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The Forum > Article Comments > Funding private schools a public good > Comments

Funding private schools a public good : Comments

By Stephen Elder, published 1/4/2015

To those associated with the sectarian discourse surrounding a vote to forever legislate Catholic school funding at 25% of the cost of a state school education I say, stop looking for an argument and study the facts.

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Stephen,

I don’t wish to canvas the arguments regarding support for non-government schools, except to say I have no problem with it. Indeed, the reason non-government schools get government funding is that people like me fought for it 40 and 50 years ago via the DLP. (You can find a lot more reasoning and facts in my posts at https://theconversation.com/australia-should-follow-chiles-lead-and-stop-funding-private-schools-33310.)

However, I do wish to make some points.

Catholic schools, while not like the elite private schools, are still skewed more to the upper half of the SES distribution than government ones. It needs to take more lower-SES students. That means capping its fees in return for government support.

The government system takes a disproportionate share of students with special needs. The non-government schools, including the Catholic ones, need to do more here. That means that loadings for disadvantage have to be paid in full to all school, not adjusted downwards as they are under the Gonski model according to the wealth of the neighbours of the students in the school.

The Catholic system to operates at a lower cost per student because it has a lower proportion of special needs students and its teachers have worse teaching conditions. The Gonski review was an opportunity to rectify this problem and produce a long-term settlement of teaching and learning conditions in all sectors throughout the nation. Unfortunately, neither the AEU nor the IEU was up to the task.

The solution to funding has been on the table for years now, and it’s not Gonski. It’s in my submissions to the Gonski review (“disappeared” from the web by the Abbott government) and to the Senate inquiry into school funding (No. 42 at http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/School_Funding/School_Funding/Submissions).

There ought to be a joint approach from the CEOs, the AEU, the IEU and the low-fee private schools, but no one seems to have the leadership to bring this about. I have tried to get both unions to see this, but unsuccessfully: the AEU is forever stuck behind the Maginot line ready
Posted by Chris C, Wednesday, 1 April 2015 8:45:24 AM
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There has been a lot of nonsense written about the 25 per cent rule. It is arbitrary and illogical, but no more than the Gonski model’s method of cost determination. The reaction to it has been disproportionate, and all the state government has done is put an existing practice into legislation.

The Gonski model, which provides three quarters of the government funding of non-government schools has several flaws (its supposed use of so-called high-performing reference schools to determine costs, its continuation of the Coalition’s socio-economic funding model, which it renamed “capacity to contribute”, its ignoring cost differences between states when setting one national schooling resource standard, its inclusion of inefficiency-promoting size loadings, its variation in support for disadvantaged students according to not their needs but the income of the neighbours of the other students in the school), while the Victorian model, which provides only one quarter of the government funding of non-government schools, has just one flaw (the 25 per cent rule), but the Victorian model gets condemned and the Gonski model gets praised in article after article.

The Gonski model of the SRS and loadings – one of the two things the Gonski panel got right – is copied from the Student Resource Package model introduced to Victorian government schools by Labor in 2005. The Victorian Financial Assistance Model is more needs-based than the Gonski SES model and provides the path to a more socially integrated education system. The public education lobby, which failed to propose any model at all in the Gonski process, is right to criticise the 25 per cent rule, but it ought to embrace the rest of the Victorian model as superior to the Gonski plan, and federal Labor ought to take its lead from Victorian Labor.

I have said much more at:
http://www.theage.com.au/comment/state-labors-big-mistake-on-school-funding-20150315-142q07.html.
Posted by Chris C, Wednesday, 1 April 2015 8:51:12 AM
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The last sentence of my first post, as posted said,
"I have tried to get both unions to see this, but unsuccessfully: the AEU is forever stuck behind the Maginot line ready to fight the last war that it has already lost, while the IEU is … who knows?"
Posted by Chris C, Wednesday, 1 April 2015 8:53:21 AM
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They Take 25% of the money lets see 25% poor kids from local area invited to School.
Posted by Aussieboy, Wednesday, 1 April 2015 9:57:00 AM
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Governments shouldn't fund private enterprise.
Posted by Cobber the hound, Wednesday, 1 April 2015 11:06:18 AM
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Every kid, be thy the child of city or remote, dole bludger or billionaire parents should get exactly the same, & not one cent more or less, funding than any other child.

Any other breakdown of funding is discriminatory.
Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 1 April 2015 2:55:53 PM
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