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The Forum > Article Comments > Means testing education support > Comments

Means testing education support : Comments

By David Leyonhjelm, published 7/6/2017

There are thousands of extremely well off parents who send their children to government schools. It's not fine that these parents receive the same taxpayer-funded support as poor parents.

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Actually, if we were honest and not driven by ideology of any type, Government funding for schooling children should stop at year six.
Throwing tax payer funds at the uneducable is bad policy.
Posted by diver dan, Wednesday, 7 June 2017 8:38:21 AM
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Intriguingly parents of high net worth, maybe be contributing with the taxes that they pay. However some may already qualify for benefits because of how they arrange their taxation affairs.
Posted by Wolly B, Wednesday, 7 June 2017 10:07:56 AM
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diver dan,
Despite what you claim, your comments are driven by ideology. And it's a particularly stupid and shortsighted ideology. An educated workforce is far more productive than an uneducated one, so the cost of education will be returned many times over through the taxation system.

Dismissing people as uneducable is bad policy.
Posted by Aidan, Wednesday, 7 June 2017 10:26:20 AM
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Largely agree with this sentiment David, and add, our charity is for the needy, not the greedy!

Arguably, all education funding be made, with the assistance of a means tested endowment adjusted for disability/remote locations.

Meaning limited education budget could go far further, provide reasonable support right up to a tertiary qualification/the only means of lifting whole families out of postcode poverty traps.
While ensuring that the cream rose to the top, rather than?

It would allow up to 30% of this limited budget to escape the fee charging middleman/state government bureaucracy ensuring funding was no longer routed through them, thereby ccompelling regional autonomy!

Thus liberating the student, the parents and school principals from the semi socialist controls of the confining union movement, thus allowing incompetent teachers to contaminate kids?

Resulting in a significant percentage leaving education illiterate?

Just not good enough given the tragedies going somewhere to happen that this underclass is destined to become.

We confront a future here as many as 90% of current occupations will be largely automated; and kids will need to excel in both maths and science to have any career prospects! The nation's prospects, served by the best most able, rather than the most privileged/pampered!

Taking wealthy hands out of the nation's till, may well allow tertiary education to be fee free once again, for the genuinely disadvantaged?

And who could not want that and the level playing field that would result? Particularly if the endowment increased with age and included a realistic living away from home, means tested allowance, for country/remote location kids?

Now, if we could just outlaw commissions and middlemen profit takers, we could conceivably half the cost of living/doing business!
As well as take some of the confected heat out of a housing market, that supports far too many parasitical players!

Which should remain an essential human right to affordable shelter rather than investments attracting economy harming, debt laden, tax avoiding, profit repatriating, foreign speculators!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Wednesday, 7 June 2017 10:51:16 AM
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personally I would get rid of the public system. It would save billions and lift the standards of education by a long way.
Posted by runner, Wednesday, 7 June 2017 11:05:52 AM
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runner, where did you receive your own education?

__________________________________________________________________________________

Alan B.,
The services provided by the government are NOT charity.

The education budget does not have to be set so low, and the rich are far more likely to resent paying taxes when they're excluded from the benefits. What you propose would likely result in a lot of pressure to cut the education budget further.
Posted by Aidan, Wednesday, 7 June 2017 12:04:19 PM
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personally I would get rid of the public system. It would save billions and lift the standards of education by a long way.
Posted by runner, Wednesday, 7 June 2017 11:05:52 AM

This is what I call a delusional concept. The main reason is that it does not save anyone any money.

Someone has to pay for the education, in many third world countries the only people who are educated are wealthy, whilst the poor remain illiterate.

A public education is much cheaper for everyone when compared to the costs of a private education in Australia.

Getting rid a public system, may save the government money, but then it is unlikely they will reduce taxation, so then parents would have to pay more directly to educate their children. So it transfers the costs on to the parent/s.

Which in the end costs them more money.
Posted by Wolly B, Wednesday, 7 June 2017 12:31:47 PM
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David Leyonhjelm has this one totally wrong. When education is compulsory it is a government requirement to provide it. At the same time, anyone who thinks state education is free has not put any one through school recently.

