The funding of schools has for over forty years been a source of strident debate and sectarian conflict in Australia, the subject of a seemingly inexorable blame-game fought between the Federal and State Governments, and a fight for resources waged by mostly well-meaning advocates from both the government and non-government school sectors. It is a conflict inflamed by the reality that the education of Australia’s children – the people who will eventually forge the nation’s future – is what is at stake. Terrorism, climate change and crime might be the topics du jour that tend to be splashed across the front pages and in the commercial news, but it is arguably the national response to the challenges facing our education system in an increasingly globalised world that can make the most substantive difference to Australian society in the coming decades.
It is in this context that Julia Gillard, as the former Minister for Education for the Rudd Government, announced the commencement of a Review of Funding for Schooling back in April 2010, with the aim of defining an approach for funding schools beyond 2013. The terms of reference for the review are fairly broadly-defined, and are available here [PDF]. This review is scheduled to report before the end of 2011, and public submissions to the review close at the end of this month, on Thursday, 31st March 2011. You can make a submission to the review online here.
As the most significant public review of schools funding in Australia undertaken since the epoch-defining Schools in Australia report delivered by the Whitlam Government’s Australian Schools Commission Interim Committee in 1973, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that the results of this review really matter. The review process represents a once-in-a-decade opportunity for the Federal Government to shake off the policy squibbing of recent decades and embark on a program of serious educational funding reform.
Such reform, if it is to be serious, must deliver a needs-based funding model that has equity at its heart, and it must also consider the prospect of constitutional change. The “elegant” silence of Australia’s creaking Constitution regarding who is explicitly responsible for doing what has laid the foundation for the dog’s breakfast of schools funding arrangements that we enjoy today. The Federal Government finds itself by convention responsible for the majority funding of non-government schools, whilst providing GST revenue to the State Governments to majority fund public schools across the country. It is a system ripe for political manipulation, fostering an environment in which anyone with a gripe about schools can blame anyone for anything, and everyone can, in a manner of speaking, still be right.
Timed as they are, the recommendations of the review panel seem likely to prove a formative influence on Gillard Government’s re-election platform heading towards 2013. Collectively we can only hope that the review panel proves bold enough to make fair and far-reaching recommendations, but certainly as individuals we can all do our bit by having our say based on our frustrations and our personal experiences with the nation’s schools before the end of the month.
Fourty?
As a firm proponent of public education, I don’t like those ToR at all – they are big on “excellence” and very light on “equity” (ie excellence for all).
My fears are intensified by the composition of the panel – heavy on the Great And The Good who have a business background (and who mostly went to good private schools themselves), and on representatives of the Unis who have remarkably little interest in ensuring the great unwashed get a decent early education (they focus on the “elite”).
However, I have to recognise that the Howard government’s approach has already changed the political economy of education – as more kids get sent to private schools, the voice of parents with kids at public schools gets ever weaker. Given the importance of this review to the government’s election prospects I think the end product is going to reflect the politics rather than my preferences.
I agree with derrida,
I believe that an education system needs to be standardised and educational institutions need to be regulated. The state should supply the necessary infrastructure to achieve these goals — institutions and persons who meet the requirements can offer educational circumstances, but they don’t need to be supported by the public. Such enterprises should be understood as purely private businesses or within reason ideological institutions.
Private schools practically complicate the ability of the public regulatory institutions to control and set the standards of the school system.
I wonder if there will come a time when secondary schooling will be extended a year? It would be expensive, but the senior years at High School don’t really prepare students to make the best use of a university education.
I think we need a more flexible system, where people who wanted to do a trade could leave school in yr 11 say, but they would still have a clear path where they could later meet the requirements of a uni entry. Students who have the ability to go to uni, would then have to do a 13th year. That would allow an increase in the material that students had to cover, but maybe even more of a seminar style of teaching could be integrated into the final years?
Yes. My wish list for an education system, besides equity in resourcing, would be for
- Offering free Trades education for kids who don’t wish to aim for uni
- Offering a path to uni for kids who show promise regardless of parents’ income
-Breaking the nexus between rich = must go to uni, poor = must be a tradie, regardless of ability or personality
-Allowing for changes of direction. I know someone who was in the middle of a philosophy degree when she decided to do a carpentry apprenticeship instead. After a longish and fruitful career as a high-end woodworker she’s now done a law degree and is practicing that instead. The reverse should be possible too – someone employed in metal trades should be able to go out and get a degree in philosophy or law.
Yep Helen,
that’s not just a great story, but IMO your friend sounds like a person with a really rich education due to her experience in a number of areas and contexts.
