.........'some parents work harder to advantage their children,'
So I take it that those children of drug addicts, carers, single parents etc, are less worthy of an excellent education?

I have no problem with private schools, but when public schools are asking parents to pay a 'voluntary' contribution, it is clear to me that funds should be diverted to public schools, not given to private schools, to cover this shortfall. After all, parents with children at private schools have made the decision to put their children there, when there are government schools nearby.

Perhaps if a school wants to be independent, then it should stand on its own two feet and fund itself. The market would then decide whether it was a viable operation.

I wish to thank Kevin for reminding us that facts should not get in the way of a good story.

I’m not referring to his quotation of that old saying, but to the rest of his article.

Donnelly cites OECD research that “proves” that “Australia is one of the most egalitarian countries in the world”. Note that “in the world” includes the A-Z of the world’s poorest countries, from Albania to Zimbabwe. But let’s look at child poverty across the OECD. In Australia 14% of children live below the poverty line (2008 OECD figures), compared to rates like 3.7% (Denmark) 5.4% (Finland) and 7% (France). In fact (if you don’t mind my saying that Kevin), 24 out of the 34 OECD countries had a lower rate of child poverty than Australia.

Donnelly argues that it is “also the case” that the “current socioeconomic status (SES) model of funding” (through which private schools receive Federal recurrent funds) “is based on need”. Yes, and mothers’ milk comes from mothers. So what? Is Donnelly seriously going to challenge the fact that public schools do the heavy lifting, that as a system, public education has a much larger proportion of socially and educationally disadvantaged students than either of the Catholic and “independent” systems? So why should the cost of educating these students benefit non-government schools?

Even if it could be argued that the Average Government School Recurrent Cost is a fair basis for funding non-government schools, how can he defend the “funding maintained” provision that ensures that no private school will lose funding even if the fact is that they should?

Opposition education spokesperson Christopher Pyne’s seat of Sturt is an example. Nine out of the 14 private and Catholic schools in the Sturt electorate have “funding maintained” status in respect of their recurrent funding from the Commonwealth. For example, St Ignatius College was entitled to receive 56.2% of the Average Government Student Recurrent Cost (AGSRC) in 2008, and is maintained at that level despite the 2009-12 entitlement being only 36.2% of AGSRC. On average, there is (continued)

...a difference of 10.7 percentage points between what these schools’ current real share of AGSRC should be, and the percentage at which they are being maintained by the Commonwealth Government’s unfair funding formula.

Donnelly says that “Australian research also proves that socioeconomic background is not the most influential determinant of educational success or failure…” What research? The speciousness of Donnelly’s fact here is immediately obvious when one looks at this qualifying comment: “…equally as important are factors like student ability and motivation, teacher effectiveness, school climate and the quality of the curriculum”. Only a person with a Doctorate would have the insight to disassociate socioeconomic background from student ability and motivation, and those in-school factors that are determined by where and in what community a school is sited.

Another “fact” cited by Donnelly “is that most of the growth in (private school) enrolments over the last 20 years or so has been in low fee-paying non-denominational schools serving less affluent communities.” Yet the Teese study of changes in enrolment shares over the two decades 1986-2006 demonstrates “that the greatest increase in the proportion of students attending private (including Catholic) schools has occurred in high SES localities, while no increase at all has been registered in low SES localities”.

Donnelly writes that “state and federal governments spend millions every year on programs designed to strengthen educational outcomes, especially in literacy and numeracy, for under-performing and at-risk groups of students.” Here he unwittingly endorses one of Teese’s observations, namely that the government funding of choice, by moving more highly achieving students out of the public and into the private system, creates the need for extra funding to address the resultant increase in low achievement in the public system. Research by the NSW and SA education department, and by Teese in Victoria, shows that low SES students do better in schools where there are higher SES students than in schools where there are concentrations of low SES students.

So, to paraphrase Donnelly, who would have believed that the good Doctor would be at it again, trying to justify educational inequality and privilege?

Atlarak,

Intelligence has a lot to do with genetics, and work ethic has a lot to do home environment. Educational results are a combination of intelligent and hard work. So in simple terms, a child from a disadvantaged area with unskilled parents that don't care whether he does his homework or not is unlikely to succeed even with the best education in the world.

