Shorbe,

Your comments on my points 1 & 2 - I am not saying that we shouldn't have private schools and I too am pro choice. But you don't rob Peter to pay Paul... you put enough money in to finance both so that ALL get the benefits of a good education. Both should be funded properly!

3. Private schools are a business and so are State schools, why can't people see that? The first law of business is to fund it properly - see above again. Your cinema argument doesn't really apply... as another cinema isn't forced to to take the riff raff expelled from the first cinema. State schools do have to take the expelled private school kids. Private schools should have to deal with their own problems... and solve them themselves ... not dump them into the state system.

4. I might agree (depending how it was done)that it might be better done in a school that specialised in such illneses but... they won't fund more support teachers so I doubt if they will fund other institutions ... even if the greater benefits were proven.

7. Shorbe ... many people do unpaid overtime and it is all wrong... Go stand point duty in a classroom for 7 hours a day... then get back to me on their remuneration package.

Education in all areas has been underfunded for years and is full of top heavy departments. I am not against private schools ... it is the diversion of funds from the State to the private that I am against. Fund both of them better.

As for taxpayers having choice.... that is a bit of a furfy.... most low income earners have no choice whatsoever in eductaion.

Opinionated2: Who'd pay for it though? Australians are all for a socialised system so long as someone else takes financial responsibility. I say go one way or the other, but people really do like to have a bit of a whinge in this country.

My cinema argument does hold because the patrons at one cinema are not forced to fund other cinemas. In short, I don't believe in the legitimacy of the state.

I'm also of the mind that education is wasted on most people in the west. Aside from providing free baby sitting, after grade six, I think school is largely a waste of time and people don't learn a damned thing. This might all be different if we changed the compulsory, syllabus based model, but then again, I'm not so sure. I'm more than a little cynical about human nature. Pearls before swine and all that.

As to more funding for special types of education, I don't have a problem with people throwing their own money away on a problem, just with them demanding other people also contribute.

As far as unpaid overtime goes, that's the job and people are aware of that when they apply for a job. If they don't like it, they don't have to do it. I've generally been pretty slack when it comes to doing extra, but then I've also never expected that it's my right to curry favour with the boss or get a promotion without being really conscientious.

You're also assuming that I haven't worked in education simply because I'm extremely unsympathetic to both teachers and students. Nothing will make one a misanthrope faster than being exposed to the raw horror of a classroom (William Golding, for example, was a teacher), which is why I'll quite possibly homeschool my own.

Your final sentence simply isn't true or both private schools and selective government schools (such as Melbourne High School) wouldn't have lots of kids whose parents came to this country with nothing, not even an understanding of English. It's all about an attitude that values excellence and learning.

Funding.

One thing I did gain from the three school boards on which I served was that "state" (cwlth or state) funding of non-government schools disadvantages both the ordinary and the disadvantaged, twice over.

Neither of the two non-govt schools took as their student body, the region/area social demograpic. Indeed, in one school with a nominal feed from one suburb, a suburb that had the highest level of Aboriginal residence in Perth, only one Aboriginal student was evident!

Hence, government schools servicing that suburb essentially took one hundred percent of this disadvantaged demograpic. Outcome? Less funding per student for all students in that school if the disadvantage of the Indigenous student was to be addressed.

This is repeated across the nation, without let, hindrance or input by alleged academics, certainly politicians.

Answer, well, for a start, ALL schools take their dependency demographic.

No person, teacher, politician, unionist, or academic will ever convince me that "state" funding as presently disbursed meets our allegedly egalitarian national ethos.

In spite of our constitution, we favour religion in our funding model.

For some this is a very sad outcome, for both teacher and student alike.

Sapper

A good degree holder and researcher might not be a good teacher.No doubt a teacher needs a good academic record but he/she should have personality by which he/she would be well accepted to his/her students.
His/her neurolinguistic version will have to be attractive with well developed convincing capacity.Mere educational qualifications may not serve the purpose of a teacher.

Shorbe,

The Australian Govt have been running huge surpluses. We can, at the drop of a hat, go to a war in Iraq costing 100's of millions of dollars... and yet you ask who will pay for it?

I am against the war in Iraq because of the flawed intelligence used to start it (it may be illegal under international law) and yet I don't get a say in where my money is spent.

I would far prefer our kids be educated than our soldiers fighting in a trumped up war.

Sorry Shorbe, teachers aren't informed about the unpaid overtime when they start teaching... it is just expected of them ... and of course they are caught between a rock and a hard place. If they don't do their marking in their own time the kids complain because they rightly want their results. So the teachers give up their own time to benefit the kids... what rotters they are for giving their time!

Teachers are pretty special people Shorbe... and most of them take their roles very very seriously.

I still don't think your cinema argument is relevant and your last sentence is patently wrong. Of course some people manage to scrape together the funds to send their kids to private schools but most people in the low socio-economic can't afford to. It aint just attitude...it's bucks!

So which system do you prefer?.... all the way with the State system or all the way with a fully privatised system run basically by the churches?

Opinionated2: You won't get an argument out of me about the Iraq War. I was living in London at the time and marched against it because I considered it immoral, ill thought out, a massive waste of taxpayer money, and would create more problems than it solved -- all of which is proving true. I have no sympathy for many of the British people though who had a viable alternative to Blair and his cronies in the Lib. Dems. (Charles Kennedy, the leader at the time, was a strong critic of the war) yet passed on the opportunity.

No, teachers do know what their job will involve before they start. I had to do marking, lesson planning, etc. when I did my training. Along with the nice students, I also had to deal with some little rotters. I knew what the job was going to involve within the first month of my Dip. Ed. course.

Private school teachers do have to spend a lot of extra time, but state school teachers don't. The students don't get much homework at all. I have seen teachers (who are well organised) use their free lessons to do a lot of this paperwork. Also, they stockpile lesson plans and resources to streamline their jobs. An extra hour or so per day still only makes it an eight hour day.

We'll have to disagree on the cinema argument. My last sentence isn't wrong in my experience. I went to a private school that drew mainly from working class parents (and many students travelled up to an hour each way rather than attend the local state school), and we had a fair number of Greek and Vietnamese students whose parents had come to Australia with nothing (and couldn't speak English at the time), yet within their own lifetimes, those people had become middle class and their children had become doctors, lawyers, engineers and accountants. Australia is, despite governments' best attempts to penalise or discourage hard work and entrepreneurialism in small business, a land of opportunity for those willing to try.