Parents meet Mark McGowan over Karratha schools

Parents angry over State Government education cuts met with Opposition leader Mark McGowan in Karratha last week

Parents and Citizens committee members from Karratha Primary School and Karratha Senior High School sat down with Mr McGowan and Mining and Pastoral Region MLC Stephen Dawson to discuss how their schools would be affected.

Mr McGowan revealed Labor's estimates Karratha schools would lose $923,245 in funding.

The figures indicate Karratha Primary School would lose $110,715 a year in funding, and Karratha Senior High School would lose $277,245.

Karratha Primary School parent and P&C president Amanda Rintoul she said she was concerned about the cuts.

"It's quite scary seeing the figures," she said.

Ms Rintoul said the teaching cuts would be significant for Karratha Primary, which has a high proportion of special needs students.

"I can't imagine how teachers can cope with more students," she said.

Karratha Senior High School P&C president Meredith Atkinson and treasurer Corinna Hall also attended, but said they were awaiting a school meeting at the end of the month to hear how the cuts would impact them.

Mr McGowan said Labor calculated losses based on cuts to school support programs, a long-term service leave teacher levy to be paid out of school budgets, cuts to existing teaching and education assistant positions, and cuts to future teaching positions.

Education Minister Peter Collier said the figures were skewed because they included the cost of teachers schools were expecting to get next year under the old teacher-allocation model.

"Because teacher numbers are remaining at the same level next year as this year, schools will be allocated teachers under a new formula," he said. Mr McGowan argued the figures were an accurate representation of the changes to school budgets.

"We're doing a comparison on what schools would have, and what they're getting - I think that's the only fair way to do it," he said.

"At the end of the day, schools all over the State are complaining about this - this is not some sort of Labor plot, it is led by school communities and we are supporting them." Mr McGowan said the cuts would have a greater adverse impact on regional schools.

"If parents are dissatisfied in the regions there's often fewer alternatives as to where you might send your kids to school," he said.

"The loss of aid and support in a regional community can be greater than in a city school because often there are higher numbers of aids and support in a regional school because of the social make-up of regional communities." Mr Collier argued the Government had heavily invested in schools in the Pilbara region, highlighting the new Karratha Senior High facilities.

"The state-of-art school cost $55.5million," he said. "Earlier this year I was delighted to open the $20.7 million Baynton West Primary School which is also providing a high-quality education for Pilbara students."