Those calling for funds to be diverted from well performing schools to disadvantaged areas until there is an equality of results are unrealistic. You cannot make a silk purse from a sow's ear.

Leaving aside the issue of equity (how many swimming pools/tennis courts do Melbourne Grammar et al need?) here we have Kevin Donnely, a warrior of the free market, defending middle class welfare for rich parents in the name of education outcomes.
If the underlying philosophy underpinning this travesty posing as a serious article wasn't so obscene, it would be laughable.

I have taught in a disadvantaged (lower SES) Government school for 14 years, and in an advantaged (upper SES) Government school for 6 years. My disadvantaged school had extraordinary supplementary funding which was routinely squandered on incompetent educational practise, while my advantaged school does not have access to anything like the funding in my old school, but the money that is there is well-directed and the school achieves as well as, if not better than, our counterparts in the private school just down the road (minus the exorbitent fees they pay at that school). Money doesn't equate to good teaching. I don't now why the AEU constantly talks about improving education by throwing more money around. The incredible ammount of wasted money in the educational IT sector for example is hard to describe. Why do we have to have wall to wall state of the art IT in every area of the school? I use an 8 year old program for example that is finally debugged and very user friendly, yet our new ultra-colossal PC's can't read the old software, so now I have to find upwards of $5,000 to teach exactly the same course I was teaching 7 weeks ago. This is a good use of educational money? If funding was redirected from private schools to government schools, I fear it would be wasted on a lot of hokey-polokey, faddish philosophically dodgey pseudo-educational programs. Government schools need the checks and balances which market-driven Private schools tend to provide, though I am sure my old lecturer Dr Teese would disagree with me. I guess Richard has been at Uni while I've been in the classroom for the past 20 years, so what would I know?

I agree with almost everything which Kevin wrote about Socialist social theory, except his claim that "Australian research also proves that socioeconomic background is not the most influential determinant of educational success or failure;"

That is complete bunkum.

Generally speaking,smart people inhabit the highest echelons of society, while less intelligent people occupy the lower. Smart people are usually upwardly mobile, while people with low intelligence are downwardly mobile. There are exceptions, in the highest echelons of society, a dumb person can maintain their social status through social connections or family fortune.

If there is a high degree of upward social mobility in Australia from the lower socio economic group, it is because Australia ia attracting a high degree of intelligent immigrants from third world countries (usually Asian), who are smart and who may initialy inhabit the lowest social strata in Australia, but who consider education a gift from God, and who take advantage of it to further their social advancement.

But there are other immigrant groups who appear to be of a low intellectual development, who are notoriously disruptive in classes, a problem to teach, not prone to educational attainment, and who fill our jails and dole queues after they leave school.

Thank you phil and mike for your demolition job on Donnelly’s narrative. I find it amazing that he didn’t source his claims. It isn’t hard, Kevin, but it might reduce the scope of your arguments - because you’ll need proof.

Is it just me or does anyone else sense growing desperation from Kevin and his (dwindling) ilk as the Gonski recommendations loom? Short of both time and evidence he has recycled his whole cultural warrior language: ideologically imposed egalitarianism, Marxist critiques, elites, utopians, cultural-left. (I think he invented the last one).

Alarmed about the current debate, he tries to isolate his opponents and set up countless straw man arguments. In Kevin’s world, concern about equity is only held by teacher unionists and academics who want to recreate a socialist utopia. He makes no effort to address the essential findings of Teese’s report – or the research commissioned by Gonski.

This approach lets him off the hook: he doesn’t have to mount any reasonable case to keep the current system of schools, one which even the mainstream media is increasingly questioning. All he needs to do is dredge up half truths, but even these fall away as he is proven wrong yet again. Notice that he no longer argues that Catholic schools are the poor cousins.

But he’ll continue to get published, as he should. After all, which media outlet wants to be accused of being part of the cultural-left conspiracy?

