The Age: Equality in education is a dying concept (Kenneth Davidson)
The imputation is clear. The Rudd Government education “revolution” involves continuing with the unfair funding arrangements of the Howard government. Why? This can be explained by a simple political calculus, which suggests that the Government has more votes to lose than to gain by a level funding playing field as operates in most OECD countries. This is where private schools receive public funding only on the condition that their total spending per student is no higher than for government school students.
It is not to denigrate government schools to point out that they educate most of the “at risk” students. It is irrefutable that each dollar spent on these schools will generate a much bigger pay-off in economic and social terms than a dollar spent on non-government schools, which are already better resourced than government schools.
Combine this failure to ensure a more level playing field with the fiasco enveloping the plan to give all school kids a computer and the current government’s education policies are looking more shambolic every day. I knew that this centrist government was never going to sort out everything on my progressive wishlist, but I thought they’d do better than this.
Bummer. I really thought the ALP would be better than this. Why can none of our politicians have the courage to do what needs to be done?(I feel like I keep repeating myself with this question.)
Debbieanne - I think its as the quoted bit talks about briefly - the percentage of students attending private schools has reached a high enough level that the government doesn’t want to annoy that many parents. And Rudd isn’t exactly displaying much confidence in government schools by sending his son to an elite private school when Canberra has probably one of the best supported and funded government systems in Australia.
There is definitely a problem with some public schools having a disproportionate number of at-risk students, but the way the funding works at the state level is also to blame for this - funding schools, rather than students based on need.
IMHO ‘equality in education’ is already dead in Australia, and has been so for some time.
[Debbieanne - I think its as the quoted bit talks about briefly - the percentage of students attending private schools has reached a high enough level that the government doesn’t want to annoy that many parents.]
Can anyone say “Rich Schools Hit List” by Latham - all those “Howard Battlers” kicked up such an outcry, that ANY attempt by the ALP to redress the balance would’ve ensured that the Private School Industry would create such a scare campaign, it would make Workchoices look like a school picnic.
Fo the umpteenth time, what is going on with ABC News (at least its online division)?
Compare tigtog’s link - PM pressured to reveal computer roll-out extra costs - from 6 hours ago…
To this article NSW signs up to school computer rollout from Monday.
When they’re not relying on AAP to draw half their content from, are they simply republishing Liberal Party press release…or do they come up with overly simplified summaries like this by themselves?
“the states and territories are angry at having to pay for the running costs like software and electricity.”
The video at the head of this ninemsn page from Monday has a good deal more detail on what’s at play between the Federal and NSW Government - Govt defends computers for schools plan.
Unfortunately it’s not just the on-linr news, the 7.00 pm version is dreadful as well.
Purge the board I say!
Is anyone else concerned that an ALP staffer was happy to advise the Government to secretly pay a state government $245 million (!) in return for jumping on board Rudd’s Education Very Gradual Evolution? I mean, he/she apparently advised the creation of a ‘front’ program to deceive Australians about the true purpose of the money. I would have expected a little more outrage on this, and the failure of the Coalition to call for this person’s immediate sacking seems strange; the staffer concerned are clearly unfit for any role within the Government.
BBB
Geez, Louise. It’s just “argy bargy” as Rudd says. Is it really “shock horror” stuff to learn that the states might want stuff in return for co-operation with the Feds? It’s been that way since time immemorial. Save your “outrage” for something real, BBB!
Personally, I think Swannie left that memo lying around deliberately to scotch the NSW money grab.
“Personally, I think Swannie left that memo lying around deliberately to scotch the NSW money grab.”
I had that thought too. I’m sure fed ALP don’t relish the idea of dealing with Lib state govts, but if there’s any one they’d cut loose it’d have to be NSW.
Yep.
Mark - its not that they want something in return, its that they wanted to hide the fact that NSW was getting something in return. Not exactly open and honest government is it?
Its that sort of organisational culture which leads to AWB like kick-back scandals.