If we are going to pay for any kids to be educated, we should be paying exactly the same amount for each kid to be educated. Funding each child, & letting the parents chose the school is the only fair way to fund education. It would also hobble the radical far left teachers union, so worth doing just for that result alone.

I am sick to death of hearing more about the disadvantaged receiving even another source of funding. Welfare should be just one payment, with no cheap housing or rent assistance over & above that payment. School funding should be the same. We give payments per kid, & that should be it.

Alan the very worst model for education is one with any sort of regional difference. It is one government service that should be national, with all state input removed.

With the mobile workforce we have today, we need every school teaching the same stuff in every subject every month at a minimum, every week would be even better. Too many kids have their education ruined when the parents move interstate, & the kid cops a very different curriculum.

I have always had a bit of a mental block about electricity formula. We moved just 250 miles to a different town, but the science class in second year had finished electricity. I missed the basic grounding, & have to look up formula which would otherwise be in my memory forever.

We must try to minimise education disruption to the kids of mobile parents as much as possible.
Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 7 June 2017 4:50:09 PM
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S means tested endowment as the only government contribution to education per se, wouldn't result in higher taxes or higher education costs?

Just require all schools to compete for both funding and student numbers? And where published results coupled to benched marked results! Allow the parents alone to decide, which of their competing for the education dollar, district's school to send their kids to?

And where impoverished families, would not need to have their kids miss out on the fundamentals.

If this essentially now wasted, make work money, was redirected first hand and just once? Solely at unmet need, we could revisit fee free, means tested, tertiary education?

And if the same reasoned logic applied to a means tested public health system, we'd actually get the seriously squandered budget back to surplus?

And as part of reform, local government ought to be officially recognized so that work they do via state funding, could be directly funded?

This would change little except the amount of recoverable waste built into our publicly funded anything!

And that waste no more evident than the 70 plus annual billions, we fork out just for the privilege of a middle tier of fee charging middlemen merely masquerading as competent uncorrupted government?

And that 70 billion is what we pay before a single service or social amenity is rolled out!

Nothing they do now couldn't be done as well or better, with the same money that already now passes through their fee and administration charging hands, as direct funding that simply bypasses them and their unproductive money wasting fiscal demands!

Imagine what nation building projects we could embark on if we the people used our power to dismantle these ancient anachronisms and liberate 70 billion per as far better nation building funds!

Truly, with one exception, we are the most over-governed people on the planet, and without question paying the (through the neck) taxman for this ball and chain, albatross of a triplex, convenient, blame shifting, buck passing government (by the people ha, ha) model!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Wednesday, 7 June 2017 5:26:10 PM
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Yes Hasbeen, if a single entity raises all the tax, then that same entity should also directly fund a needs based means tested system! And where he who pays the piper calls the tune!

This would require all schools to adhere to a best practise benchmarked system!

Particularly when and where fully informed/enabled parents directed their education endowment or fees!

Education needs to put the student and their needs at the centre!

A single curriculum connected to regional autonomy, would give us a much bigger bang for our buck, as would digitising subjects, so that lessons could be revisited online, when and where mobile work requirements meant kids can and are left behind!

And nowhere more important than in foundational fundamentals!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Wednesday, 7 June 2017 5:46:09 PM
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Dear Aidan.....*Dismissing people as uneducable is bad policy.*

No it's not! It's pragmatic, and would save huge swaths of badly wasted tax dollars, currently funnelled into the black hole of stupid!

Keeping in mind, the top jobs in this country are reserved for students with attendance history at prestigious schools. Top schools, top jobs; bottom schools crap job, or more truly, no job!
Even the Catholic Church has been sprung engineering its education system to accommodate this evolution.

I say, from the pragmatists view such as my own, since the education system discriminates against the poor, (70% of Australians roughly), be honest then, and only support the minority of the educable with resources enough to improve on the tax payer hand out!

The balance of crappy jobs which are retail and odd assortments of other, requiring little to no education to perform, need not be furnished with over educated morons!
Posted by diver dan, Wednesday, 7 June 2017 6:03:44 PM
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Actually, if we were honest and not driven by ideology of any type, Government funding for schooling children should stop at year six.
Throwing tax payer funds at the uneducable is bad policy.
Posted by diver dan, Wednesday, 7 June 2017 8:38:21 AM

Firstly you are way way off the mark and you have the wrong end of the stick.

