Parents4ethics needs your help

[Lee]

To our NSW forumites,
We received the following email this morning.
Please help if you can.
Thanks
Lee

Hello

We are parents of children attending public primary schools in NSW. For some years NSW government policy has allowed children to opt out of scripture classes but has denied any teaching for those children during that weekly period. In a society in which many families do not subscribe to a particular religion this policy excluded a substantial number of children from learning. We therefore support ethics classes as an option for those children who do not attend scripture classes, and were very happy indeed to see them introduced last year.

We were extremely disappointed to find that, in response to a threat by Rev Fred Nile, Premier Barry O’Farrell is considering the removal of these classes either altogether or to a time slot not coincident with scripture classes (http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/ofarrell-b...729-1i4b8.html). Either one of these moves will take away our children’s opportunity to learn during the scripture class period.

Public opinion is in favour of ethics classes, as evidenced by media commentary (e.g. letters to editors, talkback radio) and the army of volunteers who run and teach ethics classes in public schools. In view of this, we are encouraging our members and any visitors to our web site (see below) to contact their state MP and Mr O’Farrell so that any decision on this issue can be made in light of community view points.

We hope that you will consider inviting your members to make their views on this issue known. They can do so by visiting our web site (http://parents4ethics.org/support-the-ethics-classes/) where they will be able to write a message and send this automatically to their MP (based on postcode) and to the Premier.

Thank you for considering this request.
Yours sincerely
Russell Wyatt
parents4ethics.org

[c2105026]

Thanks for this; I am a pre-service teacher studying primary education. When I can get myself organised i'll see if I can volunteer....

[FSM]

Email to local MP sent, I think.
I got the error "Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn't here." after the (compulsory?) step of emailing it to friends.

This ethics situation is just utterly ridiculous.
I think ethics classes should be the DEFAULT class, and you have to OPT-IN to scripture class. Let's then see how many parents (and kids) chose that option...

(Yes, scripture classes don't belong AT ALL)

Dave.

[Xeno]

Mods: Please move if necessary or delete if inappropriate, or edit this out if neither.

I have been given a current newsletter published by PrimaryEthics and thought some people here may be interested in the following, firstly for some information and secondly in case you know of someone who could help.

Originally Posted by Bruce Hogan AM, Chairman Primary Ethics

A more pressing issue for Primary Ethics at the moment is funding. Primary Ethics is an overwhelmingly volunteer organisation as are the providers of SRE classes. Unfortunately, even a volunteer organisation needs some full time staff, an office, phones and materials to manage all the matters surrounding volunteer recruitment, teacher training and mentoring and curriculum development to name just a few. Our vision is to be an organisation of around 4,000 volunteers with a small full time staff to support our volunteers and manage the quality and standards of the lessons and classroom experience of the children. Ultimately, we believe we can manage Primary Ethics with only 8 full time staff. Today we have one full time and one part time employee who do the impossible every day to keep our already 500 volunteers strong organisation going and growing. We need at least another two staff now but do not have the funds to employ them.

So how does Primary Ethics fund itself? The reality is that Primary Ethics, unlike the providers of SRE lessons, has no source of income. Through St James Ethics Centre and the generosity of two individual donors Primary Ethics can maintain its current staffing until April next year. Primary Ethics itself has no funds nor will any Government provide any as they do not provide funds for the provision of SRE classes. Our long term vision is to seek donations from a range of sources including corporates, individual philanthropists, charitable foundations and the general community. However, to do this requires the Commonwealth Government to allow donations to Primary Ethics to be tax deductible. Donations to the providers of SRE classes already enjoy tax deductibility status. For the past 10 months we have been pressing the Commonwealth Government to treat donations to Primary Ethics on the same basis as donations to providers of SRE classes. To date our submissions seeking equal treatment with SRE providers have been unsuccessful. We will continue to press for equal treatment and we are very confident that once tax deductibility is achieved Primary Ethics will be well supported by donors.

I am sharing our financial situation with you, our volunteers, friends and supporters, for two reasons. Firstly, because we realise that there is an understandable and widespread lack of awareness about how Primary Ethics is currently funded and how it plans to be funded in the future. And secondly, because our current needs are so pressing that we will shortly be seeking public donations via our website to help us manage while we continue to press our claims with the Commonwealth Government for tax deductibility for donations to Primary Ethics.

You may wish to contact your Federal MP about treatment of Ethics vs SRE in terms of deductibility of donations, or if you know of some suitably wealthy philanthropist who may be interested in assisting with a chunk of funding then please go for it.