So, more choice for those who already have a choice.

The mistake is in the thinking of the parents of wannabe private schooled kids.

Your taxes are not "your" money once paid. They are "our" money. Like roads, libraries and national parks, individual non-use of some aspect of the common wealth is not a reason for a refund. Public money should fund public schools to teach things the consensus finds necessary and proper. Optional extras are a private concern.

Public money should not fund private schools to teach other things.

In taking public money do private schools undertake to continue to accept the student if parents don't pay fees? If the child is expelled, to pay it back? If the child moves schools, to pass on the pro-rata remaining for the year? to take on new arrivals on short notice because expelled from some other school but legally *required* to go to school? To accept people of all religions, including antagonistic ones? To accept children of divorced parents?

In short, in accepting the public money that should go to the public schools (which *still* must accept the student if it presents), is the private school also accepting the unwanted responsibilities that public schools struggle to meet on that money? To accept public control of school management?

I expect not.

Middle-class welfare for wannabe private-schoolers who have pretension beyond their means.

Rusty

We are unique,

Your experiences with the education system are not unique, and I can remember reading of surveys undertaken of students, and one of their most common complaints was that teachers were not marking and returning their assignments quick enough, or were making few or no comments on the assignments.

This gave the student no guidance as to what to do, and it is questionable why so many teachers are teachers, when they really have no interest in helping the student.

The investigation into maths and science teaching in QLD schools revealed a total mess, almost beyond comprehension.

On average (and this includes both private and public schools), primary school teachers were only spending 5% (repeat 5%) of their time teaching science, and a high proportion of teachers did not use a textbook.

This meant that if a student didn't understand the teacher, the student couldn't use a textbook to learn from either.

Added to the disaster that is now maths and science in Australian education, English appears to be the next causality, as more students leave the education system barely able to read and write (with estimates that states such as Tasmania now have about 30% of the workforce regarded as being technically illiterate)

So while teachers ask for more and more and more taxpayer funding, most of which goes into their pockets or they spend with as much zeal as possible on imports from other countries, the education system is possibly at its worst level of competency in many decades, or perhaps since schools were first opened in this country.

The issue so often raised by teachers of federal government spending on private schools is just a smoke screen to hide the massive mess that is the education system.

Generally the discussion has taken no notice at all of the coming
problem of energy depletion, in particular oil based energy.
It has been calculated that somewhere up to 100 times the number of
farmers that we now have will be needed to supply food to the population.

Now just don't skim over this as an irrelevance as this is your
breakfast, lunch and dinner that is at stake.
Oil is used for fertiliser, transport to get it to the farm, operate
the farm machinery, then refrigerate and transport the food to you.

No, alternative fuels will not be available to do all this and the
lower level of mechanised agriculture will require many more hands on the farm.

So would it make more sense to concentrate on agricultural studies ?

The critics of modern education claim that there has been a major decline in standards over recent decades (though they are not really specific about when the golden age was) and then propose as solutions going further down the road that has been taken during the time that they allege the decline occurred. We have gone from a centralised system with teachers centrally appointed, a staffing formula, automatic pay increments, no mandated curriculum, no centrally prescribed testing other than at year 12 and students zoned to district schools to a decentralised system with local appointments, annual performance reviews for pay increments, principals with ‘buckets of money’ to spend as they wish supplied under a de facto voucher system, mandated curriculum, centrally prescribed testing and no zoning.

If there really has been such a big decline in student achievement, why do the critics not argue that we should return to the centralised system of administration and local control of curriculum that existed when they claim standards were higher? Surely, it could not be because they are ideoillogically motivated.