I've always thought that schools and hospitals provide the perfect instance of the enduring unfairness of our "democracy". Children and sick people would seem quintessentially to exemplify the beautiful "idea" of equality--that all children and all sick people are inherently equal. But this is not so. These pathetic instances, the innocent and the infirm, are also fundamental to why we should never surrender to privatisation--which would institutionalise inequality "again" without a pang. Indeed the neoliberal ideology is such that it would represent such a dispensation as a virtue, as it was ever rationalised in the past.
There should be public schools and hospitals and that is all, and were that the case you can be sure that the wealthy would make certain these were world's best practice and no waiting lists! There is no rationale that can justify privileged education or healthcare except a retreat into barbarism. Yet this is the kind of inexorable "progress" that's getting the upper hand in Australia.
This sentence says it all: "Instead of throwing more money at disadvantaged schools a better option is to make such schools more effective and to create the conditions where teachers can deliver a quality education based on the premise that effort and ability can be rewarded".
Note the implication that the problem isn't funding, but laziness, which smears the whole demographic as inherently lazy or dysfunctional.
Note too the tireless demonising of the evil "academic cultural-left", imprecated no less than four times, as if it's responsible for the educational malaise that does indeed hold sway. But the malaise is not the work of the intellectual left (sorry, tautology), it's the work of populist governments trying to reconcile antithetical ideologies.
Absolutely, we need to institutionalise meritocracy, and that would close half our universities and bloat the dole queues, but that means no unfair advantage "and" no lowering the net. That's reconcilliation.
The neoliberals can spin the ball all they like, but no child deserves a superior or inferior experience of education, and yes, outcomes. Nor does our society need to perpetuate the class distinctions that are thereby popularly inferred.

Squeers,

I know that you hanker for a socialist utopia, but in Australia parents are allowed to spend discretionary money on their children's education.

The government spends on average 70% on independent schools per child than it does on public schools, which actually frees up funds for disadvantaged public schools. Removing funding for independent schools simply drags everyone down to the union dominated public school level and adds billions to the tax payers cost.

Shadow Minister,
my position really isn't that simple, as I've tried to show above. I acknowledge the failure, naive utopianism and villainies of doctrinal socialism. I don't hanker for a socialist utopia.
Our society operates in the tension between liberal and socialist capitalism, within which each compromises on its theme, and I'd hate to see either ideology in its pure form become dominant, as it currently threatens to on the side of neoliberalism. If prosperity was based on equal opportunity there might be a case for privilege based on worldly success, but it's based on fortune and corruption that will only ever accommodate a minority. If we are to remain a "society" rather than devolve into amoral economic Darwinism, we have to base our political economy on principles first, and I don't mean the survival of the fittest in rude liberal-economic terms.
Where socialist capitalism has it wrong at the moment imo is in its devotion to both economic growth and redistribution, as though they were unalloyed goods. It's the unlimited pursuit of wealth as an institution, on the one hand, and the demand for concomitantly higher living standards for all, on the other, that creates all the problems. The modern ideologies of left "and" right thus drive our disastrous progress. The capitalists resent taxes and obstruction and the socialists resent drastic inequality. In wealthy countries like Australia where compromise is most marked, we end up with a nation devoted either to egotism (right) or sloth (left).

To reiterate, "There should be public schools and hospitals and that is all". This isn't about economics and I'm against people being maintained in slovenly lifestyles as much as I'm against unconscionable privilege. It's about "principle", the principle that the innocent and the infirm, rich or poor, should be subject to the same social provisions. Whether liberals like it or not they are part of a society, and don't forget that the myriad commodities and innovations and services they enjoy, including in health and education, are driven by the whole consumer base and wouldn't be there if the ideology of individualism dominated as it once did.
Education and health facilities should come under the aegis of Humanist principle and not economic rationalism. But we are more and more slipping back into free market viciousness, unprincipled and ultimately destined for neo-aristocracies and feudalism.
Children also need protection from their often tyrannical parents, who indoctrinate them at home and in private faith schools and ideological elitism.
Education is, or should be a domain of human rights and equality in any civilised State--but the neoliberals don't believe in civilsation.
Most parents choose private schools and hospitals for naive reasons, or to feel superior, I suspect, but it's the thin end of the wedge.