If you wish to become better informed you would choose to read:

The Remarkable Model Of The Commonwealth Bank Of Australia by Ellen Brown,

Australians did not pay tax until WWII when a ONE OFF tax law came to to raise tax to pay for WWII but as we know and should have known at the time, the tax stayed.

Where did the Australian govt get money from to pay for public infrastructure before the introduction of the WWII tax?

Sections 90, 91, 92 and 93 of the Australian Commonwalth Constitution provides the means for the Australian govt to extract money out of the
"Common-Wealth" of Australia.

“In 1937 an Australian Royal Commission investigated Finance and banking. In his summing up the Chairman Sir Mellis Napier of the Royal Commission stated:

“That the commonwealth bank (reserve) can make money available to governments or to others on such terms as it chooses even by way of a loan without interest or even without requiring either interest or repayment of principal.”

From: Banks Lie - Chris Fields (NSW)
Posted by Referundemdrivensocienty, Wednesday, 7 June 2017 7:47:33 PM
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You are actually the non thinker on this subject Referundemdrivensocienty..
Mass education has way passed its use by date. Let me educate you on the subject.
Since the mid 60's, children have been directed towards extended education, in an attempt to patch up the damage to employment prospects for school leavers, caused directly by the flight of industry to Asia; chasing cheap labour.
Governments were looking for easy excuses not to intercept this exodus of jobs applicable to early school leavers. The burden was increasingly shouldered by the tax payer by extending school education for traditional school leavers, as a temporary hedge against rising unemployment, (as a consequence of the flight of jobs to Asia).
Instead of grappling with the problem. Liberal Governments escalated attacks on the union movement, which resisted the job losses going to Asia; a lost battle for unions.
The market for school leavers crashed, directly as a consequence of bad Governance.

Fast forward. Today the tax payer is under intense pressure from escalating cost of living and disproportionate pressures from taxation increases.
The burden of schooling children into their late teens and early adulthood, which rests on a diminishing taxpayer base, is unsustainable, and unnecessary.
The burden of supporting unemployable youth would be diminished by vetting which children should be subjected to further education, and putting the burden back onto parents, with some help from welfare support for the family, financed from the reduction in education budgets and a diminished educational work force.
Posted by diver dan, Wednesday, 7 June 2017 9:13:38 PM
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I have read some really interesting comments and some incredibly inaccurate ones.

Parkes' Public Instruction Act of 1883 created an educational system across the then colony of NSW which was "compulsory, free and secular". Every Public School and every High School in NSW, to this day, is still very heavily funded by the NSW Government.

The state system now, as then, exists to educate all who present and ask to be enrolled regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion or socio-economic status. Fees which are small, relative to the real cost, are charged to cover those costs which the government does not cover.

No attempt should be made to recoup the real cost of a child's education as this would merely convert each school to a different version of a private school and would result in many children finishing their education as quickly and as early as they could.

This would be in line with the unexpressed ideology of conservative governments that education is a cost to be borne only until the student has just enough knowledge to become part of the labour pool. By contrast, 'progressive' parties see education as an investment with returns in the future.

Senator Leyonhelm's ideas fit well with the model of education espoused by the coalition concerning state government funded schools. For this reason they should be resisted at every opportunity.
Posted by Brian of Buderim, Thursday, 8 June 2017 12:22:57 PM
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"No attempt should be made to recoup the real cost of a child's education as this would merely convert each school to a different version of a private school and would result in many children finishing their education as quickly and as early as they could."

So what you are saying Brian is that those parents earning above $350,000 per year and asked to pay their own way would then decide to give their children the shortest, cheapest education they could find? Why? So they could spend more money on silk hats, cigars and champagne?
Posted by Edward Carson, Thursday, 8 June 2017 1:21:11 PM
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I'd like to check out the validity of an observation.

I think in low taxing environments, they way they raise revenue, is by penalising people through a system of fines, where offences are created and fines are then issued for committing an offence.

Our American TV shows especially the one that show the cops arresting people for minor infringements that barely rate in Australia.

There are so many cars on the road with broken taillights we could almost pay off the national debt, if they were arrested and fined. ;0

A recent newspaper article about smart cars, being the end of the revenue councils raise through parking fines, said that the revenue councils raised from these fines would fall, so council would to find other means in which to raise revenue.

