A rally of teachers, education assistants and school support staff has demanded that the West Australian Liberal government reverse a $280 million budget cut to state school funding or face industrial action.

On 20 August, state education minister Peter Collier announced that 150 support staff would go, along with 150 education assistants and 200 staff in the Education Department’s central and regional offices. Just four days before the announcement, he had told 6PR radio that there was “no allocation, no indication and no desire” for redundancies in education. Collier later defended his statement, claiming that he had misunderstood the question, believing that the interviewer was “referring to teachers”.

However, information gathered from school principals by the State School Teachers Union has revealed that more than 300 teachers’ jobs will also be axed from 2014. At the same time, student numbers are expected to increase by 18,000 over the next two years in the country’s fastest growing state. Class sizes will increase, support programs will be cut, and students with special learning needs will suffer.

While Collier has attempted to spin the reform as “delivering equity and efficiency”, state Premier Colin Barnett has told a parliamentary committee his government could go even further and force small schools to join larger campuses, or close schools altogether.

Kevin Davey, an education assistant for 15 years, told the ABC that the cuts will have the greatest impact on vulnerable students.

“You’re talking about children with autism, Down syndrome, kids who have severe anaphylactic shock, epilepsy, things like that where you need someone one on one with those kids to make sure they’re going to be okay”, said Davey.

A principal, who did not want to be named, told the Sunday Times that the cuts would cost large senior high schools between $400,000 and $1 million.

“This is the biggest hurt to public education in the many decades I’ve been involved in education”, he said. “There is all sorts of talk about downing tools … For a lot of people, this will be the first time they have ever downed tools. People are saying that they have never been willing to down tools for pay rises and so on, but for this, they would be willing to.”

After having knocked back an additional $671 million in federal funding for state schools, as part of the Gonski plan, the state government intends to slug vulnerable students and their families with new fees. Each child of a 457 visa holder will be charged $4,000 annually to attend a state school, and TAFE fees are set to increase by up to 400 percent next year.

Angered at the cuts, 500 education assistants and school support staff walked off the job at lunchtime on 3 September to rally outside state parliament in pouring rain. At 4pm, they were joined by 1,500 teachers, who were addressed by officials from the State School Teachers Union, United Voice and the Civil Service Association, as well as state opposition leader Mark McGowan and federal education minister Bill Shorten. McGowan and Shorten’s pledge – that an ALP government would do better – received a lukewarm response from teachers, who have for years battled with big class sizes and poor resources.

The rally issued an ultimatum to the Barnett government to reverse the cuts or a face a campaign of industrial and political action by teachers.