Further the drop-out rate shouldn’t be seen as a catastrophe in itself. It depends what people go on to do, when they drop out of a course!
Kids need to gain a bit more self confidence in their ability to be self-sufficient in learning at school and then not feel trapped into following a particular academic/ career path.
DD @2
“As a firm proponent of public education, I don’t like those ToR at all – they are big on “excellence” and very light on “equity” (ie excellence for all).”
How did you conclude that? The review’s overall purpose, stated in the ToR, is to promote:
I agree with your concerns on the panel though. Nobody there representing the recipients of the funding. I guess that was deliberate.
@4 – “someone employed in metal trades should be able to go out and get a degree in philosophy or law.”
They can if they have the ability and want to.
I bleed money in order to send my kids to top private schools. One of the joys of being married to a Teacher who isn’t prepared to accept for her children what the Government system has to offer.
I would have been happy to send them down the road to the local public primary school and then off to private for high school. However, Mrs Razor, who has taught in the following types of schools in her 17 year career – North West WA Government with high aboriginal population (should right a book about that – being called an effing white c by drunk mothers and having softball bats thrown at you while breaking up lunch time fights), small ethnic/religious community based, local government early childhood, catholic, and elite private school – has said from conception that our kids are lifers in the elite private system. I can hardly argue from a positon of strength. It does mean that the kids are going to cop a bit of shit for being dropped off in crappy old cars and they won’t be holidaying in the same summer holiday home locations as their friends (maybe they’ll get invited). but I am pretty sure that they will get a good education.
Happy wife – happy life.
The government does not fund Catholic schools directly. Instead, it gives money to the state Catholic Education Commissions, which then redistribute it to their own schools. However, according to the National Audit Office, the Catholic system gives less money to its own disadvantaged schools, favouring its own privileged Catholic schools. This contradicts what the Catholic school system says about preferencing the poor.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/small-public-schools-cost-more-says-private-lobby-20110306-1bjjd.html
According to the Save Our Schools website, the top 10 over-funded primary and secondary schools in Melbourne are all Catholic schools.
The problem could be solved by taking the state Catholic Education Commissions out of the equation.
Joe says:
“I believe the education system needs to be standardised and educational institutions need to be regulated…” and “I think we need a more flexible system.” hmmm….
He goes on to say (and I agree here) that “Kids need to gain self-confidence in their ability to be self-sufficient in learning at school.”
Standardisation is the natural enemy of flexibility.
I don’t believe mass education in consumer society would ever relinquish its covert agenda and grant the flexibility required for children to become more independent in their learning. Our young-uns learn early on to stop seeking and to merely present themselves to be filled with information.
Razor, I hope your children are happy at the schools you have chosen for them. Enrolment in the kind of school you describe is no guarantee either of happiness or of academic success.
Unfortunately, however, administrators and teachers of many ministry schools are forced to deal with problems that greatly reduce the opportunity of many otherwise motivated and happy students to achieve academic success.
Ministry schools often fail to maximise opportunities for academic success.
It can be argued that the conventional measures of academic success are largely bogus but I have yet to see a more satisfactory model. Parents should know that their children grow up only once. Therefore, caution about schooling choices is indicated. You don’t get a second chance.
Katz, that is. D’oh!
@ 10 – but on balance of probabilities (measured by real world data and not computer models) I expect that they will do, on balance, better than if they went to the available government schools – and yes I have had a look at the NAPLAN tables and TEE results. I know that the literacy outcomes at my sons school are only on par with comparable government schools. Well knock me down with a feather – from day 1, 2011, almost the first words out of every single staff member from Kindy to Head of School is “Literacy – our performance to now has been unacceptable and this is what we are doing to improve”.
The other thing I really like about the schools my kids are going to is that they both focus on teaching styles based on the different gender charachteristics. Boys and girls learn in very different ways to each other. Until I becam a parent I hadn’t really seen it but having a pigeon pair has highlighted how different they are.
The Committee’s task is going to be very difficult. It is very hard indeed to conclude that the allocation of funds to independent schools has resulted in a good return on investment. My random selection of 7 schools shows independent schools (2) with rather more Australian government funding than public schools but spending up to twice as much per student as the government schools and generally doing less well in NAPLAN scores, sometimes substantially worse than comparable schools (those with a similar ICSEA score).
The principal issue remains the basis for the Howard government’s decision, retained by Gillard, to differentially fund independent schools which cannot chose what students to enrol. Those schools have used the extra money to reduce class size (which is not the most important issue needing attention) and add a lot of facilities (which makes a difference).
