A 'Christian' school, if it is based on the principles of the Gospel, would have 2 purposes from what I can see.

1/ It would provide education to Christian children.
2/ It would offer affordable education to the less fortunate. (Christian or none)

Point 2 would not mean they should 'hide' the gospel for the sake of non Christian children, who would know that it is part of the package.

I suppose Christian schools could be 'run' in a manner which contradicts the Gospel, and that would be sad. My son went to a private 'Christian' school for 2 yrs, (Until we ran out of money and coincidently they ran out of patience) and it was abundantly clear that the emphasis was on keeping the school name and 'score' high, rather than catering to the various needs of students. It was the only school where my son obtained an "A" in Maths, in one year. He had a very dedicated 'Christian' teacher. But a different year, a different teacher, down down down.

CONCLUSION it is quite possible that Christian schools can contradict the Gospel, but not neccessarily so.

Shorbe, making sure all kids are educated to a reasonable standard is not just about being unselfish. In fact, considered intelligently, its actually about being selfish. After all, talent and potential are not just born into rich and lucky families, it pops up all over the place. In a globally competitive world like ours, countries like Australia with highly segregated education systems that entrench privilege and underprivilege, put themselves at a distinct competitive disadvantage to most of our competitors who have much more equitable education systems and therefore are much more likely to develop talent wherever it appears.
So, the kind of narrow I'm-all-right-Jack philosophy you espouse is not simply unjust, it is also foolish. In the end, we will all suffer and our economy will too. Developing the talent of all our children -whether your direct offsping or not - is simply sensible policy which benefits all of us in the long run.
"No arbitrary obstacles should prevent people from achieving those positions for which their talents fit them and which their values lead them to seek. Not birth, nationality, colour, religion, sex, nor any other irrelevant characteristic should determine the opportunities that are open to a person – only his abilities" a quote from Milton Friedman, and another from Alan Greenspan, "… we cannot expect everyone to be equally skilled, but we need to pursue equal access to knowledge to ensure that our economic system works at maximum efficiency and is perceived to be just in its distribution of rewards." Perhaps you don't have to be a socialist to recognise the wisdom of good universal education.

"After all, talent and potential are not just born into rich and lucky families, it pops up all over the place. In a globally competitive world like ours, countries like Australia with highly segregated education systems that entrench privilege and underprivilege, put themselves at a distinct competitive disadvantage to most of our competitors who have much more equitable education systems and therefore are much more likely to develop talent wherever it appears."

WELL SAID!
I talked to a specialist's wife yesterday (at a party) who was pleased she could get 25% discount on Uni. fees by paying for her three kids up front.
She thought the "Future Fund" was a great idea
and
she no longer listens to the plebeian, leftist ABC.

Strangely her husband was quite nice.

ena: If you seriously think Milton Friedman would be advocating government funded and controlled education, then you're seriously taking him out of context.

Anyhow, I don't buy your argument about education being for the benefit of the entire nation for a second. If we were talking about a country where everybody became a scientist, perhaps. However, what good does anything beyond about year 7 do 90% of people in this country? I value knowledge and education, but I think beyond simple arithmetic, spelling and reading, most of what people "learn" in school is soon forgotten, and thus, a complete waste of time.

What we need is less of a lowest-common-denominator system and more of an elitist, streamed system where the dumbies and "behaviourally challenged" would be kicked out as soon as possible so that those who showed some inclination to learn could do so in peace. If you were to argue for that to be funded by the public, I would begrudgingly agree, even though I'd rather see it funded by private scholarships. I can't possibly advocate the present system where the ~20%+ of hardcore troublemakers are kept on until at least year 10, and possibly longer because they don't have any other options, very much to the detriment of everyone else. Likewise, the ~60% of people who aren't bad kids (but won't use most of what they've "learnt" once they get into the real world) should be culled at an appropriate age.

Or, you can have a private system where if people want to stay longer than their abilities dictate, they should pay for it.

"...and "behaviourally challenged" would be kicked out as soon as possible..."

This would be disastrous for not only the education system but also for the country. So what are these kids going to do after they are out of school at an early age? Instead the less academically inclined should be encouraged to take up apprenticeship schemes at a much earlier age than is currently.

But the reason they stay on is neither their fault, nor the school's they attend. It is driven by our changing economy and technology. In the 1980s half of all the full time jobs for teenage boys disappeared - most of them either unskilled or apprenticeships in manufacturing industries. And if you think those boys had it bad, think about the girls, fully two thirds of the full-time jobs for teenage girls disappeared at the same time (in offices, textiles and factories). That's why the kids stick around - they have no job to go to.
Worse, just at the time the teenage job market contracted so catastrophically, govts decided to cut spending to public institutions - including public schools. So just when the least academically inclined kids were forced to stay on at an institution they hated, govts made it harder for those institutions to cope. This is the major reason behind our current sense that something has gone wrong with our schools. It has, but its not the teachers or the kids or even the much maligned teachers unions who caused the problem; it was change that we'd neither prepared for nor - even to this day - actually recognised. The increasing VET (vocational education training) courses - mostly in public schools are almost our first attempts to actually start to do something constructive about this remarkable yet largely unspoken change. They are proving extremely successful, by the way, its just that its taken so long for us to work out that we needed them.