Squeers,

Education is a right in Australia. The government ensures that everyone gets access to a decent education, your proposal that people should be banned from using their own money to improve their childrens' education reeks of Orwellian government control.

The base reality is that those that educate their kids privately save the state a fortune that can be used on public schools.

SM,
a premise of the article here is that there's no qualitative difference between public and private education, yet you're saying parents should not be "banned from using their own money to improve their childrens' education", so there is an advantage to private education, qualitatively and/or in terms of advantage?
If there's no measurable advantage in going private, then why do we need private schools at all? If there is an advantage it's unethical. Wealthy parents could put their resources into improving the public sector (same with hospitals). Why do we have to have educational apartheid, based on means rather than colour (though of course many wealthy parents see it as a good investment merely in that it protects their kids from the riff raff, or secularism, or "mass" culture, or sundry reasons that boil down to bigotry and double standards.
If the wealthy classes want to improve their kids' education (more likely brainwash them, though there are noble exceptions), let them homeschool or hire a tutor (I was hired in taht capacity once, and only once, to tutor a spoiled and under-achieving kid who was nevertheless headed for Oxford in his father's footsteps).
In any even, I'm not saying anyone should be banned from trying to help their kids, I try to help mine, just that they should do so within an educational dispensation based on equality and human rights rather than apartheid.
Private and privileged schools are indefensible, and in any event in the modern era just another expression of the market and credulous consumers.

"those that educate their kids privately save the state a fortune".

Fib!

There is a massive subsidy granted to tax funded private schooling that is not added to the equation you propose SM.

After that subsidy comes the cost to the community of a largely failed education system based on an old industrial model Taylor would have been proud of, that barely even whispers the word 'education' at our children but does blare 'schooling' at them on volume level 11.

Donnelly is known as a rightwing neoliberal free marketeer. There lies his real interest, it is not actually education he is concerned about. That is merely a convenient vehicle for him to drive to cloak his ideology in 'thoughfulness'.

I am with Squeers here. I was half listening to The Drum the other night, when Reith was blathering on about him hoping that privately funded patients would sign into private hospitals to save the state hospitals costs.

He must have an excess of cash, because if you are seriously ill, and foolishly sign in to a private hospital, then before your body is bled of blood, your wallet will be bled of cash and credit.

Health insurance is not any sort of insurance at all.

Neither is 'private education' any sort of fair egalitarian notion either.

It is amusing that Donnely uses Latham's foolish 'ladder of opportunity' phrase, because, of course, a ladder is a fine analogy here.

Only one person at a time can safely climb a ladder, it has to be set at a specific angle to work, and it needs others holding it from slipping while the favoured one climbs ever upwards.

Ladders of Opportunity suit the wealthy, and exclude others from the sharing the rungs, reducing them to waiting at the foot of the climb, to hold the wealthy upright in their stratospheric clamber.

That said, state schools as currently configured and run are a sham and a shameful offering and must not be allowed to continue as they are.

Let's start by examining the leadership, or failure of leadership, from principals, unions and parent bodies.

mike-serve-the-people,

The fact that some schools get more than they would be allocated under the SES model does no more than demonstrate the flaws in the SES model. The SES model funds schools, not on the basis of the school’s resources, but on the basis of the wealth of the other people who live in the streets that the school’s students come from. A poor student from a wealthy area reduces the school’s funding, while a wealthy student from a poor area increases it. The SES model penalises low-fee schools for having low fees; therefore, they not funded under the SES model, but under the previous Labor model of the education resources index. You would think that Labor supporters, and I’m not saying you’re one, would want their own model back and use the current so-called “overfunding” to demonstrate the failures of the SES model instead of accepting the SES model as good and then using it to complain about so-called “over-funding”.

In any case, both the SES model and the AGSRC formula are dead. There is no doubt that the Gonski Review will have recommended a system based on the costs of educating particular students. Whether or not it has accepted my model remains to be seen. Links to my submissions are at:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=13201&page=0

The most remarkable feature of the whole saga is the total failure of the federal AEU to realise both the golden opportunity and the dark threat presented by the review. The opportunity was to devise a funding formula based on an explicit staffing ratio and thus put all schools on a sustainable footing with a long-term settlement of teacher workload and class size issues. The threat was that the e-comic fashionalists would get their way by divorcing education funding from inputs, something the Allen Consulting Group did in its report to the review. The federal AEU failed to take the opportunity and to resist the threat.