The emphasis on standardised tests so as to provide choice is part of an agenda applied in the U.S. with no gains whatsoever. That agenda is absolute opposite of what is pursued in those countries and states whose students perform exceptionally well in international tests like PISA.
That ought to be the major focus of any review of our education system. Along the way it would help if the media were told to be reliable and comprehensive in their reporting and business lobbies were told that education was not first and foremost a subset of vocational training and asked why they don’t spend more on training their staff instead of expecting the government to do all the heavy lifting. The best school systems don’t focus on vocational training and they don’t use standardised tests and they are the most competitive economies into the bargain.
All this should be a wake-up call for Australia!
I dont often say this – but I prefer the US system.
Over there, you can have a private school – you can have as many as you like – and get funded by the state just like the public school next door.
But as soon as you charge fees – you immediately lose the lot.
Good system – means private schools are genuinely about their religious (or whatever) orientation, if thats what parents want; but NOT about breeding privilege partially off the back of taxpayers who cant afford to send their own kids there.
@13
I’m sorry Des. Perhaps you could help me out here because I can’t find any Private school that receives more State plus Federal Governemnt Funding than Governemnt run schools.
Are you referring to Federal Government funding and excluding State Government Funding when you use the term “Australian Governemnt funding”.
If so, why are you only focussed on Federal funding and ignoring state funding as part of the total funding mix? Are state and federal government dollars worth different amounts?
Left E – ok then – let’s introduce the US system here.
What do think the impacts would be on both the government and private systems?
Just interested to know where you think the State and Federal Governemnts might find the money to fund the extra kids in the state system?
Is it true that we prohibit “for profit” schools?
Lefty E @14,
“as soon as you charge fees – you immediately lose the lot.”
I like it.
“…private schools are genuinely about their religious orientation…”
I don’t like it. If schools want government funding, they should teach a secular, government-approved curriculum.
Lefty: You might prefer to refer to that as the Swedish model
The US situation is complicated by the 1st Amendment. Religious schools may not be eligible to receive federal funding regardless of any other criterion.
I don’t like the US system. If you want to cut public funding to schools that charge fees then that’s fine by me but only if you offer a corresponding tax rebate to the parents.
Actually it’s not fine because those schools would then be elitist an inaccessible to low income families. Better to provide public funding to all schools equally on a per student basis irrespective of other funds they receive.
My kids go to a public school with modest (non compulsory) fees. However we spend a small fortune on extra education outside school. Soccer, swimming, music, drawing, creative writing, marshall arts etc.
Razor, sending your kids to a private school will not guarantee a decent education (as others have already claimed). I went to an elite private school for part of my primary and secondary education, and they were the six most miserable years of my life. I blossomed when I went to a government school for the last two years of my secondary education.
My kid graduated from her scary, scary government school with a TER > 90 and a place at Melbourne Uni. But she didn’t get into the local paper or anything because her achievements are by no means unusual for that school. Last year’s cohort kicked f*n arse. And no, it’s not a selective school. It’s actually the one the later yuppie arrivals in our suburb are trying to avoid :-/
What actual, hands-on experience with “ministry schools” (I take it you mean government or public schools) do you have Katz?
(It’s also Dan Sultan’s alma mater as I found out recently. Sigh…)
“Just interested to know where you think the State and Federal Governments might find the money to fund the extra kids in the state system?”
The billion of dollars a year of tax payers money which is currently subsidising private school students would make a bit of a dent Razor.
TerjeP
“If you want to cut public funding to schools that charge fees then that’s fine by me but only if you offer a corresponding tax rebate to the parents.”
Would people who do not have children be eligible for a tax rebate too?
What about people who don’t own cars, would they be eligible to get a rebate for all the roads they don’t use?
Look, I know it grates Terje, but tax is not theft. It is the price we pay for living in a civil society.
The infrastructure that allows business to flourish was paid for, mostly, with tax payers dollars.
Also, what DI(NR) said. I started out in elite private and finished up in outer suburban Public, and did much better in the latter, also getting into UniMelb – not that I think that place is the be all and end all, just to demonstrate that not all of us publicly educated people end up in crack dens.
Razor, I suspect that your concern for the quality of education your kids receive, and the fact that your wife is a teacher, will have a greater impact on your kids’ actual education outcomes than the school they go to. I went to a terrible state school in a rural part of South Australia – a school so bad you had to choose between French and physics – and I graduated able to enter any course at Adelaide Uni. My parents encouraged my schooling, is why.
My partner went to a christian private in suburban Adelaide and had a very limited range of educational choices compared to the nearby state school. Her school now shares a campus with the neighbouring catholics. It’s not always the case that private=better in education.
