Chalkface playwright Angela Betzien on her fury at the money being pumped into the private system, while public schools ‘literally decay under our feet’
When thousands of teachers from public and Catholic schools joined forces for the first time in June to stage a mass strike over workloads, salaries and staff shortages, the playwright Angela Betzien marched with them. For a homemade sign made of recycled cardboard, she filched a line from her new classroom comedy, Chalkface, and wrote: “Pedagogy, not pedadogy”. Her six-year-old son, Wylder, using his experience as a pupil in a small government school in inner-western Sydney, wrote: “My favourite teacher is Miss Cusack and I support more pay for teachers.”
Chalkface is set in West Vale primary, an “entirely fictitious” school with a list of fundraising priorities that will be familiar to anyone who has seen the poverty in Australia’s public school system: decaying stairwells, asbestos requiring removal, concrete cancer, unflued heaters, threadbare carpet, flaking paintwork, dodgy wiring, leaking toilets, ancient air conditioning and unstable demountables.
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