Lindy Nolan

Promotion of Public Education, POPE, stood loud for public education from the late 1990s into the new millennium in NSW. Its actions focussed on the obscene government-funded wealth of the richest elitist schools, exposed through its own research. This effectively narrowed the private education target, to broaden the base for support. POPE gathered media attention and support through street theatre and speeches at school- gate-protests at Newington, Trinity Grammar, The Kings School, and at the Head of the River boating regatta. It distributed nine Class Action pamphlets a year to the Teachers Federation’s councils and annual conferences. Between 250 and 350 were mailed out (that’s in an envelope with addresses and stamps, LOL, before LOL was invented). It researched and warned of Thatcher’s school academies, which pre-dated US charter schools and NAPLAN-driven Local Schools Local Decisions here. And it ensured a former NSW Uni campus in suburban Oatley was not sold to Trinity. It’s now Georges River Senior College.