This is another selective use of data attempting to show that Government schools are badly treated. The authors did grudgingly admit that " It is true that on average, private schools still get less public money than government schools".

An example better illustrates the true picture.

I live in the ACT and send/sent my kids to the best performing school (academically) on the north side of Canberra. The school happens to be a K to Year 12 Independent School, and anyone familiar with the ACT education sector will know which school it is.

The school according to the My School website had a Net Recurrent Income in 2013 of $15585 per student, of which $12743 per student (or 82 per cent) came from fees contributed by parents. This compares with Net Recurrent Income of about $13,000 for typical Government primary schools in the ACT, about $15000 for Government high schools, and about $16000 for colleges (Years 11 and 12). The parental contribution to Government schools is virtually nothing. The differences in academic results, however, are chalk and cheese, with the result that to get my kids into what I believed was the best school I had to enrol them virtually at birth.

I don't doubt that parental SES has an effect on educational outcomes but the school itself is also a big factor. It is also clear any advantage non-government schools have in extra funding per capita is both a lot less than the apologists for the Government sector claim, and entirely due to the fact that the parents are prepared to put their hands into their pockets.

If the authors truly want more equal educational opportunity, they should be pushing for more equal funding for non-Government schools so that they will be more accessible to lower income households. There also needs to be a better mechanism to allow the transfer of more resources and more students to better performing schools.

With the world already exploding with the burden of humans, why should the public have to pay in the first place for the needs and wants of those who make children (with the exception of those who were raped), including their schooling?

Nevertheless, promises were made and need to be kept regarding those children already born or conceived. As for the future, no further promises should be made for public-sponsored education of any kind and public schools need to be phased out.

Until then, existing parents should be given educational-vouchers that are equivalent to and fully cover the cost of public schools - they could then spend it as they wish on a public school or as part-payment towards a private school or on private tutors and books, etc.

we know Chris more money more money. Simple fact is that private schools do far better with close to half the money of the secular schools. Results have far more to do with teaching standards, failed secular dogmas and kids behaviour. Until you address these obvious flaws you will continue to make excuses for poor performance.

The better off pay more tax!

And possibly are paying for the education of folks who like many single mums, don't pay any tax at all?

And many of the disadvantaged kids, who attend independent schools, have their fees paid by other parents!

Moreover, we regularly critique wealthy parents who use public health or public schools; almost as if they as higher paying taxpayers, don't have the same rights accorded non taxpayers as a birthright entitlement!?

The obvious answer to this eternal conundrum, is to stop funding all schools and instead give the same averaged amount per pupil, to every parent as a education endowment?

Which for the purposes of the act, should be added to your taxable income the way benefits and pensions are now!

And then allow the newly empowered parent to choose which school the kids attend, on the basis of apples for apples comparisons, published merit!

This money no longer routed through state government coffers, would likely force state governments to grant complete autonomy to school districts and or school principals?

Which would mean, they could finally clean out the union protected dross, if only to compete on a level playing field, with other institutions for the education dollar; or parental voucher!?

And a must do, in order to fully advantage in any fair comparison, our best and brightest!

Which by the way are our best possible future!

By the way, every ministerial desk should have three signs on them!

1#,It's the economy stupid! 2#, The buck stops here! 3#, Keep it simple stupid!
Rhrosty.

Introduce equal vouchers for all subject to means testing.
There will thus be more money to spend on education as well as the market to accomodate true parental choice. Government schools versus private church schools versus private non-profit non-religious schools versus for-profit schools versus home schooling.

What the authors are trying to hide is that if one looks at the total subsidy per pupil in private schools from the state, it is much less than the subsidy per pupil in public schools.

Thus the more private school pupils there are, the more money per pupil there is available per public school pupil.

Simple maths that if the authors had a decent maths education they might understand.

There are a lot of over educated, over paid, but underworked people in this country, & a large percentage of them are government school teachers.

The only way you will ever get value for money from government schools is, as Rhrosty says, endow the kids, & let them carry the subsidy to the school of choice.

Having sorted the money, then give the P&C, definitely not the head master, the right to fire all non performing teacher. After getting rid of about 25% of the existing teachers, along with quite a few head masters, we might then get some value from the rest. There would be much less "going through the motions", which is endemic in the job for life union controlled government systems.

Head masters are still union members, & apart from that, are often a large part of the problem.

We have seen a very good government school slide to useless, when a new head started covering up the drug & behaviour problems, rather than controlling them. Far too many heads want to avoid rocking the boat, boat rocking is not good for promotion prospects, & are frightened to apply discipline, unless forced by a strong P&C.

Of course, getting rid of half the bureaucrats, & most of the experts would be totally necessary for any improvement.

This forum is full of private school apologists. The question that needs to be asked is if the public is paying so much for these private schools, why don't we finish the job and just nationalise them, thereby automatically ending their discriminatory practices in both enrolment and employment. The facts are there are 0 differences in academic performance between public and private schools teaching students with the same SES status - so private school parents have been sold a myth and are paying for nothing except gold plated facilities at these schools and in some areas the ability to segregate their children from children from lower SES backgrounds. We need a radical rethink of public funding for education - for example why not publicly fund all teachers salaries on a uniform basis ( so many teachers for the same no. Of students, with extra allowances for special needs etc), and nothing else, so all the excess public funding currently going to private schools can be reallocated to public schools where it is needed. That arrangement would be more than generous to private schools. What part of the word private don't you understand? With so much public funding going to private schools, the public should start demanding for value out of them - for example maybe they should be required to share their gold plated facilities with local public schools, seeing as everyone has paid for these through their taxes. It's a shame our politicians can't seem to contemplate what Chile is doing right now, and phase out public funding of private schools completely.

A monopoly in education supply is their goal and an undoubted guarantee of Social disaster. Anyone so sure of their "Correctness"™ can only be one subject to faddishness, we are still recovering from the whole reading debacle.

Private schools are a critical source of diversity and hence fulfill an essential social good.

'The question that needs to be asked is if the public is paying so much for these private schools, why don't we finish the job and just nationalise them, thereby automatically ending their discriminatory practices in both enrolment and employment'

simple JohnJ

then you would get the same atrocious results as the fully tax payer funded system.