Yes, this essay reminds of the concerns voiced in the essay titled The New American Sadism.
Its OK to target the poor,the weak and the defenceless because the "market rules", but the moment anyone tries to curtail welfare for the comfortably well off, and the wealthy its called "class warfare".

Hi Tristan, god to see you on OLO again.

I have posted an OECD site with updated data on variety of data which you may find useful as a primary link to go to for a variety of info.

http://www.oecd.org/economy/outlook/economicoutlookannextables.htm

Tristan,

Before you get carried away by Gonksi enthusiasm, I urge you to look more closely at the panel’s recommendations, which include keeping the Howard government’s SES model. This has two consequences.

First it punishes private schools that draw students from middle class areas but try to remain inclusive of poorer students by keeping their fees low. It does this by cutting government support, thus forcing fees up and poorer students out into low-SES schools, socially stratifying our education system. The political consequence is the bad publicity Labor has had from the various lists of losing schools, which no one seems to understand are losing schools because they are being taken off Labor’s education resource index of the 1990s.

Second, it will lead to increased pressure for means-tested fees in government schools because it entrenches the funding principle as parental “capacity to pay”, rather than the resources of the school being funded.

I have presented a submission to the Inquiry into the Australian Education Bill 2012 on the problems with keeping the SES model and suggesting some transition arrangements to a new model. (It is No. 46 at http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_Committees?url=ee/auseducation/subs.htm).

You can find a lot more detail at http://community.tes.co.uk/forums/t/576719.aspx?PageIndex=1.

As I understand it the government has been saying no school will be worse off under Gonski - but there will be loadings for disadvantaged and disabled students etc. This funding is crucial to stop the long term drift away from state schools, though - which would see the state sector become a residual and 'second class' option compared with the resources the more advantaged private schools have.

Surely Tristan, getting rid of all the proven no-hoper & brain dead teachers who continue to infest the state school systems, would have the same effect.

Parents who care are smart enough to know that the control of the state schools given to the teacher’s union by default is ruining a once useful system.

No amount of money can fix the state schools, without clearing the dead wood first.

The cure is making principles responsible for results, on pain of loss of seniority, or return to the classroom, & giving them the power to sack the deadheads.

the irony is that Labour has squandered such huge amounts of money on nothing that their is none left to spend on education or disability. Socialist are experts at creating huge social problems and then expecting everyone to pay to fix their mess. Encourage the use of drugs and let the tax payer pick up the tab, outlaw useful discipline of kids and let the tax payer pick up the tab, promote incompetent women or ex union hacks to cabinet and let the tax payers pick up the tab, create schools of chaos and claim discrimination when private schools show what can be done. Same ol same ol