Yes, yes, argy bargy. Fine. But do you really think the best way to “scotch” a NSW money grab is to leak the fact that one of your employees suggested that you should actually pay them off then cover the whole thing up? How does that “scotch” anything? It just makes you look dodgy and leaves the ongoing funding issue hanging. After all, it wasn’t a NSW government suggestion to make massive secret payments. And don’t act as if the issue is NSW wanting cash; it is not. The issue is the method by which one ALP staffer was apparently happy to hand over that cash (a quarter of a billion dollars) - using a big lie and actually going to the trouble of constructing some fake state government program. I would not have picked you as an apologist for that kind of rubbish.
BBB
Point taken, BBB (and Chris), but I still think the level of outrage is somewhat disproportionate. What we’re actually talking about is negotiating strategies rather than outcomes. Swannie scotched both the “side deal” and the attempt to do it on the sly.
I don’t know that anyone ever believed that all transactions between the states and the commonwealth should be conducted in plain view at every stage. Is that your position?
The grief on the computers is just beginning. Just wait until they have to be repaired and then replaced somewhere down the track. Who pays? Someone will because the tar baby has now been touched.
I remember the Feds funding ‘Pre-Schools’ years ago but they pulled the pin after they became the ‘common sense’ and the state had to pick up the bill.
Does anyone know how much they paid for each computer? Who won the tender? Desktops or Laptops? Given the volume, I would hope they landed a good deal.
Does each computer come with software, including a porn filter? Anyone have any detail or could someone provide a link to the detail?
Well I’m not sure about ‘at every stage’, but certainly they should be as transparent as possible. I can’t give you a bright line on that, I’m afraid. What I can say, with confidence, is that setting up fake government programs to hide multi-hundred-million dollar payments falls well short of any reasonable standard of propriety.
And I’m not sure the response is disproportionate; I am perplexed more by the (non)reaction to all of this amongst the holier-than-thou crowd than by the fact of its happening. I was looking for some loud condemnation, but I suppose we are all realists together now.
Cheers
BBB
It didn’t happen, BBB, and I suspect that what Swan did was intended to ensure that it wouldn’t. I’m afraid I have to part with you on the necessity of loud condemnations of what was literally a non-event.
Mark, there was never any prospect that Swan would agree to it. He’s not a complete idiot. So you’re absolutely right to imply that the government as a whole doesn’t deserve opprobrium on this. A little, just a little, loud condemnation of a nameless, faceless Labor apparatchik would have satisfied me.
Anyway, Davidson’s point is well made. We do need to spending more on public schools because we get more bang-for-buck there. Of course, this is only half a solution. If he were serious about creating true equality of opportunity, he’d be in favour of (1) a massive increase in public funds to primary and secondary schools; (2) the privatisation of all schools; (2) a largely de-regulated curriculum; (3) external testing of all students at key stages; and (4) a fully mean-tested differential voucher system that ensures disadvantaged children get a lot more cash for their education than they’re getting now. So many sacred cows, so little time.
BBB
Well, I don’t know how much advice Swan receives that is dumb, BBB. Maybe that should be a bigger concern than loud denunciation of an individual - maybe the fact that no one’s joining you in your calls for that individual to be sacked should tell you something! We all do dumb stuff at work now and then. It doesn’t follow that people should be sacked whenever they make a mistake.
But I think all this isn’t too close to the central concerns raised in the post.
Why, except as an ideological assertion, would this ensure more equality of opportunity? Can I also throw into the mix the idea that ensuring absolute equality of opportunity is impossible? That should be relevant both for formulating and evaluating policy.
Mark - if it was Swan that leaked it to kill it, then I congratulate him on that. Given the number of leaks coming from the public service lately though it could well have come from them. I would hope that the staffer who came up with the idea would at least be sent off to some ethics education, but I don’t expect that sort of thing to be made public.
wpd - The margins on commodity pc hardware are ridiculously small - I don’t expect there would be much to be gained on volume, except perhaps on support and software. I hope they’re considering open source software, especially when it comes to things like word processing and presentation software. For example, I find it quite inappropriate that some schools require students assignments done in PowerPoint, meaning that those who want to do the work at home have to purchase the software, when there are perfectly good alternatives which are free.
Mark, (2) doesn’t really work unless you also implement (4). It’s about unleashing the market while at the same time pumping a lot more cash into education for the disadvantaged (both in absolute and relative terms). As for your other point, whether or not we can ever get true equality of opportunity doesn’t seem to be a very good reason not to give it our best shot.
