“Over the past eight years, the NSW Government has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on botched reforms and increasing paperwork for teachers,” Mark Banasiak, high school teacher and SFF Upper House candidate said.

"They've spent our taxes on a faulty IT system, unnecessary curriculum reforms, fancy re-branding and endless data collection".

“At the same time, country students lack text books and miss classes due to teacher shortages”.

“Teachers are spending less time with students, and education is going backwards”.

Mr Banasiak called on the NSW Government to abandon its fancy reform agenda, and divert the money to the education essentials they have neglected – books, computers, lab equipment, school building maintenance, air-conditioning, teacher aides and financial incentives to attract staff to underperforming rural schools.

The SFF candidate took aim at the Department of Education’s bungled so-called LMBR reform, which was supposed to provide schools with an all-encompassing computer system to manage school operations.

“The NSW Government has spent more than $750 million on a system that has not benefited schools at all”
“Ironically, this is roughly the same figure as the maintenance backlog for schools.

“The system was a basket case from the beginning”.

Mr Banasiak said this is typical of the reform agenda pioneered by Liberals and Nationals.

“Over the past eight years this government has presided over the most convoluted and confused delivery of education the state has ever seen,”

“When they are not wasting tax payers’ money on pointless rebranding, they are confusing school leaders, teachers and school administration staff with conflicting ideologies on school management”.

“The so-called Local Schools, Local Decisions reform, which was touted to give more flexibility to schools, in reality it has brought a whole new layer of unnecessary bureaucracy to teaching,"

“Teachers are spending increasing more time on paperwork and less time preparing and delivering quality lessons to our students”.

“At the same time, country schools in particular are falling apart. We don’t have basic teaching resources for our students. It’s time we revert back to basics in school spending”.