Now that so many politicians and commentators are jumping on the performance-pay-for-teachers bandwagon, and since a large part of the argument also touches on funding for schools, perhaps the time has come, not just for a debate about pay for teachers, but performance pay for schools?

The issue that ought to concern taxpayers is whether or not their hard-earned contributions are being directed towards the right sort of educational services.

To resolve this impasse, instead of dividing public funding up along the lines of who contributed it (the old "states fund public, federals fund private" model) or on the basis of how poor or rich your neighbours are (the current federal funding model for non-government schools), how about we adopt a model based on two simple premises:

1. Public money should only support public education.
2. Public education should be recognised no matter what kind of institution (government or non-government) delivers it.

This way we could have a standard level of funding for every student, with institutions receiving a proportion of this total nominal grant, depending on how much of a "public education" service they choose (with the agreement of their school commmunity and/or authority) to deliver. The debate would not be about the dividing of the dollars, but on what constitutes "public education" and deserves the support of the taxpayers.

Schools and school systems would be free to set their own missions, policies and practices and would have to be accountable to their communities.

Eligibility for portions of the grant could be based on agreed criteria, which could include things like:

* delivering approved syllabus
* freedom from mandatory fees
* open access to educational services
* whatever other criteria the public can agree on

Perhaps you can think of some criteria - what are the essential characteristics of a desirable public education service?

Public money for public education? Do you want to add to the tax bill? If all public funding was cut to the private system then parents would go public and that would create costs. Yes, create costs. The private system, like it or not, subsidises the state system. Kids in private education get less tax dollars per head than kids in the state system.
It's a sad fact of life which often goes unrecognised by those who think that "only rich kids go to private schools" and that taxpayers are subsidising elite education. Sadly, the reverse is true.
What we need to do is spend more money on education - and make state schools as accountable as the private ones.

Hi Communicat

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I think perhaps I didn't explain myself well enough in the first thread...I'm not talking about cutting money from non-government schools. I'm saying that government AND non-government schools do at least some of the work of "public education" even if it is only following the syllabus and the obligatory reporting requirements for all schools.

I'm suggesting that ministers should decide on the total level of funding (like they do now), but then divide the total by the number of school students in Australia and whatever the result, that is the default grant for all students, regardless of where they go to school.

The only catch is that, to receive the money, the school, or the system to which it belongs would choose what proportion of the grant to receive, by choosing to deliver some or all aspects of the agreed elements of public education.

Let's say the criteria for the grant includes "open enrolment to all students" and that is worth 20% of the grant, then Muckadilla Christian College might decide to abolish its enrolment cap and waiting list and remove its academic entry test so that they get the entire 20% (plus whatever else they qualify for). The school could use the money to lower their fees and make their school available to a wider cross section of their local community.

Lofty Heights Boys Grammar on the other hand, can choose to keep their enrolment cap and strict entry exam but would have to accept a deduction of 20% from their grant for the privelege.

My question is about what the criteria ought to be...in other words, assuming we are going to fund education to the tune of $x billion per year, let's spend it all on public education services wherever they occur and make the debate about what "public education" is - and what we want to see public money spent on.

Drew.QLD,
We have already one of the fairest and most equatable education systems in the World. Why change it to diadvantage some whom you think are advantaged by wealthy parents. All public money is taxpayer money and ought to be distributed equally for all student children of taxpayers. I suggest you better understand the current system and stop the politics of envy.

Hi Philo

I understand the current system really well. I understand that the indpenendent school a few blocks away only get about 20% of what the kids in a comparable state school get, while the kids in the inner-city GPS school that I attended get round 60%. Why?

Because the grants given by the federal government are based on the average income, not of the families who send their kids to these two schools, but of the people who live in the same area as those families.

Now since my local indepenedent Christian school gets all its kids from the local area and that is largely an affluent one, they get much less, even though most of the kids come from the lower income families who happen to be in a minority in this area.

Wheras my alma mater has large numbers of boarders, from very wealthy families who happen to live in very depressed rural communites, so they get a large slice of the grant.

The shameful part is that my alma mater has a restrictive enrolment policy, a strict waiting list and uses most of the extra public funding it gets to put in what my local school would consider luxuries.

It isn't the politics of envy - it is the politics of fairness. I don't care where kids go to school - I just think that funding should be based on the sort of services taxpayers want and I'm interested to know what those are. Neither you or communicat have listed any though.