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The Forum > Article Comments > Public funds, private schools > Comments

Public funds, private schools : Comments

By Tom Greenwell, published 4/2/2011

A fair and intelligent funding system should not reward good luck in the lottery of life but seek to mitigate against bad luck.

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longweekend58,

You initially said, based on no evidence whatsoever, that I was opposed to private schools and to funding them. Now that I have supplied specific evidence showing that this is not the case, you say you do not know what my position is. I’ll sum it up this way: You have state aid to private schools because of the efforts of people like me who argued that you should get it. That really should be clear enough.

The only reason I mentioned the DLP was to indicate that obviously I was a supporter of the funding of private schools. In response you have chosen to extend the topics to critical comments regarding that party. I am not seeking to divert this thread even further, but I feel a duty to respond. The DLP was a moderate social democratic party that pioneered opposition to the White Australia Policy, that pioneered votes for 18-year olds, that supported land rights for Aborigines, that pioneered environmental concern, that spoke up for moderate trade unions, that opposed capital punishment, that worked for prison reform. I have made lots of comment on the DLP and you can find links to many of them on the thread:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2010/06/25/galaxy-52-48-to-labor/comment-page-14/#comments
I’ll leave it at that, except to point out that had parents of children at private schools voted for the DLP 40 years ago, they would have a lot more government assistance now. They chose not.

For you to accuse me of bringing in irrelevancies is hilarious. You are the one that decided to invent a set of beliefs on private schools to ascribe to me. You are the one that decided to go off on a tangent about the DLP, when my reason for mentioning it was completely clear. You are the one who claims not to know my position after I have explained it more than once.

Riddler,

Be as abusive, as nasty, as belittling and as insulting as you like. I won’t be taking instructions from you.
Posted by Chris C, Sunday, 13 February 2011 5:13:43 PM
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longweekend58,

If you were correct in saying that the CPI had increased by 741 per cent, then a teacher paid $11,400 in 1975 was paid $95,874 then in today’s dollars, meaning that contrary to your earlier claims, teachers actually have less purchasing power now than they did then- $14,068 less in this case, to be precise.

My CPI information has been sourced year by year form press reports when the information was released or directly from the ABS. The percentage increase in the CPI for each year since and inclusive of 1974 was 16.3, 14.0, 10.8, 9.3, 7.7, 10.0, 9.3, 11.3,11.0, 8.6, 2.6, 8.2, 9.8, 7.1, 7.7, 7.8, 6.9, 1.5, 0.3, 1.9, 2.5, 5.1, 1.5, -0.2, 1.6, 1.8, 5.8, 3.1, 3.0, 2.4, 2.3, 2.8, 3.3, 3.0, 3.7, 2.1, 2.9. If I make 1974 the base year and give it 100 and then multiply it by (1+ the inflation increase of each year), rounded off to one decimal point at each step, I reach an index of 743, very close to your claimed percentage increase of 741 per cent, but I have to include 1974 to do it and it is an index, not the percentage increase. If I take out 1974, logical given that I am starting with salaries as at January, 1975, the index is 651, which means the increase is 551 per cent.

Feel free to correct any year whose inflation I have wrong or my calculation.

I will return another day on the salaries question – unless you want to bring up a new topic again. But then you are “sure” I don’t understand what you are saying, just as you are sure that I think teachers deserve a 30 per cent pay rise, even though I said above, “I am not arguing that the salary should be returned to exactly $116,554, just that it ought to move in that direction”, just as you were sure that I was ideologically opposed to private schools and to funding them.
Posted by Chris C, Sunday, 13 February 2011 5:14:22 PM
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You have some serious issues to address, Chris. First, your posts are often about as 'clear as mud' and terribly confused, to say the least. Saying that YOU are partly responsible for public funding of private schools places you clearly in the box labelled 'wannabe' or perhaps even 'delusional'. The DLP is a party born out of a split with the labor party in 1955. It has been a long, long time since they even had representation in parliament, never mind an actual say or influence on anything policy related.

You are almost thoroughly tangential in your arguments, finding it difficult to stick to the topic at hand - 'private school funding' just in case you forgot. Your maths makes me wonder what level of schooling you had as well. 741% of 11,400 is 84,474 - not what you said. Your maths is torturous and illogical - not to say total garbage. But that too is an irrelevency to the topic at hand.

If you think that people misrepresent you then there is a fairly decent solution. Most people dont deliberately misrepresent others on forums and boards. The problem here is that you are exceptionally difficult to understand, you misconstrue facts and your maths and understanding of statistics are well... lamentable. You may well be in favour of Private schools, but you tend to hide it well behind your bluster and use of irrelevancies.

No one cares here about teacher salaries as it is irrelvant to the topic. And if there is a complete irrelvancy today, it is certainly the DLP.
Posted by longweekend58, Sunday, 13 February 2011 7:10:06 PM
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Longweekend,
There are private schools that don’t pay teachers according to performance, but if teachers don’t perform in private schools they can be dismissed more readily.

2 ways.

- If parents complain to the principal, the teacher or teachers involved can be dismissed because the school does not want to lose students.

- If parents do begin taking their children out of the school, the principal may also dismiss teachers because there are not enough children left to teach (and I personally know of a school that lost so many students that the principal had to dismiss teachers and then begin teaching classes himself).

Compare that to the public school system.

I also know of a parent that made a serious complaint to the principal of a public school over the phone, and the principal literally laughed at them.

The parent dug their heels in and took the matter to the regional office for education. After several letters and phone calls a meeting was arranged with a staff member of the regional office, and finally the regional office investigated the matter at the public school.

The teacher involved seemed to disappear somewhere, and the principal took early retirement the next year.

If the parent had not been so determined that the matter be addressed, it would never have been investigated within the public school system
Posted by vanna, Sunday, 13 February 2011 7:42:45 PM
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It's a real shame that people have wasted time on irrelevant issues, when we should be focusing on attacking the author for his ridiculous analysis of the situation.
Posted by Riddler Got Away, Sunday, 13 February 2011 8:18:11 PM
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longweekend58,

I made a comparison of the pay of a teacher at the top of the unpromoted scale now with the pay of a teacher at the top of the unprompted scale in 1975. The teacher at the top in 1975 had taken only seven years to get there, whereas a teacher at the top of the unpromoted scale now takes nine years to get there.

The salary paid in January, 1975, to a teacher with seven years’ experience was $11,400, $72,414 in today’s dollars. A teacher with seven years’ experience today is paid $69,946, $ 2,768 less in real terms than 36 years ago. So, there are some teachers whose pay is not only lower in relation to that of other occupations but also lower in purchasing power.

You have outlined changes in the structure of the Australian economy again. I told you the first time that I understood this. It does not alter my point: the relative decline in teacher pay has been accompanied by a decline in the entry scores for those training to be teachers. In other words, because teaching has become less attractive as a career compared with other careers, fewer able people opt into it. That is the issue that affects the education of children. It does not mean that the education system has suddenly become a disaster area, but it does indicate an area of concern.

“Between 1983 and 2003, the average percentile rank of those entering teacher education fell from 74 to 61.” (page ii)
and
“For women, teacher pay fell from 114 percent to 103 percent of non-teacher pay between 1983 and 2003. For men, teacher pay fell from 108 percent to 91 percent of non-teacher pay.” (page 20)
(Andrew Leigh and Chris Ryan, “How and Why has Teacher Quality Changed in Australia?”, September 2006)
Posted by Chris C, Tuesday, 15 February 2011 3:48:32 PM
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