Thanks Linda Graham - a good summary. The ideology of parental 'choice' has always been a transparent sham. Only those with the income or capacity to borrow to pay school fees have a choice. The great majority of the rest of us have no 'choice' but to send our kids to the increasingly under-funded state schools.

Some of us actually see the benefit to the child and to the nation of a broad social mix in a person's schooling. These parents exercise real choice but are increasingly challenged to keep the faith in the face of constant Government denigration of state school teachers and failure to provide adequate resources for the majority system.

Under the Howard regime, vast amounts of taxpayers' funds have been transferred from the state systems to the private sector, and 'choice' has been the camouflage for this unfair strategy. A number of these schools are hard-pressed to find ways of spending their windfall. Any decent self-respecting citizen with children in wealthy private schools would be honour bound to advocate the cessation of the Government's generosity to the wealthy and its mean-spirited approach to state schools.

Moreover, they would pressure the Howard Government to get out of the game of funding minority parental 'choice' on the grounds that good education is a public benefit and ultimately a national asset. Linda Graham is right to assert that - to the extent that governments can intervene - all Australian schools should be equally good. Imagine that!

An excellent article. It is deeply disgraceful that something as important as the education of a nation's children is not seen as the single most important expenditure by a government.
That we actually accept such a notion as private schooling affordable only to some and that these are seen as a better choice than public schooling sits very uncomfortable with the idea that every child deserves an equal chance.

A free and open market is one thing, but whether education should be seen as just another commodity is another.

The Netherlands, like the Nordic countries, regard education as a right equal for all children. The elite, aristocrats, wealthy, unemployed and average joe-blows send their children to the same schools. International benchmarks speak for themselves.

Australian parents will always look for ways to get their children out of the public school system, while that system fails their children.
Parents want a curriculum that provides a very solid base of fundamental knowledge in literacy, numeracy, history, geography etc, so that children’s options are all open for years 11 and 12 and university.

They don’t want ideological conditioning from Left wing teachers designed to equip children for social activism…if their children want to be social activists, they can make that decision for themselves, when they have acquired the education and experience in life to decide.
The Left always seeks to blame such ills as drug dependence, welfare dependency, low self esteem, on the wicked conservatives.
The opposite is the truth.
Over the last thirty years , the Left has socially engineered this society into one in which women have been encouraged to place their own wants before their children’s needs.
The mother who elects to stay at home and raise her own children, has been derided ( as we’ve seen this week from Rudd), and relegated to the status of second class citizen…not by the government, but by Left wing women and feminist men.
Children find themselves in some no man’s land between two families when their parents decide to do their own thing, divorce at the drop of a hat, and start new families....a recipe for lifelong insecurity, low self-esteem and despair…the legacy of Left wing social engineering....not conservative government…they are the ones who just have to pick up the pieces.
The genie will never go back in the bottle.
All the Left can think of is money ...they are the problem.....not the money.
Children in Norway and other countries gain a much more comprehensive knowledge of our language , English, than children do here… that’s the legacy of the Left…and it’s criminal.

Real nonsense!

real says: “Parents want a curriculum that provides a very solid base of fundamental knowledge in literacy, numeracy, history, geography etc, so that children’s options are all open for years 11 and 12 and university.” Cliche, cliche. Is that why the vast majority of parents send their children to state schools?

real says: “Over the last thirty years , the Left has socially engineered this society into one in which women have been encouraged to place their own wants before their children’s needs.” What sort of Left government has ruled in Australia for the past eleven years? How did the Left manage this engineering?

real says: “The mother who elects to stay at home and raise her own children, has been derided (as we’ve seen this week from Rudd [sic]), and relegated to the status of second class citizen…not by the government, but by Left wing women and feminist men.” Such power to relegate! But compare: real’s quote immediately above. Apparently Australian women can be relegated to second class stay-at-home citizens AND simultaneously taught to place their own wants before their children’s wants. How do they manage both?

real says: “All the Left can think of is money ...they are the problem.....not the money.” I'm not kidding; it’s real - that’s what he said!

real says: “Children in Norway and other countries gain a much more comprehensive knowledge of our language , English, than children do here… that’s the legacy of the Left…and it’s criminal.” Last time my family was in Norway (a recent visit to Oslo and Stavangar in 2006) many people had no English language skills at all. Conversations were strictly limited in many cases.

real says: the Left are somehow responsible for high divorce rates. Is he sure it’s not the learning of the English language that causes it? The number of divorces in Norway has increased fourfold since the beginning of the 1960s. www.ssb.no/ekteskap_en/arkiv/art-2004-09-02-01-en.html

“Marriage is slowly dying in Scandinavia. A majority of children in Sweden and Norway are born out of wedlock.” www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/660zypwj.asp

Told you they shouldn’t teach English at school.

Linda and FrankGol, do you really believe equality of outcomes can be legislated into existence?
Two points- schools are happy to teach and achieve 'half understanding' in their students(50% passes) and then argue themselves blue in the face about how good they are. Why does any education system process their clientele through the system blithely ignoring their failure to educate the child in front of them? And don't tell me its wrong to expect a child to demonstrate learning and competence through examination and demonstration.
-here in NSW the Dept. of Commerce rips who knows how many hundreds of millions out of the Dept. of Education budget by artificially inflating prices for school maintenance projects. ie a $100,000 job costs the DoE $160,000 after Commerce has whacked on its fees.
My point is that the education system is its own worst enemy and articles like Linda's' sound great but are meaningless in reality.

Interesting article but I am concerned here with the issues, and there IS much in what Donnelly states

Over the years I have worked with great teachers and brilliant principals, but they have been in a minority. Far too many were, full of themselves, there only for the power trips over kids, the abuse of the system...

I have had principals whom I would love formally investigated, but the Department protects errant principals while allowing teachers to drown. Even the Union has made an agreement which sabotages teachers .

But a few salient facts

- there have been many schools over the years that abused state and federal grants for areas unrealted to the grants
- there are schools that refuse to fly the flag or to allow schools ANZAC ceremonies, blaming ethnic kids
- there are teachers who bag Rotary and other great organisations
- there are principals who cover for mates while they are away, even overseas but who make life hell for a teacher they do not like who is on sick leave
- I know of one school where disabled kids are either left in rooms or corridoors and that is all the attention they get
- I recall a truly great first year out once who truly impressed me with his dedication and his caring; that bloke, however, offended the powers that be due to his professionalism and they bullied him until he left teaching, and Australia behind - a great loss to education
- I have been to staff meetings where staff were refused the right to speak on the school's triennial reviews, where they are not allowed to communicate with the department on a range of things
- I know of principals who do not allow staff time release for PDs

And there is so much more

But the worst in many ways is that there are MANY schools in Victoria where kids only need to get 20% to pass. Is this not dumbing down?

Let's not get on political horses but look at what IS wrong and bloody well fix it!