What a hilarious insight into the complete lack of self-knowledge of the public eduction lobby. People aren't leaving your schools in droves because they are religious - Australian's have never been less religious.

They are leaving because they don't want their kids to get a crap education dictated by the ideological whims and self-interest of the teachers' unions and their shills like Mr Goldstein.

Schools have never been better resourced than they are today but boys are still leaving less able to read and write than they were a generation ago.

Meanwhile, public school teachers try at every step to stop accurate testing of their students because they don't really give a damn about teaching, just about social engineering, as we can see from Mr Goldstein's article which doesn't mention educational standards once.

As for the idea that private school students should be forced to pay the entire cost of their education - I totally agree. Just give their parents a tax rebate on the public education they are paying for but aren't using and they will be happy to take care of the rest.

Of course, I know Mr Goldstein wouldn't consider that because giving parents a real financial choice would open the doors to the public school re-education camps and soon they wouldn't have any working class inmates left either.

The extent to which we can make real unrestricted choices, defines the quality of our democracy, and how much freedom we really have.

Society and homogeneity doesn't suffer because parents make informed choices, pay fees, and students attend schools that suit their values, beliefs and personal convictions. This denies fundamental values of democracy: freedom, to choose, and to act, with responsibility. The exercise of choice in education improves society and its intellectual, cultural and democratic foundations because people are, in this way, respected for their individuality, their intelligence, their ability to discern difference and to improve the circumstances for the benefit of their children.

You seem to premise your argument on the belief it is best in a democratic society for all children to attend State Schools.

In working with others in a democratic non-state school people gave a variety of reasons for making informed choice to enrol. Reasons included issues with the absence of democracy, conduct, operation, standards, values, class sizes, lack of identity, teachers and their attitudes, mundane old world State curricula, denying creativity, testing, denial of intelligence of young people, educational "fads", etc. Added to these were constant disruptions by party political ideologies written into policies, legislation and regulations that affected the stability of Schools, teachers and classrooms.

Change to benefit students is unlikely to happen by maintaining a system that suggests one size fits all. Change happens through new initiatives, different, innovative approaches to education. Change is least likely in monolithic, top heavy State School systems, where the pace of change is excruciatingly slow.

Allow me any day to work with others to operate a self-funded, not for profit, human rights and responsibilities based, democratic centre of learning, where young people are equals, and the so called "public interest" is not used to manipulate and distantly control and drag us towards the mainstream schools that we have tried and have found to be severely wanting. We need to fulfill the learning needs of our children NOW in accordance with our democratic and human rights beliefs and values, not at some future time when it suits others.

HRS,Leigh,Persius -your pathological hate for opinions that might be described as progressive,socially inclusive and public has no bounds. You respond to every article on education published on this site with the same bias and lack of understanding that is now totally predictable. Could you all please state if you have children where they are educated(state/school area) and by what investigation you came to the conclusion that the State school in your area or where your children may have attended is so eductionally hopeless, so left wing indoctrinating that any thinking parent would not contemplate sending them there.

Well said pdev.
As a parent with kids in a comprehensive public high school, and as a professional who runs workshops in many such schools around Australia, I am at a loss to know which schools exactly these public school loathers are actually writing about.None of the schools I have seen would fit the descriptions given. Mostly they are pretty good, well meaning institutions who are struggling to function on too little money. They actually need our help, not another ideologically driven kicking.
It seems the anti-public school lobby are driven by ideological conviction rather than genuine experience - and even if they have had a genuinely crappy experience, how come one bad experience in a public school (or even 3 or 4 or 5) means all public schools are crap, yet really horrendous scandals and behaviour and prejudice and lousy teaching and results can emerge in private schools and only that one school is affected, and even that school not very much?
Sure there are lousy schools in the public system, just as there are lousy schools in the private system but what has this to do with the importance of free, compulsory education for all kids regardless of their parentage?
If the public system is really as dire as these people claim, what are they going to do about it? Or are they happy with a system that allows them to rescue their own kids and leave the rest just to rot?
The freedom to choose is always predicated on the power to choose and most parents simply don't have much choice at all, and never will have, if choice is something you can only buy with money or the sheer good luck of having a bright, scholarship winning child.
The problem with so many of the people who heap invective on public education is that they only ever offer a solution for their own or other (lucky/privileged/take your pick) kids. What alternative do they offer for the children who have not been so blessed at birth? After all, education isn't really about parents, its about kids.

No doubt there are some good teachers in the public system, and some good schools. Unfortunately the problem is systemic. Not only has education been dumbed down in terms of academic teaching it also seems to have lost its way in teaching good citizenship. There is far too much focus on rights and not enough on responsibilities.

I note ena's comment in regard of public schools that "Mostly they are pretty good"; I would actually call that damnation by faint praise!

Thanks Ena, My view is that many of the rabid anti public school lobby are what Howard called his aspirational battlers. They live in outer suburbs which tend to have the highest concentration of struggling govt high schools and are desperate to differentiate themselves from their struggletown neighbours. They often live in new McMansion estates and equate something you pay for as being superior to that which is govt provided. These parents flock to private usually low cost church schools that spring up to service them. Again their world view is very much dominated by trying to get their children ahead-everyone else is the competition. They however are not intelligent enough to understand that it is usually the children of the tertiary educated, professional classes that are most successful in public and private schools and proceed on to uni and solid careers. Most of these people live in inner and welloff suburbs where public schools are often very much competitive with the private sector. That is its waht your parents do and where you live that determines how well you are likely to perform at school.