Squeers,

"a premise of the article here is that there's no qualitative difference between public and private education" No it isn't. It is well known that the independents schools get better results. The point the author was making was that funding wasn't the prime determinant.

Human rights implies minimum rights to all, not equality. And equality generally means equality of access. I have the right to buy a porsche, not the right to own one.

TBC,

The cost to the state per independent student is far less than public students. That is independently resolved. There are huge amounts left out of the public side of the equation as well, such as the inherent property value of the schools.

The cost to the tax payer per independent student is less than a public school student, that is acknowledged even by the labor government.

Only a neo-lib would bother about this:

"such as the inherent property value of the schools."

What of the housing value to the community of all those pleasant green acres of frqeuently state donated lands the plush private schools inhabit, often in desirable areas?

That is not the real argument SM, or would you like to discuss the gigantic subsidy to road hauliers with the provision of 'free' public roads also?

You do indeed have the right to own a Porsche, so long as you have the ability to pay for it, and the shallowness to desire it, that is open to us all.

You scrape the barrel of laughs when you quote anything the ALP says about education. They would say that, wouldn't they? They all send their children to private schools these days, to escape what the politicians between them have created.

TBC,

"You scrape the barrel of laughs when you quote anything the ALP says about education."

So the libs, the ALP, and treasury are all wrong and you are right?

Puleez!

SM,
the premise may not be explicit but it's implicit in that the author never makes the assertion and cites no evidence that private education is superior to public. Indeed he couldn't make such an assertion because there's no credible evidence for it. Indeed, taking into account the relative advantages and disadvantages, the public system arguably offers "better" and certainly more egalitarian outcomes, notwithstanding that Australian public schools receive almost the least funding in the OECD.
Further:
"private schools are able to provide their students with better resources and more access to technology because they have more money. And on the whole private schools take fewer students with special needs, fewer indigenous students and fewer students whose first language is not English.
Meanwhile, public education cater for all, including high and low-achieving students. They are required to keep students with behavioural difficulties within the system until they're 17 and students with disabilities or learning difficulties are accommodated and provided with support". Read the whole article: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/public-v-private-school-its-not-as-cutanddried-as-you-may-think-20111212-1or0s.html

Private schools are elitist in that they filter out "undesirables", and so nurture and perpetuate a small-minded mindset devoted to spurious notions of difference, status and superiority that carries on beyond the school gate.

On Human rights, I don't invoke any formulaic notion of such rights as you allude to, but assert that when it comes to education and healthcare absolute equality ought be the norm.
I might add that neither I nor any "cultural-left academics and teacher unionists" I know of mean equality of outcomes. Like most of the article it's innuendos against the "cultural left" are unfounded. No one is demanding equality of "ability and intellect" or "guaranteed success", "especially in education".

SM, perhaps dig out some works by Chris Bonnor and Trevor Cobbold and have a look at what they do with the information.

I am amused though to see you defending Swan and Gillard as educational whizzkids.

The ALP has many strings to its weathered bow, and I include the abysmal record of state ALPs in the demise of public education, and the equal promotion of state subsidised schools, erroneously known as 'private' schools.

The rot started with that great underminer of public education Gough Whitlam as he bought DLP votes and it has continued unabated ever since those dark days.

Latham at least understood what turncoats and fifth columnists his party colleagues had been/are but had no idea how to resolve the betrayal, beyond his flash-in-the-pan verbal assaults on private schooling.

Gillard has swalled the entire rightwing agenda hook line and sinker with her rather pathetic attempt at a 'revolution'. But then, she is a natural fit in the rightwing of the ALP, which has never-ever been a leftwing party of change, rather a rightwing party of amelioration and sectional interest.

So, yes, I am pretty well convinced that I am indeed right, and Swan, Gillard and the Lib-Nat coalition of priviliege is quite wrong.

