Yet another Chris Bonnor 'article' that quickly morphed into an attack on non-government schools. Ho Hum! If it wasn't such biased, unsubstantiated nonsense it would be quite amusing, really. The unfortunate part is that the piece contains some valid comments about My School, but they get lost in the usual diatribe.

Well done, Chris.

You are one of the very few rational voices supporting poorer kids. And supporting State schools.
It's scary how easily those heading up the well-funded schools sitting on valuable land can get their views published. I am constantly disheartened by the many loud and strident voices urging more and more support for the wealthy schools. Shades of the USA or Brazil or almost anywhere, really.

Where are the education professors who say they care about disadvantaged schools and the kids in them?

Where are the education bureaucrats who supposedly care about State schools?

The Whitlam Government was supposedy going to supply funding according to need. That failed- torpedoed by the Catholic bishops.

The Building the Education Revolution program entrenched wealth again: tragically so.

Poor fellow, my country's disadvantaged kid!

Good to see a considered response by Ian D to the issues raised in this article. It is the depth and dialogue we would expect from someone in his position. Must have once been a rugby player with a fixation about the players and not the ball.

I seem to be noticing a steady trickle of stories about people in elite schools behaving inappropriately with school-kids. One recent article has a deluded house mistress imagining herself a 'sex goddess'.

Why are these stories hushed up? Why can't we find out where they originate?
The elite schools trumpet their successes and bury their failures.

It's a pity too that we get private and public set up as two monoliths whereas the truths are found in the detail. Selective State schools and some others resemble some of the middle of the road Catholic and religious schools.

It would also be fascinating to find where educational bureaucrats and unionists send their kids.

Gillard has been allowed to get away with murder, both during her time as DEEWR minister, and now by placing Garrett in charge of DEEWR and our school system.

The school my children attend, a state high school, has not improved one iota during the ALP years in Canberra.

Neither has it progressed from the incompetence of the Qld state education minister.

In fact, all the changes that are imposed, simply wash over the school and it carries on as if nothing had happened at all.

Oh yes, I forgot, the school reports are now simplified and say nothing at all with the straight A-F captions and identical computer generated comments.

A great step forward worthy of being called an 'education revolution'.

Sadly, the staff remain the same. And so does the principal, a clueless careerist who fears those better equipped than herself, in foresight and qualifications.

Chris Bonnor and Phil Cullen should co-operate on an article about the parlous state of education in Australia.

Sadly, the AEU and its affiliates are nowhere to be seen in this. Neither politicising their members nor the parents. And from the other half of the school community, ACSSO and its affiliates are grovelling before the Commonwealth and remaining mute, while nodding their heads in forelock-tugging subservience.

I don't know why private school advocates pretend so very much. But neither do I understand why so few parents even begin to question just how poorly the schools are run, and how poorly the policy for 'education' serves us all.

It's been a very long time since the ALP supported public anything, never mind 'education', but they have completely abandoned any claim to it with Gillard's farcical pretences.

A wikileak from within DEEWR would show that they only employ those who are committed to undermine public education. That started under Howard, but Gillard enthusiastically carried it on.