BBB
That last sentence doesn’t actually make sense, but you know what I mean.
BBB
Chris at 20, Swan left the document behind in the channel nine studio on Sunday morning. Accidentally on purpose, I’m thinking.
BBB, how does “unleashing the market” promote more equitable outcomes?
Mark, I’m not sure if you’re deliberately missing my point, which is that market forces alone will certainly not provide equitable outcomes. I’ll try again, though. A truly competitive market in education will innovate and create better methods of education; the provision of education is not some mystical process that is not amenable to profit-driven inventiveness. It is hardly pure ideology to say that competitive market forces improve services at a faster rate than government decree. Without the means-tested differential voucher system that gives the poor access to the best schools, however, you haven’t solved anything. You’re entrenching inequality and disadvantage rather than overcoming it. So it is the combination of massive increases in absolute funding, differential public funding (relatively weighted towards the poor) with private enterprises who are responsible for the on-the-ground delivery of education that will promote more equitable outcomes. You must see my point now. As I said, Davidson is halfway there.
BBB
I’m not following you at all, BBB. On one hand, you argue market competition will promote “innovation” without specifying what that might be in the educational context (and ignoring the fact that it’s not a tradeable good in the same way that consumer products or capital goods are - because it’s a continuing relationship between a child, other children, and a school community among other things). Nor are you establishing a link between innovation and equity - in fact, one could easily see how innovation could create inequity. And a “means-tested differential voucher system” wouldn’t necessarily give “the poor” access to “the best schools” - first, because geographic mobility is less for “the poor” and secondly because equity would actually be fostered by making all schools approach “the best” rather than facilitating entry by some to what are now top of the tree.
Colour me unconvinced.
My optimal position would be no state funding whatever for private schools of any stripe. I know that’s not feasible, but your market based argument seems to me to be incoherent on one hand, and ideological on the other.
wpd @ 14 and Chris @ 20…
Why would school systems buy the computers (though that does seem to be the intention)?
Wouldn’t it make more sense to tender out an ongoing lease with one of the big companies - IBM, HP, Dell etc? Leasing 10s to 100,000s of units, you could negotiate insanely good prices with full hardware/software installation and on-site within 1 hour (suburban schools, same/next day for rural), 24/7 hardware support options included, and brand new systems installed every 4 years…
Regarding proprietary software - again, the sheer quantity of student licenses purchased would bring the price down to basically nothing per license, so (in my mind!) even to double the amount of licenses purchased, to allow students to each take a copy to install on their home computer, shouldn’t make a drastic difference.
This quote from the Government’s Media Statement - 14th November 2007…
“State and Territory, Catholic and Independent school systems will tender for computers and installation of information technology on behalf of individual schools to maximise value for money. Local schools working together may coordinate their efforts through the use of multi-campus data centres that pool maintenance and support resources.”
I hope they’re good bargainers…they’ll certainly have the leverage, so no real excuses.
Mark - thanks I missed the bit about the Swan leaving the document behind.
Regarding changes to schools - I don’t think its necessary to privatise the public schools that exist already. But I do think means-tested differential vouchers would help, if not for mobility which as you say won’t necessarily work, but it would mean the schools in the disadvantaged areas get more money, which (hopefully!) would lead to more resources being available and a better education than they currently get. If private schools received more money for taking on disadvantaged students, there would be more of an incentive to take them on (and keep them).
In terms of education equity - from the OECD definition they are looking for equity of outcomes, not equity of educational resources. If you given schools equal funding per student, trying to make them all “the best” you’re not going to get equity (as defined by the OECD) of outcomes. You can see this just by making comparisons within the public school system.
Schools which have a higher proportion of disadvantaged children (and I think the definition is pretty broad ranging from disability, to family income, to education level of parents etc) need to better funded than those with a lower proportion if you want to get better equity in results.
