There is simply no reason for subsidies to non-public schools. The eastern block is not a reasonable example. Public services in many areas - not just schools - were inadequate. Not to send a child to a public school is a choice. Parents have the right to make such a choice. However, there is no reason that other people should subsidise that choice through their taxes.

There is an advantage to Australia of children of different religious, income, ethnic and other backgrounds mixing together. It makes us a less fragmented society. The US Supreme Court in Brown vs. Kansas Board of Education has observed the education segregated by race is inherently unequal. I think the same thing applies to segregation by religion. For a less divided Australia children should learn together, grow up together and work together. Fund public schools adequately. I had an excellent education in the US public schools. School funding in the US is by school districts so some districts in the US are poorly funded. In Australia that is not the case so there is no reason that all public schools in Australia cannot be good schools.

If subsidies to non-public schools were cut off some parents with children in those schools would opt for the public schools. Good! We should welcome those children.

David, there's a very good reason why all schools cannot be good and it has little to do with funding. There is a population of teachers and within that population there is a broad distribution of pedagogical skill, application and capability, as well as a large variation in commitment. Many women choose to be trained as teachers because it offers a secure job with convenient hours for mothers with school-age children and there are low barriers to entry. Many teachers were themselves indifferent students. Many wish to only teach part-time. Many do very little continuing professional development having obtained their qualification. The ones who are genuinely committed to excellence and have made a real effort to become highly skilled are snapped up by private schools which demand such standards. The rest end up, in the worst case, as place-holders and child-minders.

The bureaucratic managerialist culture within State education systems, being process-driven, is principally concerned with achieving a standardised, interchangeable workforce. That sort of approach is not conducive to excellence.

State Premiers who are complaining about the cost of the Gonski Lite proposals could find a considerable proportion of the funds by simply refusing to pay for student transport further than to the front gate of the closest public school.

Spin-offs would include significantly reduced peaks in morning and afternoon road traffic and reduced congestion on public transport during peak commuter times. Reducing these peaks is an extraordinarily effective way to reduce the cost of transport for the whole community 24/7, because design of transport systems is primarily about providing for the peaks.

Step 1 towards making our cities, highways and towns more user friendly could well involve encouraging, by whatever means available, use of the closest public school or an even closer private one. Those who choose to travel further than the closest school should not receive free passes.

They should be charged a congestion tax.

Dear Antiseptic,

All public schools can be good schools. Finland has succeeded in that. Finnish teachers get sufficient pay to compete with private sector jobs in other areas. Finland has non-public schools - faith based and Steiner. They get government grants but do not charge tuition. They are no fancier than the public schools. Finland ranks at the top in most measurable standards of education. The author of the article has pointed out the inequality of public vs. non-public schools in Australia. I would prefer no public funding to non-public schools. However, if there is to be such funding it should be on the Finnish model.

Antiseptic has offered his opinion about the relative ability of public and private schools to employ the best of the available teaching talent.

Perhaps he is correct, that by paying more the private schools get better teachers. Perhaps not. He appears not to care about any factual basis to his belief in this regard.

Where Antiseptic and I could agree is that inequality in resourcing different schools leads to inequalities of opportunity and outcome.

Does Antiseptic have evidence that public schools have a monopoly on bureaucratic, managerial culture and that these attributes are miraculously absent from private and religious schools?

I welcome Antiseptic's contribution. It neatly supports the basic thrusts of the lead article.

Speaking as someone who remembers, having to share textbooks, with a head in the book, myopic fellow student; and or, walking to school on many a cold and frosty morning, over three miles of gravel road, I can agree with the article, book, chapter and verse!
It is not only immoral to argue extremely privileged students receive the same federal funding as the poorest, but virtual theft, or stealing the very bread from the mouths of babes!
And indeed, further entrenching disadvantage, that causes generational poverty, or poverty trap post codes.
Perhaps, we could have a regular trimonthly student exchange?
No, not with foreign overseas students; but one that emptied out our most privileged schools, with the student body being forced to experience, what our poorest schools can supply; and, the living conditions of their poorest students?
Perhaps then, all the spoilt little prince and princesses, and their even more spoilt parents, would stop bellyaching about the removal of yet another form of welfare for the rich!
Some of them obscenely so, in any fair comparison to our own underprivileged underclass.
The huge death toll, during the first war war, was a direct consequence, of selecting the officer class from the ranks of the most privileged, rather than the most competent.
Similarly, our economic performance and our future, is critically hampered by similar examples, which even see us sourcing our corporate CEO's from offshore!
When, if the truth be known, we have more intelligent, more rational thinkers right here, save, they missed the education boat and were consequently mired in mediocrity, for a veritable lifetime?
When they could have easily contributed so much more, if we could have but listened to, and followed the advice this Author, many years ago!
Instead of, entrenching entirely undeserved privilege, followed closely, by virtually stealing the bread from the mouths of babes, in the consequent creation of poverty traps/poverty postcodes/generational disadvantage!
Equity in education is well worth fighting for, if only out of quite gross self interest, for the whole Australian nation!
Rhrosty.