Thanks and understood.

Subsidised buses and coaches criss-cross our cities and highways for no good reason. Where I live, a significant percentage of families bus their kids to schools which are an hour distant and even get subsidy for using their car to get to the pick-up point. This is, pure and simple, a rip-off piled onto a rip-off. If that vehicle is a company car, there is a chance that there is a third public subsidy of this private expense.

Given that many of these students live within walking or cycling distance of the nearest school, they really don't need public funding for transport to any school, especially one which is 70+ km further down the valley.

I think you have a very valid point there, John. A friend of mine who did some work down at Bowen SHS was talking not that long ago about a large number of students from that town who catch a bus every day to Proserpine SHS, nearly 70km down the Bruce Highway. Proserpine has a very good reputation, while Bowen has a reputation for being a bit rough (the schools, that is - I'm not going to get into the reputations of towns as a whole).

In this case, I can only think that the people who snub their local high school are contributing to its bad reputation - hell, any school people are willing to travel 140km a day to AVOID must be terrible, right? The state government has provided adequate educational facilities within the town of Bowen. If Proserpine has the facilities to host students from Bowen, then I don't have a problem with parents sending their kids there instead. But they are choosing to reject one facility in favour of another, and I certainly don't think the taxpayer should wear the extra cost incurred because of that choice.

I guess that's where I'm coming from with private schools. I think that, if a symbiotic (rather than parasitic) relationship with the state system can be maintained, there's a place for these schools. Parents can choose to reject the public system and fork out some extra cash for their choice. While it is certainly not the intention of many (or any?) private school parents, this does ease the burden on many of our state schools. In return (and keeping in mind that these parents still help fund the education system with their taxes), I think it is reasonable for some public funding to go towards those schools. It would not be acceptable, though, for that funding to ever EXCEED the funding allocated to state schools.

We have the right to expect a high quality education to be provided by our government. If we want more - or something different - we should expect to tip in for it.

JohnBennetts,

We know that ‘postcodes’ is poetic licence, that the comparator for social disadvantage is actually census collector districts (smaller areas of about 100 households each), but the point you make is valid.

You say, ‘John Winston Howard was nothing if not cunning - his adoption of postcodes as a comparator for social disadvantage was mean and tricky because it says nothing whatever about social disadvantage or the actual needs of the schools, yet it lives on in education funding formulae. Did the kid travelling to the distant private school come from the cheapest house in the worst street of postcode 9999 or the converse? It matters not, because the model doesn't count it. The kid's needs are clearly irrelevant - what matters is the political "fix" which comfortably hides the truth and denies many the opportunities given to the few.’

Would you also say, ‘The Gonski panel was nothing if not cunning - its adoption of postcodes as a comparator for social disadvantage was mean and tricky because it says nothing whatever about social disadvantage or the actual needs of the schools, yet it lives on in education funding formulae. Did the kid travelling to the distant private school come from the cheapest house in the worst street of postcode 9999 or the converse? It matters not, because the model doesn't count it. The kid's needs are clearly irrelevant - what matters is the political "fix" which comfortably hides the truth and denies many the opportunities given to the few’?

If not, why not?