Mark, down here in Victoria parents routinely choose between different public schools, between public and private schools, and between different private schools. For any given location there are going to be many options. There already are, it’s just that many of them are government-run. Tradability is a complete red-herring. I can only assume that you’re also against: any innovation within the state system which causes one public school to be better than another; the ability of any parent to choose which one of a number of nearby public schools their child will attend; and of course the ability of any parent to remove their child from a given school, which would obviously disrupt the continuing relationship between a child, other children, and a school community. Finally, this sentence is exactly right: “Nor are you establishing a link between innovation and equity”. Absolutely correct.
BBB
Mark: “My optimal position would be no state funding whatever for private schools of any stripe. I know that’s not feasible,”
Why unfeasible, if matched with a genuine increase in (and improvement of) the public system. It might be better done smoothly over a set period of time (a decade, or 5 years, etc). This timeframe will also probably be necessary to properly utilise the renewed funding to improve the public system.
But if there is a genuine, quality, public alternative, that is made available across the board, people will move back to the system, and “the battlers” won’t be crying out “for shame”.
Latham (for all that I loathe the man) at least had the right *kind* of ideas, occassionaly.
You can make those assumptions if you like, BBB, but you’d better ascribe them to a straw-Mark rather than me.
There has never been any geographical zoning in Queensland education, but all things are not equal in terms of the choice parents have in areas where they are more likely to be socially disadvantaged - which unsurprisingly are the outer suburbs and outside the capital cities.
Again, I’m having great difficulty in understanding you. First you say:
And then you say:
In that case, I’m at a complete loss to understand how market conditions (and I don’t think you can dismiss the tradeability point so easily, or for that matter informational assymetry) can magic up the “best schools” which will still imply lots of “not best” ones. Perhaps I’m not grasping your argument?
I’m with Davidson - fund all schools equally. What’s wrong with that?
Anyway, I’ve got some thesis to write tonight, so you’ll have to excuse me for bowing out of this conversation.
Oh and Chris, apologies for not addressing your comment which was addressed to me, but it’s not my post, and as I say, regretfully I lack time to participate in this discussion further tonight.
There’s this word begins with a ‘v’ I’m not allowed to say it. Aloud.
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Course it won’t help. The problem is that those who supply the upper crust with their noodle nuts got their hooks in. Both sides of the house. With the ALP it’s the Catholic church. In order to change this you need a concerted policy push from some direction. But those who may wish to alter it are stuck in the usual ‘good’ fight.
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I think there’s a whole range of issues that need to be addressed viz education. Access and equity is one topic heading. There are others. But I know of few other fields where the discussion is as emotionally charged as this. Fubar.
Nick - the one scheme I know about where students have laptops for school they do have really good hardware and software support (eg replacements within 24 hours etc) but they buy the hardware.
I imagine the situation is pretty similar to government departments but as far as I know they also buy rather than lease - the resale value is pretty much nothing after 4 years. I don’t claim to understand the economics of it, but presumably someone has worked out whats cheapest.
Licence fees are low compared to retail, but certainly not negligible when multiplied across the number of students (and teachers). It also indirectly forces people to upgrade their hardware to keep up with the increasing requirements of latest versions of software.
Its probably not politically acceptable, but if all the students are doing is word/presentations/web stuff then they don’t need new computers, especially if they ditch windows, and could just use the computers that the government departments offload every few years….
Yes it is “pure ideology to say that competitive market forces improve services at a faster rate than government decree” because this emphasis on market ideology has trashed public schools so that it has become a ‘fait accompli’ that these schools now cannot provide a comparable service. It’s a model that has been applied disastrously to health care as well. On top of this the - you guessed it - Media has been mercilessly attacking the public school system for decades so that you are one step up from child abuse if you send your child to a public school.
What BBB is proposing is similar to the Swedish voucher system, introduced in 1994 and going great guns since (there, Adrien, I said it). There’s material all over the interwebs on it - this piece in the Economist gives some context.
No problem Mark, but there are a few things that I can’t leave alone.
First, the ‘magic’ remark. This is something often trotted out by statists (not that I’m calling you a statist): the market just ‘magically’ provides, as if belief in markets is a matter of faith or something. Constantly improving goods and services provided by free markets are not magic; they are simply the aggregate result of small but relentlessly proceeding innovations spurred by the profit-motive.