But you and I have to accept that this is a contested area, and there is no real room for agreement. One either supports privilege bestowed by ATO fiat and gifting, or one does not. Education is but one area of the overall debate.

Besides, neither type of school really educates children with what they regard as anything the least bit useful beyond basic abilities to read and write, so the overblown debate about supporting private schools is really little more than a debate about 'adults' asserting their right to claim status in society.

I hardly think that every child who passes through the private system has a guarantee of 'success' as measured by what our community seems to value.

There are many who fall by the wayside, even after mater and pater have spent squillions, and that will always be the case.

Goodoh.

Squeers,

That the author did not comment on the quality of public and private schools is because it was irrelevant to the point he was making.

Your view of what goes on in independent schools shows that you have no idea what so ever. The majority of independent schools are not high fee charging, and with the reduced government support have equivalent or sometimes less and still on average get better results compared to comparative public schools.

While most private schools are not selective, given the low level of government funding, they are not equipped to deal with severe disabilities, (public schools for the disabled get up to $40k per student), and the ability to discipline children with the ultimate punishment being expulsion means that disruptive pupils do not spoil the education of the others, and pupils know that there are consequences for behaviour such as truancy and not completing homework, which does not happen in public schools.

TBC,

That Whine Swan and Juliar are sufficiently literate read a basic balance sheet and see that supporting independent schools makes sound financial sense does not make them educational "Whizzes" only not as stupid as the greens.

The utopia of equal education for all has never been achieved even in the communist countries, and can comfortably rest with other ideals such as "world peace" for all.

SM

I suppose you support the private car industry existing?

Thought so.

Now, 'SM, should private car owners be subsidised by governments to own private cars?'

'Yes Blue X, that makes sense. Otherwise public transport would be overflowing, and the state could never find the money to put in train lines, buy buses or replace trams'.

'But those who own Jags get a bigger subsidy than those who own Mazda 121s SM'.

'Well Blue X, governments cannot help it if some car owners are lazy and didn't save their pennies to buy a Jag.'

'There is no reason for everyone to expect governments to ease them all into a Jag, so long as they can get around, Blue X'.

Thanks SM, I thought so.

SM:
"Your view of what goes on in independent schools shows that you have no idea what so ever".

SM,
Against my principles I let my first wife have her way and our first two kids spent two years in private school; an Anglican school with moderate fees of about 5k each per year. After my wife died I had a relationship with a private school teacher and was privvy for a couple of years to all the goings on she was privvy to. Later I married a teacher and we are together today. In between times I've done most of a graduate diploma in teaching (high school), including prac, but decided it wasn't for me. I've spent the last few years however teaching on a part-time basis at university. During this time I've had four children in State schools, primary and high, and I've had an abiding interest in education, and the travesty that it generally is. I'd say this gives me some idea of what's what?
What is your expertise on the subject grounded in btw?
The "point" the author of the article is making is in fact nothing but a blunt ideological instrument; a marketing drive for privatisation generally.
Apart from the fact that a private education requites little more than hubris, to pupil and parent alike, those naive enough to be conned by the marketing ought to be aware that all privatisation, once it becomes dominant, leads to the degradation of the service or vocation it's commercialised. The pressures of competition and the demands of corporate salaries and shareholders will insure a three-tiered system ranging from Dickensian to a truly triumphant elitism.

Wackford Squeers aplenty might become teachers again, and the poorest will have to pay for their ministrations, and we can go through the whole wretched process of rescuing the innocents victims.
But I'm sure you'd call that progress.
...Perhaps you have shares in the industry?

I forgot to mention, SM, I also did my prac in a private school--felt like quite the worm in the bud!

Hurrah Wackford Squeers!

The SMs of this world care nothing for others.

See how he supports a subsidy for the ownership of Jags?

There is no end to the self interest of some.

TBC,

The comparison would be the government giving everyone a free holden barina worth $13K or offering a subsidy of between $8000 for a small car and $3000 for a jag.

And people complained that it was unfair that some people bought Jags and that either people could only own Barinas, or that the government should not subsidize other cars as this would save money.

