yvonne. You think that Scholarships are a cheap option? Scholarships are awarded on the basis of test marks! Do you think that a gifted/bright public school student who has never been taught above grade level and who comes from a non academic low socio-economic household and who is depressed can compete in academic competition against other smart kids from Private schools and/or who are extensively coached and tutored to sit the test?

To get a full scholarship you have to pretty much come first. Half scholarships are not good enough for many as they cannot afford even half the fees.

Why do our children have to win a competition in schools to get access to education at a level desirable and necessary for them? We pay our taxes; the same high level of education should be available to all. Not just those who are in advantaged environments and can get the highest test marks! All it does is allows those who are in the better learning environment to have an even greater advantage. How is that equitable and fair.

Children are not 'test marks'. They are people and it is their needs and personality that should be taken into consideration when determining school placement - not their marks as their marks are very influenced by their teachers, school and home environment.

Pdev. I am not posting about my children not getting into Selective Schools. I am posting about the Public School system totally neglecting my children’s identified and obvious educational needs and then manipulating and tampering with their test scores and school applications to purposely keep them out of Selective Schools and to ruin their reputation because I complained about their education. There is a difference?

Here is a quote from the link (http://www.adogs.info/pr219.htm):

In 2004 Mark Drummond (who at that time sent his own children to Catholic schools) in research for his PhD estimated that the average marginal cost for educating each individual child in the public system is approximately $4,500.00 per pupil. Assuming that one fifth of the pupils in the private religious sector would not shift across to the public sector, DOGS estimated that this would lead to an increase in costs of $3.96 billion. However, in 2004, the State and Federal Governments were providing Church schools with $5,800.00 per pupil in direct grants alone. This did not account for indirect grants enjoyed by church schools but not public schools. They possess this favoured treatment by virtue of the fact that under our tax system they are categorised as "charities". On the basis of the direct grants cost alone, the inclusion of four fifths of the private church school pupils in the public sector would yield a saving to taxpayers of $2. 4 billion, not an increased cost of $4.2 billion.

There you have it. Proof.

Shadow Minister, you seem to be caught up in this idea that money doesn't really matter. OK, let's run an experiment - Let's give 50% more money to ALL public schools, and 50% LESS government money to all private schools. If money doesn't really matter, then the status quo will no doubt stay the same, correct? Because people are all leaving public schools because of the "feministic" curriculum, and flocking to private schools because of their "values", right? So if our experiment shows that the same percentages of public to private enrolments exist, then you're right and I'm wrong, OK?

Willing to take it on?

Jolanda, the problem I see with selective schools is that you are again forming ghettos within the govt system. MacRob High in Melb has over 70% of its students from a Asian/Indian background-many tutored to pass the entrance exam in Yr8. It also produces the highest VCE results in the state. I do not see this as necessarily positive, would these obviously gifted students not get similar results in their original high schools? In the USA such a situation where kids of a similar ethnic background were so overrepresented would be grounds for positive discrimination. The selective system in NSW is worse in that it strips out a much higher proportion of higher performing kids therefore marginalising the performance of the non selective schools-this also occurs with scholarships which allow private schools to skim to increase their VCE results and underpin their marketing effort. In Vic both parties matched each other in their promise to build more selective govt high schools.Why??

Petal,

Having finally read your link, I see that your standards of proof are much lower than most.

Mark Drummonds calculation of marginal cost is exactly that, if you add a couple more pupils, the expected costs of additional teaching staff, stationary etc would be about $4500 (in 2004).

The polemic then goes on to apply the costing to 80% of the catholic schools coming over to the public schools. Any moron with economics 101 would see the error. It is similar to saying as your car gets 10km per litre that the cost of travel is 14c/km if you look at 100 000 kilometers the cost of the car and maintenance needs to be counted too.

The publisher of the article is at best a cretin or at worst a deliberate liar trying to deceive the naive to accept his agenda.

Petal you should be ashamed to associate with this worst type of propoganda. My children in primary school are taught not to take at face value articles on the internet when doing their projects. Maybe this was ommitted in your curriculum.

Where did I say money did not matter? I said that good governance is needed more for the public schools. As for the rest of the tripe, don't attack me for comments made by others.

HRS, don't be ridiculous. I have not said anything negative about men or boys. I happen to like men a lot. I have two wonderful young men as sons and a husband. I'm surrounded by many great people who happen to be male. Human beings are human beings who also happen to be either male or female. You will find it very helpful to your emotional well being if you stop being so obsessed with some people's female gender. That's why you perceive personal insult to your manliness where most likely none is intended.

Jolanda, you confuse me now. At some point you were lamenting labor's intent on bringing 'the top down' dumbing down the education system so to speak. Scholarships have always been and still are merit based. This means that those who are bright/gifted, but do not have parents with the financial means to have an opportunity to advance on their merit. That is a good thing. Intelligence wins over just having parents with money.

I know several kids on scholarships. Full and part. For academic ability, music or sport. Each and everyone of these kids was deserving. The competition is tough, but that shows the numbers of children with high ability. Maybe there should be more pressure on private schools to grant more full scholarships.

Children are not just 'test marks', but it certainly is a good way of determining levels of knowledge and/or creative thinking. Part of the anger with public education is precisely because whole lots of children come out the other end without being able to pass even a rudimentary test on reading, writing and arithmetic.

I haven’t said anything insulting or negative about you, but you now call me “ridiculous” and that’s added to the “but plenty of sneering, rude downtalking men towards women. Privately and professionally. I wonder how HRS addresses women he comes across?”

I wonder why I keep thinking of the word "feminist"

I do know of parents removing children from schools, where if the student does not do well, then the teachers automatically blame the parents, but if the student does well, then the teachers claim that this is because of the teachers (and never the parents).

More and more money can go to schools, and more and more money can be misspent as well, if it goes into someones pocket without student marks actually improving.

But it is rather sad that mothers and fathers have to pay tax, and then pay out extra money as well, to have teachers take an interest in their children, if those children are either boys or girls.