I find it incredible that in the discussion about school vouchers there are no comments about how school systems are different.

In the U.S. funding for schools comes from local councils, so you have to go to the school in your council area, which means there is no competition, and private schools, which have very few students, get negligible funding from any government.

In australia 1/3 of students go to private schools which get significant funding from the government and public schools are run by state governments.

In Australia you can switch between any school in the state, so there is competition and if you want to send your child to a private school the government will pay part of the fee, which is exactly the system the proponents of vouchers in the U.S. want to achieve.

using american arguments for vouchers in an Australian context makes very little sense, and seems to show little real engagement with this issues on the part of those that uncritically parrot them.

MonashLibertarian asked someone to identify a sector of the economy that had not been improved by competition. A few industries spring to mind

1. electricity generation and supply

2. gas supply

3. integrated public transport around Melbourne

4. the author on the government report into higher education said while he was visiting Monash in 2002 that he thought that the Australian university system was suffering from the inefficiencies of too much competition because universities competed against each other for scarce research and teaching funds.

Point 4 has lead to some unfortunate distortions of public perception. For example. interested parties spruik the ICT skills shortage to gain federal government research funding, to attract more students. The reality unfortunately is quite different and only 20% of ICT graduates can get jobs in ICT as the federal government continues to offshore the ICT industry.

I have no problem with private education systems, but they should be PRIVATE, their students shouldn't get more government money per capita than students in the state system.

MonashL, you are displaying the same types of selective research that is levelled at your "team" in the article.

The Swedish experience is exceptionally different to that in the USA. There is very tight government regulation and control, and every school receiving that funding HAS to accept any student who enrols (as long as there's room) no matter what. Starting to sound a lot more "lefty" to me. I have covered this issue in great depth here:

http://petaldavid.blogspot.com/2005/11/thanks-joel-joel-sent-us-terrific-post.html

So I won't bother to repeat myself.

Andrew, it's a wonderful article and I commend you on it. It's a sad fact that everything you have said has been said before - many times.

Incidentally, there is also a link on my site to a great article outlining why PPPs don't work.

I am a parent with 4 children whose needs have been seriously neglected in the Public school system. I don’t need any research, I know for a fact that had there have been a voucher system then I could have put my kids in a school better capable of meeting their identified educational needs.

Whatever money was allocated by the Government towards my children was wasted as the education they were presented with was not appropriate for their needs and nobody seemed to be required to care. The cost all fell on my husband and I emotionally and financially as we were the ones that had to pay all the psychologists bills and medical bills from the sickness and illnesses that school experiences have triggered.

There is no choice in Education at the moment. If you have a number of children you have to be mega-rich to go to Private schools and, whilst you can choose to apply to as many Public schools as you like, the only school that is obligated to take you is your local school. All other schools can refuse to take you, if they so desire, based on the area that you live in (out of area) or your child's level of accuracy and achievement ( marks in a selective school test).

Of course your level of accuracy and achievement is highly influenced by the area that you live and your social standing. The poor can't compete the way things are anyway.

Bring on the vouchers, research also says that the more involved the parents are the better the outcome for the student, let the parents choose, in consultation with their child, what is best for their child and then you will see progress.

Jolanda,
It is a great shame about your kids experience, but I could quote equally dreadful experiences from parents of kids in private schools (and they paid big bucks for the privilege) - a family has just settled out of court with an expensive private school in Victoria because of the lack of education their child received. There are good and bad schools across the systems, that is not the point.
The point is vouchers would not give you greater choice if you could not afford to top up the cost to the level a private school demanded, all it would do is remove the very last fo the children whose parents could afford it from the school your kids attended.
Its simple really, if schools receive money from tax payers, they should not be able to then choose which of those taxpayers kids they will or won't aaccept as students. let them be private, catholic, christian, muslim or zoroastrian, if they take public money they need to accept public obligations, vouchers or not.

Ena I appreciate that even Private schools can fail children but the point is that with vouchers we could have even chosen a different Public School, even if we couldn't afford private.

We couldn't even 'choose' a better public school because the Department of Education ruined my families reputation by discrediting us and vilifying us and no 'out of area' or other public school would take my children in, not even with requests for special consideration even on compassionate grounds and not even despite the fact that they were children with identified special eduational needs and were suffering serious psychological distress as a result of the neglect of their education and their treatment by the Department of Education.