Squeers,

My grandmother was a teacher, my mother was a teacher, and my wife was a teacher for a number of years, and all have worked in both government and private schools, and with regards educating our children, the rational has been private if you can afford it.

Our kids were first in public school, and while there were some good teachers there were some very ordinary ones too. Secondly there were no consequences if work was not done, and no discipline required.

The change on moving them to private schools was dramatic, as was the work ethic. It suddenly wasn't cool not to have done your homework. It took a year for the kids to catch up to the rest of the class, and my son got a scholarship to a top private school as a result of his new focus.

So we have tried both and the difference is dramatic.

A scenario for you to consider:

- A low fee private school (Christian) with enrolments of around 1400
- An open enrolment policy, with no "test" whatsoever for admission
- Children from all walks of life, faiths, socio-economic backgrounds, etc
- Classes overflowing, as they seek to squeeze in as many children as apply
- A hardship provision to help those struggling with fees
- A reputation in the community for hanging on to troubled students for far longer than any other school would, public or private
- Regularly recommended by both private and public competitors, as well as local paediatricians, as the "right place" for children with various academic, emotional and behavioural conditions, despite receiving, on average, around 10% of disability funding compared to public schools nearby
- Oh yes, no swimming pool...

And I could go on.

If you read these forum responses, you would know that I am obviously inventing this school. Squeers et al will tell you, from their vast experience in this field (cough), that this is the case.

Well I hope it's real, because I've been working there for 20 years. I also know of many, many other private schools that do the same thing. So please stop talking about the 5% that have all the money, pools, tennis courts, etc and be reasonable about this debate.

The bottom line here is that all children deserve a quality education and the government needs to get the funding formula right. Yes, some private schools do need some funds trimmed but the majority are doing the same work, in the same community, as their public school counterparts. And, on the odd occasion, we even do things together and all get along.

Thanks RD for blowing TBCs and Squeers' arguments out of the water.

The top 5% of the schools only get about 25% of the funding of public schools. With this they get to offer scholarships to disadvantaged and aboriginal children among other things.

rational-debate,

I have not and would not make any such claims as you suggest.

I've talked about private schools breeding an elitist "mentality" (though I don't believe Catholic schools, for instance, do that). A friend of my daughter's switched to private last year and is now aloof when they meet, she tells me.
I'm quite aware too that few private schools provide saunas and cocktails between classes.
I've argued there is no real qualitative difference--better resources are the product of more money, but wealthy kids also enjoy more extra-curricular support
SM, I'm blessed with high-achieving kids in the State system btw, despite its failings and inferior resources--though there's no lack of discipline. And they partake in the real world, warts and all, rather than a romantically-rarefied one.
I've argued against private schools, because it's a form of apartheid based on income, and I've argued for one public system that committed parents could then make great, and the wealthy would generously and eagerly fund with their taxes.
Despite the modesty too of the Catholic model, as places of education for formative minds, no ideological bias should be favoured imo; learning should be supported and not unduly directed.
Private schools tutor subliminal and overt ideologies. State schools are plagued with evangelising teachers, and chaplains etc., but they at least aspire to partisanship.
Whereas I've also argued that we live in an ominously privatising world that, applied to education, will lead to ever greater inequality among those who should be absolute equals in any ethical sense. Privatisation will also inevitably lead to deteriorating standards, as it has at universities, that ultimately only the wealthy will rise above. And as we know only too well, as the article's author demonstrates, that neoliberalism is as evangelising as any religion.
Education should be free and equal, and ethical and impartial in its delivery. If you find these values objectionable I'm wasting my time. Education and learning are the great hope of progressive humanity.
Whereas elitism, commodification, proselytisation and social replication lead to degeneracy, decadence, corruption and demise.
History should give us the benefit of hindsight.

Squeers,my sincere apologies for misrepresenting you. I hate it when people put words in my mouth and apologise if I have done the same to you.

I'd like to meet Squeers one day. There are too few like him who question the status quo, and I value those who do that.

Donelly is not questioning the status quo at all, in part because much of what is in place he has supported but also because, as Squeers and I have both noted, his real issue is the promotion of neo lib ideology, not the provision of any worthwhile form of education.