Secondly, you are right that there will always be a ‘best’ school and a lot of ‘not best’ schools, but I hope you’d agree that such conditions would exist in a fully state-run system. This is one of those: “I disagree with you because your solution is not absolutely perfect in every particular” moments, as if we can usher in a state-run educational paradise of equality if we just come up with more cash. The real challenge is making sure that (a) schools are all getting as good as possible as quickly as possible; and (b) the poor are not locked out of making a genuine choice by virtue of their relative lack of money.
Anyway, good luck with the thesis.
Cheers
BBB
Bugger, broke the link. I’ll try again.
Thanks, BBB. My use of the term “magic” was intended to be shorthand for the points I’m making about the difficulties in applying competitive logic to innovation and provision of basic services - and in fact the undesirability of so doing from a public perspective - I’m not anti-markets per se but there are good reasons those who approach markets from a non-ideological angle would agree that they don’t work anywhere near optimally in terms of public and positional goods. Nor am I advocating just add money and stir solutions for the public system. But I’d better go back to Hegel and avoid getting drawn into this interesting discussion any further!
Ps - heard a very interesting talk from Quiggin at the CCi conference last week on the way market incentives often misfire in terms of promoting innovation in the sort of environment we find ourselves in where intellectual value add is the key thing, that I think would have pertinence to this discussion, but I really must STOP PROCRASTINATING!
nic t, I’m not trashing public schools. They do a bloody good job in view of the resources available (and you’ll recall that, quite apart from any future privatisations, I’d also welcome massive increases to overall public funding of state-run schools). I just think a fully-privatised system would create better schools, and do so more quickly and more thoroughly than increases in funding to public schools alone. Others may be guilty of demonising public education, I’ll happily concede.
BBB
I disagree and agree with this at the same time. In the first place (agreeing). Yes there’s this, ideology’s really too grand a phrase, fad for schpiels re market forces. It’s really just simple trendy rhetoric that drives cutting corners in public education. I’m not sure, but I suspect the current trend in government is to organize things so they can get the maximum revenue and wield the minimum responsibility. I suspect that’s also the tradition.
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This, they say, is about the efficiencies of the private sector, or rational magament or whatever. But the market is actually often non-existence: as in people do not have a choice. So here I disagree. I’m not a staunch Absolutist advocate of vouchers and I don’t think that idea by itself will solve the gifting to elite schools that is entrenched in Oz education systems.
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But I do think it’s a worthwhile idea and that its market connotations cause many to pre-emptively exclude it.
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When it comes to subsidizing wealthy schools disproportionally there’s a range of other factors including the simple wielding of power and influence. That is a phenomena that is largely subterreanean and needs an organized movement to counter. A movement that is practical, focused, not beholdent to a party and has stamina. Or a talented government that sees it as a real problem, wishes to change things and knows what it’s doing.
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Neither exist. I didn’t expect Kevvie to change things. The ALP Right are with the Libs on this. Always have been.
Adrien wrote:
More like the US experiences with it Adrien. Used to prop up poorly performing religious based schools (as our private school federal funding does) the kids become third class citizens, while the first class citizens in elite schools lick up the cream. It’s basically a recipe for social stratification in a country like Australia. Don’t believe me? Think of the state of catholic schooling in Australia before Menzies caved in and rescued it, with follow-up rescues by the Whitlam government that made the system effectively a quasi state school system. We can’t afford those kinds of experiments when the system we have largely works effectively enough.
Education funding for this year was locked in at the end of last year, so Rudd could not have done anything about it. Next year’s funding comes up for discussion at the end of this year. Gillard has said that that is when the funding disparity will be addressed. Any discussion on Labor’s performance re equity in education is way too early.
That sounds a little different from the private education system in Australia.
Oh yes, it is Martin - that’s my point. I like markets, but I’m a skeptic, and dislike irrational religious in schools as much as the next skeptic. And David (up the thread) is also right - in certain respects, state provision under Menzies saved Cath Ed.
“I like markets…”
Me too. My favourite’s the Russian market in Phnom Penh.
I think it’s an interesting system. There’s a market mechanism incorporated, but the regulation of it is strong (although the article makes it sound simple). I’m not sure I like the sound of the ‘IKEA’ education, but it’s a rational system.
