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The Forum > Article Comments > Good parent, bad parent: private school, public school > Comments

Good parent, bad parent: private school, public school : Comments

By Leslie Cannold and Jane Caro, published 30/11/2007

When the last middle class family leaves the system, Australia will have settled for public education that provides a 'reasonable safety net' for the poor.

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My parents struggled to send me to a very nice private school which has a wonderful art centre, science labs and very flash swimming pool. I enjoyed being educated in pleasant surroundings but I hated the 1 hour train trip to school and wanted to attend the local high school, which had 100% university entrance in the age cohort 3 years above mine and 8% university entrance in the age cohort 2 years behind me.

My parents sent me to the private school so I had choice of subjects I could study and because they thought the teachers were better. In fact, our teachers were underpaid but keen to work at that school to be close to home and maths teachng was weak, as it was throughout the whole state.

If you want a strong education system, you must have a strong government school system. People only send their children to private schools to get a better education. If you have weak state schools you can have lower standards in the private sector.

Its immoral to have higher government funding for private school than government schools.
Posted by billie, Friday, 30 November 2007 8:48:47 AM
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I've said it before:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6642#99463

and I'll say it again:

Diverting all the money currently subsidising the private schools would save the taxpayer $2 billion per year.

Don't believe what the private school lobby tells you - they conveniently forget to include the huge capital grants that are regularly flung their way.
Posted by petal, Friday, 30 November 2007 9:34:13 AM
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The authors write about “parents” at the end of the article, but only mention mothers in the article.

Perhaps they don’t see fathers as being parents, or perhaps they find it too difficult to write the word “father”.

I do feel for those who are sending their children to public schools, and I am one of them.

I have no doubts at all regards the funding to public schools. The majority of public schools now have many more facilities then an average school when I went to school, and the average public school appears to have many more facilities than an average private school, some of which do not even have a sports oval.

However the public school system now appears to be run by the teacher’s union and feminists, and an average parent has no say in what happens after their child walks in the school gate.

There is much more ability for a mother and a father to have a say in the private school system, and I would think that this is the main reason why so many mothers and fathers are now sending their children to private schools, which often have less facilities (and not more) than the public schools.
Posted by HRS, Friday, 30 November 2007 9:42:01 AM
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Dr Leslie writes
'First we need to be frank - with ourselves and with others - about why the subject of school funding gets us so hot under the collar.
Simply much of the Public education system is a dismal failure and the financing of it has nothing to do with it. Also it costs the tax payer a lot less to have private schools as parents sacrifice their own money and labours. How much franker to we need to be
Posted by runner, Friday, 30 November 2007 9:59:01 AM
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The trouble with this debate is that people don't think about what they say and merely quote slogans (i.e., unions run public schools, public education is a dismal failure, etc) and the rot continues.

Until the politicians and bureacrats started fiddling with it the NSW public school system was adired around teh world because it provided uniform high standards of education everywhere in the State, from Wilcannia to Vaucluse.

But since market economy has started to rule, we have ceased to be a community and have become a mere market, since the mealy mouthed pollies/bureacrats have tried to convince us that parents don't seek to educate their children but have become "consumers of education services", the muddying of the waters by ideologically motivated slogans such as those already used in this discussion has allowed the politicians to favour the rich schools - using the Catholic schools as a pretext - if we stop sending disporoportionate amounts of money to private schools (by which the complainers meand the rich private schools) this is used/distorted by pollies to frighten the Catholic schools into acting against any real equity in funding.
We expect governments to fund State schools so that we have a future as a country. If people wish to send their children to schools outside the State system, then let them do so at their own expense and not at teh expense of the poorer taxpayers who cannot afford teh choice but whose taxes subsidise those whose economic circumstances allow them to do so.
Posted by Plaza-Toro, Friday, 30 November 2007 1:27:50 PM
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Actually HRS, go back and read the article. The first para mentioned mothers (in relation to mother-guilt and childcare) - the rest from para 2 onwards refered to parents. Dont be such a bigot that you cant even read straight.
Posted by Country Gal, Friday, 30 November 2007 2:08:56 PM
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