Those who argue against private school funding have no problem with private doctors, publicly funded by Medicare, private pharmacists, publicly funded by the PBS, and private childcare centres, publicly funded by childcare rebates because they recognise that public purposes can be served by private institutions.

Other OECD countries have no problem with private school funding. At least 21 OECD countries fund private schools (Education at a Glance 2014, p 249). Denmark spends $US6,393 from government funds (by purchasing price parity) per student in a private school. Sweden spends $US10,028. Finland spends $US9,281. 30 per cent of the government-funded schools in the UK are private. In New Zealand, Catholic schools are integrated into the public system. In France, the government pays the salaries of the teachers in Catholic schools. The difference between Australia and other countries is not in the fact of funding of private schools, but in the method and conditions.

In the 50 years the public education lobby has spent some arguing against public funding of non-government schools, the proportion of students attending them has increased by half. It’s time that lobby reframed the debate as being not about who owns the school but who has access to it.

At least in Victoria we have the Andrews Labor government, which has not only committed to a record extra $3.9 billion in education spending over the next four years, mostly on government schools, but also to a genuine needs-based funding model for private schools, the Financial Assistance Model, which funds students in private schools according to their individual needs and the resources of the school, not according to the wealth of the students’ neighbours, which is what the Howard/Gonski model does.

Readers can find a much more extensive discussion in my posts at:
http://www.theage.com.au/comment/private-schools-and-their-bankrupt-propaganda-20150506-ggv133.html.

David Robertson,

"To claim that if the additional 634,068 students in non-government schools between 1973 and 2012 were in fact educated in government schools, costs to governments would have been $2 billion less annually just does not make sense when the Productivity Commission's 2015 Report on Government Services showed that average government expenditure in 2012 – 13 was $15,703 a student in a government school compared to $8,812 a student in a non-government school, a saving to the taxpayer of almost $7000 a student, or $8.6 billion annually."

Does that include the cost of tax breaks?

I agree with most of this David except the execution, my model would share the same bucket of money between parents and then allow them to chose based on merit!

To make it inherently fair; I would raise the tax threshold to around $75,000.00 Then supply the funding as a child endowment which like pensions and benefits, would be treated as taxable income to ensure that those who need the assistance are the ones who get it!

Eliminating state government from this source of federal funding would likely force them to give more autonomy to school districts; which if followed through to a logical conclusion; would free up around 30% of government money for additional coalface funding.
Rhrosty.

Those who argue against private school funding have no problem with private doctors, publicly funded by Medicare, private pharmacists, publicly funded by the PBS, and private childcare centres, publicly funded by childcare rebates because they recognise that public purposes can be served by private institutions.
NO Public money to any of these
I find it funny how the right push for user pays on everything except what might affect them
IF there is a perfectly good public school in your district no money to Private, It only builds social divides anyway go ask a high school kid going to public school what they think about the kids going to saint ... we are building class distinctions at the grass roots get rid of them NOW
If no public school in your district then we could do an one off for every private school make it an exception not the rule
Also NATIONAL curriculum With our mobile workforce now kid do move to other schools get it standardized across australia

Aussieboy,

At least you’re consistent. You are the only person I have ever come across who is.

Public money will continue to go to private doctors, private pharmacists and private childcare centres because no other advocate from the public education lobby sees the slightest problem in the public funding of private bodies, other than private schools of course. No one as ever explained the inconsistency either, which is fair enough as it is beyond explanation.

David Robertson says that the “divisive public private schooling debate needs to stop”. Yet his many assumptions, half-truths and errors will only encourage the debate to continue. He needs to back up his criticisms of Connors and McMorrow’s work - but maybe he should read it all first.

In producing alternative evidence Robertson has combined two errors. Firstly he refers to averaged school costs. Averages might be useful if each sector enrolled similar students, but they clearly don’t. Data available on the My School website now makes it possible to compare similar groups of schools across sectors. Secondly, he uses Productivity Commission figures - but the Commission’s expenditure figures for education are inflated by the inclusion of the user cost of capital … for government schools alone. Robertson is not comparing school apples with apples.

Hence his figures on the claimed savings created by non-government schools, apparently $8.6 billion, are wrong. If their students transferred to public schools enrolling similar students the additional recurrent cost might be a third of that figure – and may not exist if all school costs are included, something we’ve never completely done.

Much school funding of his preferred schools is ineffective. The actual investment made by parents by paying fees is not an investment. Government schools which enrol similar students get similar results for much less. The over-investment, by both parents and governments in non-government schools, is nudging close to $4 billion each year. He might say that parents are happy to do this....I'm not happy that governments are partners, when so many schools are under-funded.

But I’d have to agree with his concluding paragraph about focusing on needs - but for students, not so much parents. We were on the way to achieving that with the Gonski review, remember? No, the debate isn’t over: in the light of what we now know about schools it has only just begun.

Chris Bonnor