Thanks SL for the link, so in 14 years the Swedish experiment has got to 10% of the population using novel web-based systems and lots of self-motivation from individual kiddies.
And they reduce costs by decreasing teacher entitlements (and keep them by rewarding individual teachers) but more so by providing less: “Like IKEA, a giant Swedish furniture-maker, Kunskapsskolan gets its customers to do much of the work themselves.”
And there is a ton apparently of weekly/daily ’student progress’ monitoring for today’s neurotic parent. And I would assume this is the main selling point. Would love to see the marketing.
I have no doubt that this form of no-frills yet information-rich education would appeal to at least 10% of parents, if not a lot more. Results! Results! Results! What do you mean you failed plasticine…
And apparently the school itself might just consist of converted rooms in a office block, with off-site hired sports fields & other facilities (recess & lunch must be fun – not) which surely diminishes the whole experience of attending a school. I would hate to think primary aged children esp. are being put through without adequate access to playgrounds and sporting fields and play equipment etc.
And how does a school like this interact with the community – how do you hold a fete or any type of community event in this type of facility. And maybe in colder climes the whole ‘playground’ as meeting space has never been as big as it is here – but “The Playground” for primary schools is where Mums and Dads also meet each other to often form life long friendships at drop off and pick up esp. in the infants years. It’s where spontaneous sleepover and playdates are organised as well being used for a huge amount of in-school activities. As for the school hall –where are we going to vote (!) let alone applaud outta-time & tune band performances and bad musicals etc. not to mention the School Disco – with noise levels beyond runway 1 at Mascot.
A school is SO MUCH more than shovelling facts and figures into children’s heads at the cheapest unit cost.
Loyal to the old school balance sheet.
As the head of their largest private school company says “ If we’re religious about anything, it’s standardisation. We tell our teachers it is more important to do things the same way than to do them well.”
I have no doubt that some private companies have come up with very cost-effective and indeed novel teaching and educational tools for a certain demographic of children who can cope with minimal instruction, lack of other resources & support, (school counsellor anyone?) and a system that instantly reports back to a generation of parents more and more obsessed about their children’s academic performances at younger and younger ages.
But if this is it - ie. the holy grail of the ‘privatise the school system’ mob, underwhelmed to say the least, and reeks of ABC Learning Centres – house of cards stuff.
OTOH, it would tops if state public educators would look at the core educational outcomes & benefits of these type of cost-effective and often effective web-based and other teaching methods and utilise them where and where applicable within the framework of an inclusive, community located public education system.
Little girl:
“Ummmm… Pepsi?”
Teach-bot:
“Partial credit!”
Ha FDB.
Yes, jo, markets are great if you want to buy a commodity, but education should be something else entirely.
Yes. It would be nice to think that parents were rational consumers measuring the quality of education within a competitive system and making choices accordingly, but it just isn’t so. How many aspects to a good education don’t reveal themselves fully for years?
Instead, elite private schools in Australia make money not by providing innovative education, but by offering non-educational extras (facilities, social capital) to the subset of parents who have the money to pay for them.
I didn’t pay too much attention to it, but my niece who goes to a state school in SA had something which looked pretty similar to what they’re describing. It was book/paper based, but recorded what they had been up to and also served as a way for parents to communicate with their children’s teacher. A web based system in a society that has good internet access seems like an pretty decent alternative that can’t be lost in transit.
I don’t agree with some of the things they talk about but do think that there are some good things described there - eg encouraging parental involvement and having a culture of goal setting.
I don’t think there’s any benefit to having one type of private system anymore than I think its good to have only a public system which is identical across the board. As others have mentioned the long term choices for education techniques may take a long time to appear and so I think its good for us to have a diversity of education systems - both public and private.
I ended up in the private school system because for various reasons the kindergarten said I was ready to leave and would get bored if I stayed around, but the state school system said I was too young to start school. The private school agreed to take me on the proviso that they’d discuss holding me back a year if I ended up struggling with the work.
David first I don’t propose to emulate America. The basic idea is just that - a basic idea. It can be utilized in many ways. I just think one should start with the goal in mind and work to solve it. And use anything that might. Ideas like a voucher system are pre-emptively rejected for their ‘neoliberal’ associations. If they leed to perdition by all means let’s can ‘em but only on the basis that this destination is based on rational consideration and not the pre-sets of secular theology.
