The Principles:
- The Primary mission
The Primary mission of schooling is to form men and women who, in today’s world, will be able to give the best of themselves for the good of society and take his or her place in the community. - A-Duty
Schooling is a child’s duty to him/herself and to society, and society’s duty to itself and its children. - Subsidiarity
The principle of subsidiarity is the social doctrine that responsibility and authority reside at the lowest appropriate level and that higher governance is subordinate to lower.
The DLP supports the following policies:
Support for State governments to re-introduce autonomous teacher training colleges’ programmes. This would be approved by and supervised by each state’s Education Department in order to ensure that the emphasis in teacher-training courses be placed upon the practical aspects of teaching.
Introduce per capita voucher funding for all schooling to ensure a just distribution of taxes that are levied and allocated for education. This will safeguard the inalienable right of parents to choose, without financial penalty, the kind of education or moral upbringing their children shall receive. It will also give parents an effective veto over school policy and curriculum decisions that infringe parental standards and values.
Voucher-based funding for schools and other learning centres to encourage educational diversity. It will promote greater localisation of educational institutions and their administrations. It will also provide avenues for the development of education-based cooperatives managed by the people most directly concerned with the process and outcomes of education at all levels: parents, teachers, and in later years, students themselves.
Federal funding for the education of students attending non-government schools to be based on an equitable distribution that counteracts the gross imbalance in current State funding. It currently advantages wealthy parents using better-financed government schools at the expense of struggling parents exercising their fundamental right to choose non-government (in most cases less well financed) schools for their children.
A higher education deferred payments scheme with full tax deductibility of contributions when deferred payments are met.
Oppose performance based teacher assessments that fail to take into account students’ backgrounds and socio-economic positions when assessing teachers.
Maintain and extend the current school chaplain programme, and re-introduce religious instruction in schools with an “opt out” option for parents who wished to do so.
The DLP believes in freedom of information in education in order that the public might be permitted to freely access, distribute and comment upon the states’ Study Authority’s various key learning areas’ (subjects) documents that are used by schools and teachers to prepare units of work for our children.
Re-introduce a suitable phonics program as the main method of teaching reading in Australia.
Home Schooling:
The DLP recognises that parents are the primary educators of their children and are responsible for choosing the educational method best suited to them. This may be participation in government, private or catholic schools, or home schooling. The DLP supports the provision of a voucher system which ensures the equal treatment of all students regardless of the choice of education provider.