Published: 2 April 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
On Monday, the Australian reported that the “federal ALP moved to shore up the Jewish vote in retiring MP Michael Danby’s seat of Macnamara, pledging $5 million for a feasibility study into a plan that would see [Mt Scopus] move its main campus to the site of the Caulfield Hospital.
“Labor’s proposed Caulfield Hospital redevelopment would see The Alfred hospital deliver new hospital facilities on a portion of the current site, with Mount Scopus relocating its Burwood campus to the remainder of the site and neighbouring Deakin University taking over the Burwood facilities,” the paper reported.
The fact that Deakin University is ready to purchase the whole of the Burwood campus is no surprise as it also needs to expand.
The Mt Scopus Burwood site is therefore very valuable and would easily pay for the building of a purpose-built state of the art primary and secondary school in the heart of the Jewish community.
This is not only good education policy but also good politics. And it is also more likely to happen than the thought bubble of Scott Morrison during the recent Wentworth by-election of moving the Australian Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The Jewish community of Sydney saw through this transparent bribe and was clearly able to distinguish between Australian political issues and international posturing. Education, on the other hand, is clearly front and centre in the minds of all parents, Jewish or not.
While moving Mt Scopus to Caulfield would reduce the need for vast majority of children to travel up to an two hours by bus each day - and therefore reduce the cost of the bus levies - the current financial burden of a sending a child to Mt Scopus will not fall.
If anything, it will increase.
The question that does need to be asked, however, is how "cashed up" is Mt Scopus after overcharging parents for many years? Parents currently are paying over $30,000 each year for a child in secondary school - and on top of that figure the school receives public subsidy of over $4000 per student.
The Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) is an estimate of how much total public funding a school needs to meet the educational needs of its students, as recommended by the 2011 Gonski Review of Funding for Schooling.
One has to ask how much does it take to educate a Jewish kid when the SRS for secondary students is currently set at $11,343 for primary students and $14,254 for secondary students in 2019?
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Labor courts Jewish vote with $5m feasibility study (Australian)
Federal Labor has moved to shore up the Jewish vote in retiring MP Michael Danby’s seat of Macnamara, pledging $5 million for a feasibility study into a plan that would see Melbourne's most prestigious Jewish school move its main campus to the site of the Caulfield Hospital.
The principal of Mount Scopus Memorial College indicated the school was banking on Labor winning the May federal election in a letter to old collegians and community members yesterday, saying the announcement means the 70-year-old institution “can start planning the Scopus of the next 70 years”.
Labor legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus made the announcement on Sunday with fellow Jewish community member and Mount Scopus old collegian Josh Burns, who is the ALP’s candidate for the seat formerly known as Melbourne Ports.
Labor’s proposed Caulfield Hospital redevelopment would see The Alfred hospital deliver new hospital facilities on a portion of the current site, with Mount Scopus relocating its Burwood campus to the remainder of the site and neighbouring Deakin University taking over the Burwood facilities.
A large proportion of Mount Scopus’s students travel for more than 25 minutes from their homes in the Caulfield area to Burwood, in Melbourne’s east.
In a letter to old collegians following the announcement, Mount Scopus principal Rabbi James Kennard said the move would have positive implications both for the school and the “broader Jewish community”.
Main image: Rabbi James Kennard (left and Federal ALP MP Michael Danby
