violent homes: new data ### Small steps employers can take to keep great talent who also happen to be carers ### Still we reach: Why humans travel to the moon as the Earth’s on fire ### How I’m raising my 3yo daughter in Gaza as a widow in a grey city ### How an International Court judge thinks about hope

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The announcement this week that CSIRO are to cut 350 research jobs is another damning indictment on Australia’s ongoing failure to prioritise research and development.