From SM:

As for the funding of schools generally, the government should have the following objectives:
1 Ensure that every child has access to a decent education,

2 That the country achieves the best overall academic results from its schools,

3 That 1&2 above are achieved with the minimum cost to the taxpayer.

All three objectives are enhanced by subsidizing independent schools.

I say

1. What is 'decent'. The issue is more 'equitable', as far as possible children should have equality of opportunity, not be victims of their parents lack of education or social standing.

2. The best overall result would be achieved by having more resources toward the most struggling in the public system. The students in the private system don't have the obstacles that the bottom 10% in the public system do, and their parents have the resources and perspective/dedication to ensure their child's education even with less funding.

3. This is the crux of the issue. I am sure SM's opinion is that parents are being encouraged in the current system to devote more resources to education than they would otherwise. I agree, but I don't think they would be discouraged without the government funding as they are actually buying something altogether different to education.

They are buying status and they are buying contacts for their children, all the while isolating them from the bottom 10% of children that have emotional issues, mental health issues, and cause the most classroom disruption. They will continue to desire private schools for these reasons with or without government donations.

But as I said above, withdrawing money from the private schools would be a free for all for private schools to become more elitist, competing for their exclusive brand, and eventually parents barely able to make payments as it is would drop out of the race and go back to public, necessitating a raise in taxes.

These dedicated parents would help create a better critical mass of connected and articulate parents to keep the public school system honest though, creating a better outcome on the whole.

What the government CAN do is regulate private schools based on the financial support they receive from government. If the schools don't agree to take on more of the disruptive students and discount fees to disadvantaged students, then they would receive far less funding, perhaps down to zero, if they so wish.

This would probably result in two tiers of private schools, the elite vs inclusive. Not sure on the mix and how that would work economically. Ideologically of course the government and enough parents are happy with what we have (ie excluding the problem children form their school). I think there is a market for the middle tier and it would alleviate a lot of financial burden for those parents struggling to pay the fees, and allow a lot more choice for kids in the public system.

Whether in the long term the inclusive private schools would emulate private or public school environments is hard to predict.

Needless to say, at the very least I don't think there is too much risk in parents who can afford to send tier kids to $10k, 20k+ private school leaving the system if the government means-tested their school's funding.

H,

The single biggest contribution to a child's success at school is the intelligence and work ethic of his peers. Mosman public, while not performing as well as the Shore school vastly outperforms the majority of public schools in the country, while the parents being bankers and businessmen don't pay a cent towards the school.

On top of this these pupils from both schools mingle on a day to day basis, play at the same sports clubs and go to the same parties, and have the same ethnic mix, and will form far better contacts than any independent school in Blacktown whose working class parents struggle to meet the far more meagre fees.

The schools that would be harmed by removing subsidies would be the majority of low fee independent schools in less salubrious areas that would close.

SM,

'The single biggest contribution to a child's success at school is the intelligence and work ethic of his peers. '

Peers as in other students? That is my point about the private schools being able to exclude students, where the public schools cannot. How would you eradicate this inequality, or do you not care to?

I would say the biggest factor, as has been proven is the IQ and education of his parents. But this doesn't mean you could not get a lot more bang for your buck by removing the other factors, the negative factors such as parental ambivalence and classroom disruption from students stuck in the public system.

'The schools that would be harmed by removing subsidies would be the majority of low fee independent schools in less salubrious areas that would close.'

I agree. Well, the government would be forced to take them over, at cost to the taxpayer. Or take the students, and those students with their like-minded parents could put pressure on the public school they subsequently attend, and on the public system politically, improving the lot of students at that school and all public schools.

What is your position on increasing funds to those very schools at the expense of the very rich private schools with 20mil in the bank charging 20k per year.

Is there any way you can justify funding to a school with such ample resources?

Even without extreme examples, do you support means-testing funding to private schools?

A recipe for increasing failure Houellebecq. Why on earth would you want to interfere with the lower cost private schools, that are at least educating a higher percentage of their students than public, [union] schools. Transferring the worst students to the best model of low cost schools is ridiculous.

For god sake get real. We have to stop this craziness of believing the bottom 10% can be educated, devise a range of games they can play while they are mandated to be at school, & keep them out of the way of the rest.

It is becoming more important daily that the best 15% get the best education possible, as they will be carrying the rest as they progress through life.

Until we are prepared to get rid of the bottom 5% of public school teachers, every year for at least 10 years the public system will continue to be too dysfunctional to be of use to the vast majority.

Houellebecq you then talk about getting the parents involved. Which planet would that be on?

My wife & I established & ran the school textbook scheme for the P&C a largish 1700 kid public high school for 15 years. We could rarely get 20 parents to a P&C meeting. We put $170,000 a year into the school with that scheme, but parents were not interested in helping, & neither were the teachers.

Each year we had 200,000 textbooks that had to be inspected page by page, to remove graffiti & pornography, have damage repaired, & missing pages replaced. There were also 100,000 in class sets to get the same treatment. Along with this there were 30,000 to 40,000 new books to be covered, cataloged & fed into the system.

This required about 20 people in working bees, for a dozen weekends, & another 40 evenings to get done. Our kids, & some of their fellow students helped, but I had to beg plead, coerce, & indulge in straight blackmail to get the help required from parents. Some nights were great fun, with the right people helping. Some of the stuff students had written in those books was hilarious, when read out.

You know, in those 15 years I can not remember a single time any teacher turned up or even offered to help.

The public system is like a chook with it's head cut off. It's running, but has no idea of what it's doing, & no idea of where it's going.

I told my son, who was not that interested, that he had to grab his school by the neck & shake what ever he wanted out of it, as it was not interested in giving him anything him. After that things improved. I think he really enjoyed making teachers do their job, & give him what he wanted.