One cannot listen/watch Sir Ken Robinson, practically a one man comedy show, talking about education and how things could be, without feeling just a little bit vomitous about the system we have created here.

One problem in forums like is is the great differences between states, and the inclination of us all to speak with our own state's world view.

That makes understanding a big picture hard to do, unless one adopts a broader view, as the Squeers has.

I also tutored, not lectured, at a uni', and I can assure those supporters of private schooling that there was no obvious way to tell which students went where.

I did note, on a casual basis only, hardly a 'research outcome' that those students who got on with the tasks tended to be from state schools and those who demanded ever more information befor egetting started tended to be from the private system.

I also recall, but now cannot find the details to post here, some research indicating that public school students tended to drop out less, and stick to completion more, than private schooled students, at uni'.

More....

Squeers,

"Learning should be supported and not unduly directed."

That's an interesting point.

If we compare an infants ability to seek out and discover, we find that although they thrive on imitation they are simultaneously masters at directing their own methods of discovery.

It seems that our entire system is predicated on "directed learning". Assisting a child to build on their innate ability to self-direct their learning would seem to be something that is stifled once a child enters a "learning institution".

There have been several references here to car ownership in relation to the exercise of choice in schooling. The question is not about subsidies for particular models of car, but about the obligations of government. Governments are obliged to provide public roads that are safe, properly maintained, and of the same surface type and quality in both poor and rich suburbs. It is not obliged to fund the provision of an alternative private network for the use of drivers of imported luxury cars who don't want to share the road with the average family car. That would be un-Australian, and is the essence of the choice debate.

Caritas College, a Catholic school in Port Augusta, has sent a letter home to parents making great claims for the support that the Catholic Education Commission has for "choice in education", adding that "Catholic schools have a commitment to supporting all families - no matter what their economic or social circumstances."

There is no room for my response here. I invite you to read it at:
http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/catholic-education-office-lobbies.html

rational-debate,
thanks for your graciousness. There are of course great schools and teachers out there and I think school teachers have one of the hardest and under-appreciated vocations there is.

TBC, maybe we should meet annually on November fifth?

Poirot,
it disturbs me that education is not only often directed, which to a certain extent is inevitable, but also that these days the only goal in sight seems to be what lands the most money. My daughter's in grade ten and an accomplished musician (something that gets no public funding and I struggle to afford private lessons, exams and expensive instruments. That's why at her current age virtually all her competitors at Eisteddfods are kids from elite private schools who may take such incidentals for granted) and aspires to make a career of it. Yet she tells me her teachers routinely push business as the best career choice. The Arts are treated with contempt by much of our society.
I realise we don't live in a communist utopia, but I refuse to treat the current dispensation as put in place by God and immutable. We're never going to have a perfect society, but that doesn't mean we can't make reforms, embrace change and grow in our affections, rather than just economically and materially.

It's interesting that NAPLAN is based on the American model of standardised tesing. The No Child Left Behind program has been roundly criticised (not least by some of those that were instrumental in its implementation) as a system which, istead of identifying schools with challenges and assisting them, has closed them down and repudiated their teaching staff. This has led in the U.S. to a rise in "Charter Schools" which are apparently government funded but are obliged to fulfill a prerequisite charter.

What will standardised testing achieve in Australia in the long term, I wonder?

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/28/135142895/ravitch-standardized-testing-undermines-teaching

Squeers, yes let's. I have a few kegs we can smuggle into the Big House for our party.

Poirot, Gillard, devoid of any understanding of schools beyond her own charmed swoosh through school (because of her intellect, effort, support from home and no doubt a handful of good teachers)bought, hook line and sinker, what her officials at DEEWR, employed by Howard years before, were advising her to adopt, that is, the move to privatisation of education as another commodity with a safety net for the poor to be found in state funded and religiously inclined schools.

Rudd of course, was in his element too.

So, Gillard was interested not in improving education but eventually flogging it off, as is about to happen when Gronksi suggests vouchers, 'community schools' and just about everyhing else from his mates in the neoLiberal Party.

The Nats are too dumb to be able to read what he writes, so will do what they are told, as usual, by their big brother Tony.