It would be interesting to read others thoughts on this subject.
Posted by Wolly B, Thursday, 8 June 2017 3:01:13 PM
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Edward, you are approaching my reply from the wrong end of the money scale. If parents were earning $350 000, and presumably able to employ numerous tax ruses to avoid paying any tax at all, their darling children would not be in the local state school but would have been enrolled at birth in the local franchise of St Trinian's.

The children I am talking about are the sons and daughters of single parents, or handicapped kids, or seventh or eighth in a family with two unskilled workers as parents. These will be pulled out of school as soon as legally possible or even earlier and would replicate their parents'lives: no qualifications, low literacy and numeracy levels and prime suspects for a production line life, if they can find a production line.
Posted by Brian of Buderim, Thursday, 8 June 2017 3:02:15 PM
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I have no problem with the wealthy sending their kids to public schools. Especially when they do what most have to do and send them to the nearest school obliged to take them.

The taxes of these parents have helped build and run these schools, and further, are required to maintain them whether the parents opt to use another school or not, because private schools are not *obliged* to accept all within their catchment nor to keep them enrolled, nor to refund fees or subsidies. The state schools must stand ready to accept such children, and *that* is what our taxes help pay for.

The more well-off families who attend, the greater the motivation for these supposed community leaders to participate in and improve their child's local state school - a community asset, instead of sequestering their help, interest and fees in private schools that do not benefit the general public and which in many famous cases need no help whatsoever. The oft-made inference that the more well-off are more capable citizens should encourages that this example be exercised in the school community, rather than sequestered in the privates benefiting only the few.

What I object to is public subsidies for private schools that may turn away students, or filter based on likely "performance". What if privates had to accept all comers? What results?
Posted by Rusty Catheter, Thursday, 8 June 2017 10:39:21 PM
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That is going to be wild diver dan.
Posted by rollyczar, Friday, 9 June 2017 2:27:00 AM
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diver -
The only ones who would benefit from neglecting to educate a portion of the population are certain populist politicians who would gain votes as more people would be unable to spot the flaws in their arguments.

But as far as our economy goes, mass education is more important than ever. We need to do far more to make ourselves more productive. And we need to stop pretending we can't afford it. We're a rich country, but if we stop investing in the future we'll gradually fall to third world standard.
Posted by Aidan, Friday, 9 June 2017 2:43:49 AM
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I absolutely agree with your opinion Wolly B.
Posted by rollyczar, Friday, 9 June 2017 2:44:35 AM
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Aidan...(dear Aidan).. You are way off the mark.
Children of the modern world are self educated already. Remember, they have all the tools for this at hand, as we do.

Children are now a force to be reckoned with. What society needs to do is to capture their enthusiasm, not destroy it. The current mass education system produces zombies.
I've pointed out, the majority of children Ill fitted to continuing education, need little to no continuing education, to fill the current jobs available to them at school leaving age.

The travesty to the tax payer lies in this fact. That children need perpetual education is a fallacy and a lie fed to society, and capitalises on greed and insecurity of it's adherents to support the inconvenient truth, hidden by politicians, by pretending the advantage of stripping our children of the ability to self-survive without it!
Posted by diver dan, Friday, 9 June 2017 8:00:42 PM
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diver, you're way off multiple marks.

Children of the modern world are not a homogenous group. And while many are self educated to some extent, there's a lot they don't know. Year sixes and sevens generally don't have all the tools we have, and there's much they don't know about how to use the ones they do have.

There is a lot more that schools could and should do to capture children's enthusiasm. But your unsupported claim that "the current mass education system produces zombies" is way off the mark, and I suspect it's based not on the current system at all, but on the system when you were at school.

And even if your dubious claim that " the majority of children Ill fitted to continuing education, need little to no continuing education, to fill the current jobs available to them at school leaving age" is true, you seem to have missed the fact that education is about preparing people for a future, not just getting them into the workforce.

The ability to self-survive is irrelevant; we should be giving everyone the means to actually thrive, and education is the biggest part of that.
Posted by Aidan, Saturday, 10 June 2017 1:12:04 AM
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