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Sweden is not typically associated with laissez-faire capitalism. Just sayin’.
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I’m not sure why people keep insiting the education system is hunky-dory. Every time I challenge this I’m asked to provide empirical data. I do so. And then I’m ignored and when the topic comes up again people spout this mantra: tout va bien.
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Tout va bien? Non! Merde!
Adrien wrote:
It wasn’t a direct attack Adrien, but equally tiresome is the chicken little cry of “crisis in education” that I was referring to. Sure it’s not perfect, but the kids not being served particularly well tend to be at the extreme ends of the spectrum. My question is largely whether vouchers will make that problem better, or make it worse.
The problem with vouchers that I see is that they tend to foster a kind of bogus “choice” much like the old catholic schooling system pre-1966. That is, little enclaves of exclusion where parents are doing their best to hide their precious offspring from nastiness like (say) science. The kids (who are surely the most important part of the equation) cannot exercise choice. The voucher should be aimed at them, but is aimed at the prejudice of their parents. That’s not choice, it adds nothing to the childrens welfare and potentially worsens it if they end up in some rubbish, underfunded evangelical crud factory where evolution is seen as some kind of atheist plot. Those kids are getting damaged. Vouchers will exacerbate it.
Hmmm…
The kids (who are surely the most important part of the equation) cannot exercise choice. The voucher should be aimed at them, but is aimed at the prejudice of their parents. That’s not choice, it adds nothing to the childrens welfare and potentially worsens it if they end up in some rubbish, underfunded evangelical crud factory where evolution is seen as some kind of atheist plot. Those kids are getting damaged. Vouchers will exacerbate it.
Trouble is if parents don’t exercise the choice, someone will have to. Choice won’t necessarily be better coming from the P & C, or the relevant unions, or the relevant state or federal governments. If kids were handed the choice over what they got to learn, chances are it would be “How Many Chocolates You Could Eat In One Go (with a heavy Practical component)”, or “All About Snot: What to do with it, and when”. I’m not entirely sure if this wouldn’t be a better choice than what the politicians or committees or ‘interest’ groups would have in mind, sometimes.
But seriously, the people with the best knowledge of the special needs of the individual children would be the parents, so if a voucher system would equip them with greater and better choices, it has a big thumbs up from me.
Whether parents are capable of making appropriate choices is at the core of the dispute though isn’t it? One side claims that the government knows better, the other that the parents know better. Personally I think it depends on the individual parents, but I don’t think you’re going to get overall consensus on this.
“But seriously…”
You mean you were havin’ a larf.
Difficult to know where these sort of things begin and end sometimes.
But seriously, most parents wouldn’t have a clue.
I don’t agree that most wouldn’t have a clue, but there may well be a significant number who don’t which is why its important that the default choice of the nearest school is still reasonable. But should those parents who do have a clue have their choices restricted which would otherwise lead to a better result for their child because others are unable?
Chris (a different one) wrote:
Those parents already have a choice (at least in metro areas). The best voucher system the advocates have dug up is basically a system that merely allows the parents to outsource the management of their school. Not the curriculum to any large extent, not the social or religious content, none of the usual suspects that libertarians usually use to suck social conservatives into supporting “school choice”. If the management of schools sucks, change the government. It’s that easy.
Sorry, that last comment was me. I hate that wordpress thingy that forgets i’m being a sock puppet.
Voucher systems don’t work, because the providers simply say, “great, we’ll charge whatever the market will bear and factor in the voucher money as well, so everyone will end up where they started (ie. vouchers alone will only pay for schools comparable to what we currently see as the failing public schools, while the parents who can afford to go private will pay even higher fees.)
That’s why I’d support direct investment in a genuinely public system, rather than vouchers. We’ve seen this syndrome at work with child care, for which the Child care Rebate is like “vouchers lite” - the providers just see it as a green light to charge more.
Has the government thought about making computers in Australia for instance. Have them done in bulk, cheaper this way and then get on with the process that they promised. It is now July and not much has been done about these computers.
