Okay, I had been biting my tongue but now I’m about to vomit.

Some of you need to get real. Most parents pay large amounts for an independent school education so their children have a far greater chance at securing a tax payer subsidised university place. These places cost us around $10,000 per year.

I have suggested in other forums that a solution to the inequity within our system is to allocate these publicly funded university places on a proportional basis, reserving 65% to the government school students and letting those who want to let market forces and prospectus’ prevail can fight each other within their own share.

As for funding of schools if we stopped throwing money at the private ones, easy, just return the top personal tax rate and the company rate to where they should be. Under Howard the wealthy had the double benefit of tax reductions and the top wealthiest schools in my area receiving millions of dollars in extra funding per year, and still the buggers want to whinge. Rudd is showing little inclination to stop the rort.

As to the ‘feral parents and children’ crap being bandied about I have had a couple of conversations with a bloke who boards his children at the local grammar school while the family home is about 20kms away. He doesn’t help his kids with homework as he “pays enough for someone else to do it”. Works his arse off to afford it and to some of you here would make parent of the year, but not in my book.

Sure there are some difficult kids around but because they are often shown the door from the private system my sector is forced to handle a greater proportion of these children and the accompanying disruptions.

The excessive funding of wealthy private schools in this country is a disgrace and attacks the very Australian notion of a fair go.

Hi Odo. As a public school teacher of 22 years - with a lot of friends who work in the private system - I can tell you that the private syustem is not that simple. Each private/catholic and independent school has their own Enterprise Bargaining. For some of the teachers in these schools it means lower salaries than the public system with little or no workload or work life protections or family friendly conditions. For the wealthier private schools it can mean higher salaries. You neglect to mention that the private system usually sit back and wait for the public system to fight for and win salary increases and then use these wins to set their bench marks. My colleagues who work in the private sector constantly ask me here is SA when we are going to finally settle our pay dispute because it will automatically give them a pay rise.

The excessive funding of wealthy private schools in this country is a disgrace and attacks the very Australian notion of a fair go.Posted by csteele, Tuesday, 4 August 2009 12:19:14 AM

You just can't get it ; Governments respond to demand and that's what is going on here eg; no money no vote too simple really .

If I had my time over again with my five kids I would have them at Private Education .

The problem with State Edu is the fanatics in the background who believe only in the State , these people like you are so bitter and twisted Policically they refuse to grant private education parents any equity they own in the tax system at all .

Why don't you butt out and leave people alone who are responding to your ilks failure to present adequate results in the education of our children .

At least Csteele admits that the private schools educate the children better.

In the name of fairness they would like to increase the cost of education to the state and reduce the education to the lowest common denominator.

The tall poppy syndrome is the Australian way?

Well said Csteale. In the 22 years that I have taught in the public sector I have seen so many children who are turned away from the private sector because of learning difficulties, social problems, behaviour problems - you name it. The private sector do not want their statistics and resources burdened by underperforming students. I have had parents turn up with children in year 3 from Private schools because the school has flatly told them that they can not and will not cater for the childs learning disability. Who picks up this slack because they don't have the luxury of turning these students away? The public schools. So whose resourses are stretched and whose classes are coping with greater challenges? One of the classes at my school has a mentally challenged Down Syndrome student in a mainstream class with a teacher who is "untrained" for that level of disability, but as a system the school can not turn the student away. Little wonder the public schools looks worse. They deal with far more students with complex issues and with far less money and resources than the private schools. Fairness and equity does not always mean the same! You only have to walk through the grounds of a private school and then a public school to see how inequitable the resources and fascilities are.

Dear Shadow Minister,

Please don’t verbal me. I certainly did not say that private schools educate the children better rather I said they had a better chance at securing a publicly funded university place. These are two different things.

Bob Birrel’s work from Monash not only shows the dramatic inequities in the current system but also illustrates that when push comes to shove public school kids fare better once they are in university with proportionally lower drop out rates, better self reliance and stronger academic results.

There is a huge focus within the private system on ENTER scores because of the ability of these to translate into impressive prospectus presentations and high fees. Those not up to the job are kept from diluting these scores. If my daughter is lucky enough to be in the top 7% at her school then she will be competing with over 30% of those at the local grammar school for a top end publicly funded university place. This cannot be truly indicative of either her intelligence nor her ability.

You seem to want to reduce education to an economic rationalist paradigm but just because some of us don’t want to buy into such a market driven sector, either because we can’t afford it or for ideological reasons, shouldn’t preclude our kids from accessing our fair share of publicly funded university places. Let us have the proportion that our sector makes up of VCE students. If your lot want to go out and pay for a full fee university place for your kids if they miss out of securing a place in your sectors allocation I’m not stopping you. In fact I have seen the debate within the pages of the Fin Review, which is a better investment, private school fees vs full fee paying university place? Well you can go play in your own playground and leave us to ours.

Ours is not an argument of envy and spite; it is demanding a fair go for our children. But there are posters here who just don’t get it!