The article only covers one aspect of social segregation, namely that between government and non-government schools. It correctly suggests that that the high cost of fees in non-government schools is a barrier for students from poorer families.

An issue not covered is segregation within the government system. Much of this occurs because of social segregation in where people live, and flows on to the mix of students in local schools within the government system.

You have to laugh when some nice academic like Paul Duanne gets puzzled about something that everyone else in his community already knows.

Paul is wondering why "working families' are paying through the nose to send their kids to private schools. Well Paul, did it ever occur to you that this is yet another example of Australians "voting with their feet" over multiculturalism?

With multicultural Australia now breaking up into monocultural ghettoes, it is hardly surprising that our schools are not following suits with social segregation. The aspect which Paul studiously avoided noticing, is that those schools most infested with students from crime and welfare prone ethnicities are the sort of schools most unsafe to white Australian students and teachers. Especially female teachers.

In the book "Boys in Schools", author Rollo Browne reports that some inner city schools are having trouble retaining teachers because of the appallingly violent behaviour directed at teachers. He does not specify which ethnicity and religion, but Sydney siders are familiar with euphemisms like the "troubled schools in the South west of Sydney", and that gives the game away. Relief teachers are refusing to go to some schools because of the apparently culturally conditioned violent reputations of their students.

"Boys in Schools" reported that one teacher at Canterbury Boys High school wore a full face helmet in the playground for protection during recess duty. The 'Daily Telegraph" newspaper reported that six schools in NSW have permanent security guards on campus to protect teachers and students from out of control students.

We have had Los Angeles style school stabbings and one incident where a schoolboy was shot dead at a school bus stop over an exchange with another student. School invasions by machete wielding former students, attacks on teachers cars, and one teacher who suffered a nervous breakdown after her home was targeted by rock throwing attackers at night.

And you wonder why the Aussies are getting their kids out? Ain't multiculturalism grand? It's a bit hard to figure out why the Titanic sunk, Paul, if your ideology refuses to acknowledge the existence of icebergs.

Well Paul, you stick your head up, & LEGO gave you some facts in spades.

I don't have experience of inner city schools, where multiculturalism is a problem, but I do have experience where the Australian Education Union it self is the main problem.

Little wonder "The research does not explore causation of this segregation", or if it did, they rapidly shredded the results.

The union has fostered a system where every drop kick that ever got in front of a class is still there. Most of the good teachers have moved out of the public system, but all the no hopers are still there protected by the very union that is bleating for more money.

Until the incompetent can be sacked by the head, or the P&C, it will only get worse. Parents just have to get their kids out.

We have not one teacher in a near city country high with 1700 students, who could pass an exam on year 12 math C, or Physics.

Why the hell do you think they have stopped having proper exams? It is because few of the teachers could mark the papers, let alone do the exam.

We [the P&C] found why one senior grade would not let the kids bring their papers from a minor test home for parents & tutors to check for themselves. They had been using the same test for 6 years as none of the teachers felt competent to write a new one. And they want more money!

To the union, do stop wanting more money, until you have cleaned out the garbage from the teaching staff. Yes it may cost you 30% of your members, but unless done, education has no hope.

LEGO, this is for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqX9OXLDXXU
They're studying the relationship between genetics, intelligence and behaviour in Israel and China, as the Jewish professor says near the end it's only the Anti Racist ideology of Western scientists which is in conflict with these inquiries, the science of race is sound.
Hasbeen,
All secondary schools should be academic entry and graded on that basis,the brightest kids should go to the best schools and get the most funding, the least intelligent to "special" schools.

When it is widely accepted that "to send your kids to a state school when you don't have to is tantamount to child abuse" garners only rueful head nodding, may be an answer. This has been said not at Vaucluse but at Mt Druit and Seven Hills.

Social segregation will get worse now that the Labor is gradually moving schools off its own socially just education resources index model of the 1990s and onto the Coalition’s socially segregating socio-economic status funding model of the 2000s.

Prior to the Howard government’s changes, schools were funded on the basis of their own income. A low-fee school with few private resources would get more government support than a high-fee school with lots of private resources. It did not matter whether the school was attended by people with wealthy neighbours or people with poor neighbours. It did not mater if the parents of the children were wealthy or poor. The system supported social inclusion because it gave more money to a low-fee school than to a high-fee school. Thus, a low-fee school serving a middle class neighbourhood could keep its fees low and thus still take comparatively poorer children. It was not forced to put up its fees and drive poorer children out of it because it drew students from a middle class area.

The SES funding model changed all that. It ignored school fees. It ignored school income. It ignored school resources. It funded schools on the basis of how well off the students’ neighbours were. It used census collector districts to determine how well off the neighbours were. This immediately penalised low-fee schools in well-off areas. No longer could they be accessible to poorer families.

The result was the funding guaranteed promise. The public education lobby calls this ‘over-funding’. It looks at what a school would get under the absurd SES model, declares that to be the fair amount and condemns any extra. Yet the extra is compensation for the failings of the SES model. The ‘extra’ simply restores the school’s level of support to what it would have been if the SES model had never been introduced, if the school’s fees and other income were taken into account, if the previous Labor model were still in force.

The low-fee private schools were conned by thee Howard government. By agreeing to the SES model with funding guaranteed, they set themselves up for 12 years of criticism by the public education lobby. Are they dumb enough to let this happen again? It looks like it.

The SES model also broke the nexus between funding and fees. There was no longer any incentive for a school to keep its fees low, as the fees charged had no effect on the level of taxpayer support.

The Gonski panel wants to keep the SES model and then use a smaller number of neighbours, which makes as much sense as charging patients a particular fee in hospital according to how well of their neighbours are. In the long run, it wants government support to be based on the income of each parent whose child is at a private school. This, of course, will never happen, but if it did, it immediately changes the principle under which education is funded everywhere. It becomes inevitable that public school parents start to pay fees based on their income. The income tax system is meant to redistribute income and then everyone, poor or rich gets access to public services. If ‘capacity to pay’ becomes the principle for private school funding, it will become the principle for public school funding.

The Gonksi model is guaranteed to socially stratify our schools because it says the more you earn the less your child gets. Thus, the wealthy, the upper middle, the middle middle, the lower middle and the poor all have to concentrate in their own schools because the funding system segregates them. A school that wants to take both middle class and poor students will not be able to because the presence of middle class students will cut its government funding and thus push its fees up and thus drive out the poor, who will end up at the public school. There is no better way to create public school ghettos than this Gonksi proposal.