Helen - what about differentiated value vouchers as some have suggested - this would in an more equitable way funnel money towards those kids who need it, rather than basing funding on public or private schooling. Those rich kids from privileged backgrounds will get less funding whether or not they go to a public or private school and those from disadvantaged backgrounds will get more funding.
The schools that currently have a lot of disadvantaged students will end up with significantly more funding. The elite private and public schools that have very few students from disadvantaged students will end up with less funding.
Margo - the margins on commodity PC hardware are so low that I don’t think you’d gain anything. Setup (think hundreds of millions if not more) and local labour costs would result in the computers costing significantly more.
One side claims that the government knows better, the other that the parents know better. Personally I think it depends on the individual parents, but I don’t think you’re going to get overall consensus on this.
Chris, I don’t know whether there’d be anybody who doubts that it’s parents who are in the vast majority of cases the best equipped to make decisions about their child’s future insofar as they have the most knowledge about the personality, ability, and inclinations of their own children. If there are people who would seriously deny this, I can only think that would be because they stand to benefit from membership of a teachers union, or similar. However, that may be because I see one of the most important aspects of any education system being a variety of courses/schools/teaching methods on offer, and the choice that that entails.
I hadn’t thought about this point Helen -
Voucher systems don’t work, because the providers simply say, “great, we’ll charge whatever the market will bear and factor in the voucher money as well
And it’s certainly something to consider when advocating vouchers; there are obviously plenty of other examples where a government grant to individuals has not worked - eg, the effect the first home owners grant has had on house prices (which has worked pretty much in the way you’ve described here, I understand.) Not sure how this is handled in Sweden. I do wonder if this problem would be encountered in a voucher system, seeing as the grant is to parents rather than providers, and so the onus is on the providers to be competitive and emphasise their educational advantages and their cost effectiveness. But it’s certainly a serious argument to consider, and possibly a deal breaker.
On a slightly separate tangent, Andrew Norton recently did an interesting and mischevious post about science education here. He argues:
But how much does it really matter what ordinary people think about where humans came from? Even most of us who would say we subscribe to Darwin’s theories would not be able to correctly answer even quite basic questions about the evolutionary sequence and how many years ago the the various stages of evolution occurred. I wandered through an exhibition on Darwin only a few weeks ago in Toronto, but I have forgotten already most of what I learnt there.
I don’t need to remember, because no practical decisions in my life turn on knowing this level of detail. It’s not like being misinformed about how disease is spread, or the dangers of playing with matches near flammable chemicals, or other scientific facts that that if known could spare me harm or gain me benefits.
Evolution is more like whether life exists on Mars or not, a matter of curiosity rather than practical concern.
Yes, knowledge is better than falsehood. Creationists are legitimate targets of scientific scorn and ridicule. But among the many wrong things people believe, that man was created by God does not seem to be exceptionally harmful.
Tim T -
That’s not an apt comparison imho. The housing grant was a subsidy is aid of artificially furthering a boom. A voucher system is a system of public education where parents make choices and not the government.
David #55
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Good points. I’ll respond tomorrow maybe but I have to split.
Yes, what I was wondering about, Adrien, was whether a voucher system, given directly to parents or guardians, would have the effect that Helen predicted - ie, make education providers factor in the cost of the vouchers to their price. Doubtless some educators would; but I don’t know enough about the economics, either practically (ie, in regards to the Swedish system, or the first home-owners grant, discussed) or theoretically, to make anything other than a tentative judgment call as to what might happen.
TimT - the voucher system in Sweden doesn’t allow the schools to charge additional fees to what is supplied by the government so there is no possibility of price rises.
In Australia the private schools are non-profit, so even if fees are increased the extra funds are only going to go to capital investment (no capital funding from governments for private schools), salaries (not a bad thing!), spent directly on the students, or saved for future use (ie it will be spent on students eventually).
Adrien - with respect to the parents being able to make good decisions - I disagree with you - I think there are many people out there who argue against vouchers because they believe that parents would not make good decisions - eg very vulnerable to marketing etc.
If you were also listening you would have observed that the Swedish system is far from laissez-faire; the requirement not to charge additional fees is a powerful control of the market.