In 1961, 241,000 signatories for a National Education Petition were presented to the Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, calling for Commonwealth funding to state schools. This was the culmination of a long campaign begun in the 1940s, to encourage the Commonwealth Government to fund certain programs in State schools. To this day such programs are funded by the Commonwealth Government. This number of signatories was a record which was only broken in 1993 by a petition calling for private health insurance to be tax deductible.