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The Forum > Article Comments > Defining disadvantage > Comments

Defining disadvantage : Comments

By Andrew Dowling, published 27/2/2008

Australia’s school funding needs urgent reform to ensure that fair and adequate funding is provided to all of the nation’s schools.

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Dr Dowling's article is a masterful display of side-stepping through the minefield of vested interests.

Everybody knows the issue is not a matter of better and more consistent data. The issue is that the balance of funding has been tilted dramatically and without warrant from public schooling to private in the past decade for ideological and vote-catching reasons. You do not have to be an econometrician to understand that.

The issue of the impact of those changes - and at what cost to the nation's future - is what we should be debating.

Dowling is disingenuous when he remarks that "Government schools tend to enrol students who cost more to teach" (students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, Indigenous students and students with disabilities). They don't TEND to. They MUST, by law. And they take the push-outs from private schools nervous about their VCE scores.

He is getting closer to the nub of the matter when he discusses a flaw in the current funding system whereby, when the cost of educating students in government schools increases, a corresponding increase in Commonwealth funding is given to non-government schools whether they need it or not.

Despite Dowling attempt to put the case, the problem is not a problem of definition. Identifying and quantifying need is not rocket science. The Schools Commission did it throughout the 1970s. It does, however, require goodwill and the casting aside of vested interests, ideology and the imagined fear of losing some voters.

When Julia Gillard meets her state counterparts in April - all of them ALP ministers - will they have the courage to address the real - and not the alleged - problem?
Posted by FrankGol, Wednesday, 27 February 2008 12:46:37 PM
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Clearly its wrong to fund private schools that are so awash with money that they can undertake a massive rebuilding program to replace all the early learning centre buildings as at the Geelong Grammar Galmorgan (Toorak) campus while the local high school students of average ability have a 10km train trip because their local high school has closed, eg Prahran High, Albert Park High. Government schools in the outer suburbs have dingy corridors, inadequate science and computer labs, insufficient money to shelve the domestic science and art department storerooms. Many country schools are in original condition, untouched since they were built in the 1970s.

The top private schools in Victoria like Scotch had a $12 million surplus - Xavier haven't completed their accounts yet.

if you want a good education system, if you improve the government system then the private schools will have to improve to attract students. If government school standards slip then private schools can be very poor and still attract students.
Posted by billie, Wednesday, 27 February 2008 1:30:07 PM
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I can understand where Frank Gol is coming from but he is a bit harsh on Dr Dowling. The significance of Andrew Dowling’s work is probably that ACER let it happen at all. I might also be being harsh, but my image of ACER is coloured by the way it has seemed, to date, to tilt its interest in research according to the priorities of Nelson and Bishop and the contracts coming out of the previous federal government.

So Dowling’s work is very welcome and is yet another refreshing look at the nonsense of private school funding.

It is interesting that he probably did his work prior to the leaking of the DEST report into the funding regime (Go to http://www.smh.com.au/multimedia/pdf/sesfundingreport.pdf).
The report shows that the additional cost to taxpayers of keeping the current (corrupted) regime will be $2.7 billion over the next four years. Meanwhile the cost of bringing public schools up to speed is around $3 billion. Hmmmm.

In the meantime, what IS fun is watching the Rudd government tip-toe through the minefield while (in public at least) saying that no (private) school will lose funding. Can someone take bets on how long this will last?
Posted by bunyip, Wednesday, 27 February 2008 6:57:20 PM
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As Ross Gittins has pointed out, subsidising private education (or anything else) puts up the price. So the poor taxpayer is being hit twice over -- once paying for the education of their own children and once for the extra costs that private school providers can add to their budgets, thanks to their free ride from the government.

Let the private schools down gently by all means -- a 5% cut in funding every year, say -- but let's restore the public school system that promotes equity and citizenship, not privilege and wealth. Keep private schooling for those who are prepared to pay for it: ALL of it.
Posted by Jon J, Thursday, 28 February 2008 8:32:16 AM
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