The politics of envy! What a disgusting article.

Funding has little to do with anything. The real problem is with usless incompetent teachers, who the union force governments to continue to employ.

I went to a small country high school. 300 kids, only 12 in 5Th [matriculation year], & pretty poor facilities. Winter in those prefabs was cold, but our teachers were great.

Our teachers were good, they actually knew their subjects, but more importantly gave us everything we could handle. Of those 12 kids in 5Th year, 6 of us achieved 2 As, & 3 honours, all achieved in external exams. Each of us could win any government or industry scholarship we applied for. This was back in the day of full fee university education, in the later 50s

No we weren't especially bright, but we had teachers, particularly math & science teachers, who would run classes at lunch time, & after school, any time we needed the extra help.

Compare that to today. My eldest attended a large well resourced high school, on the fringe of Brisbane. There was only one teacher in the school who could actually do the math C work, & some of the physics. As a union delegate, he was often away, & no one in the school could answer questions on the courses 100 kids were doing.

My daughter had to spend all Saturday traveling to QUT in Brisbane to get coaching in what was not available in the school. I could do most of the work, but evidently my way was was not acceptable in our feminised school system.

One poor biology teacher who was trying to muddle through teaching courses beyond his knowledge used to ask her, & a brilliant kid who just knew everything, how to teach what she had done on Saturday, & then take classes. At least he was trying. One lady from the subcontinent went through the motions, unable to even understand the questions, & a Chinese lady may have been competent, but no one could understand a word she said, so we will never know.

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As a parent & the P&C treasurer I discussed this with the head master, one of the best actually, who admitted privately, he could do nothing about the lousy teachers. It was out of his hands, & he was stuck with what he was allocated.

So to fix education, get rid of the worst 30% of teachers.

Most are over paid for what they know & do, but we may have to get rid of this fool equality in teachers pay. We may have to pay more for teachers in real subjects like math & science, to get people who can do the job.

If no competent teachers available, drop the subjects in some schools, & stream kids with ability to schools that have suitable staff. It is not good enough to destroy reasonably good kids future by pretending to teach courses, & not doing it adequately.

So forget extra money. it's the teachers union stupid.

JohnBennetts, my point with respect to the self-selection of high quality teachers into the private sector was in relation to the cultural differences between that sector and its public counterpart. It was not about financial resources. As the old saying goes, it's hard to soar like an eagle if you're stuck in a cage full of turkeys.

On the other hand, the demands of the private sector are not attractive to those who just want a part-time job doing supply work, or who have chosen the course because they couldn't get entry to something else and they plan to quit as soon as they can transfer into some other public service position, or who like the fact they can be home with the kids in the afternoon.

Throwing more money at those people will simply make them slightly fatter turkeys, it won't turn them into eagles and it won't level any playing fields for the kids.

I closed my business late in 2011 and when I did I donated some of my industrial woodworking machinery and about $10,000 worth of good quality timber to my childrens' Qld high school, to do with as they wished. The machinery needed to be tested and tagged and a couple of minor repairs to make it compliant with Education Department requirements, although it had been in daily use before I retired it. It is still sitting there, unused, while the timber is stacked and also unused because it is not dressed (which is what the machinery is for), while the school continues to purchase dressed timber from Bunnings at retail prices. All because the turkey who is Principal won't authorise the expenditure of the couple of hundred dollars that would be needed for a private contractor to do it, but she insists on using a Qbuild electrician and Qbuild aren't interested. The shop teachers just want it working, but she has a "process" that she is determined to follow, willy nilly.

A classic case of managerialism in action.

I think if you can get the parents to care more about educating their children it will make more of a difference than throwing more money at the schools. The school education should be secondary to the teaching and attitude that comes from the home. If the parents dont care about school or education or learning or growing then the kids wont. Fix the parents, fix the kids.

Davidf,

"We pay taxes for a public good." Yes, and private schools are a privately supplied public good, the same way private hospitals are. The private schools exist for all children including those who go to public schools.

In both the cases of private hospitals and schools, the state offers a reduced subsidy to enable many more people to afford more choice of service than the one size fits all public service, and in turn makes a vast saving on the public purse.

Excellent article.
Spot on!
Have taught in both private and public schools.
Differences incredible!