I had a friend at uni who was only one of two from her school that year to get into uni. That was normal for the school she went to. Her siblings went to the same school and they also all ended up at uni. You hardly ever hear the politicians talking about this aspect of student performance though – probably because they’d get unelected
TerjeP @ 22 – thats whats a bit misleading about the way funding for schools is portrayed too. Public schools in affluent areas often do quite well without compulsory fees. A friend of mine donates several thousand dollars a year to the public school his children attend because he can see how it helps them and he can afford to do so.
Funding the children rather than the school would lead to a more equitable situation as it could take into account the parents capacity to both contribute (in both financial and non financial ways).
“Just interested to know where you think the State and Federal Governemnts might find the money to fund the extra kids in the state system?”
Razor – what extra money? govt is *already* paying for those kids in private schools. Today. Even those that dont need it and squander the money on unnecessary capital works – so their absurd overpayments dont appear as unspent funds.
We need a better funding system.
To all those telling me that private schooling “doesn’t guarantee” outcomes and that certain people had terrible times at private schools and public schools can actually produce good results – all of it is true but not necessarily the rule. I am certain that if I was sent to the local high rather than the school I did then I probably wouldn’t have been pushed to achieve and I am forever grateful to my parents.
Good friend of ours has a daughter at one of the top private schools (where my daughter goes) and she went off the rails in a huge way (drugs etc). Got pulled out and sent to local government high school – new girl and achieving well. Great news. If it doesn’t sem to be working out for our kids then we’ll look atthe options. And with the stories coming back about some of the cross-dressing-up activities of Razor Jnr I’m starting to wonder – then again I reckon he is potentially a future (hopefully happier) Heath Ledger or Special Forces soldier given his sense of humour and desire to perform at the drop of a hat.
Is there the slightest chance of this thread rising above anecdata?
*stern looks at everybody*
*wags finger*.
Yeah, that’s right, I’ll take you all on!
Remember, we’re trying to get beyond ‘the dog’s breakfast’ here.
Does anyone have any serious disagreement with the notion that the funding model should be, as Guy put it, “a needs-based funding model that has equity at its heart,”?
And what would such a system look like? Well, it wouldn’t look like a system that has money going to people who don’t need it, for a start.
Can we try to get to a bigger picture than “well, this is what I/my family are/were doing…”? and “well, this is what I reckon is right for pedagogy, based on what I believe about economics”?
Solipsism is no basis for policy planning.
Cmon Lefty – you know that the governmnet pays less for kids in the private system and therefore if the private system shut down then the government would have to find more money on top of what is already spent.
It is interesting following the BER that you consider Capital spending squandering. Obviously what you think is appropriate capital works for a school and what I think are appropriate are going to differ – just as communities do within the private schools.
@31 – define EQUITY.
No child living in poverty by . . .????
It’s fascinating how the elite defend their elite schools. Here’s a letter sent to the SMH:
Quite frankly, the opinions expressed in this letter disgust me.
This is what we’re up against.
@31
How’s this sound – a needs based funding model that funds a voucher system for all.
So for example – a disadvantaged kid from Borroloola NT can take his $21,000 pa funding a apply to go to a really swish private school in the big smoke and it is all paid for.
Question – is it equitable that Gifted children get education support invested in them?
@34 – that is almost a parody – I smell a rat on that one.
It’s no rat. It was published both on the SMH website and in Monday’s SMH. The commenter left his name and suburb.
Even if it is a “Poe,” this is exactly how elitists think. I’ll say it again, this is what we’re up against.
Of course the SMH and Age would publish it – it fits with their’s and your thoughts about what you think the enemy think.
@35 Razor – Regarding your example – why should the kid from Borroloola want or need to go all the way to ‘the big smoke’ if his local school is adequately funded, staffed and resourced?
If a kid has to go to the other side of the country to get a fair slice of the education pie, then the system isn’t delivering ‘needs-based’ funding, or ‘equitable outcomes’, is it? It’s just serving people who win life’s lottery by being born in the right postcode, to the right SES family.
As to your parting question — The thread is about the equity of schools funding. ‘Gifted’ funding is targeted at individuals, not schools. FWIW I don’t think ‘Gifted and Talented’ funding is equitable, but I also don’t think it’s relevant to schools funding…
The paradigm of your example and questioning is entirely individualistic and atomistic. You obviously don’t believe in ‘schools’ funding per se. You believe in individuals doing individual things.
I’m not sure how you can have a sensible discussion of schools-level funding and systems with someone who doesn’t want to envision anything beyond the individual, atomistic level.
Razor, I think the research results on school achievement show parental attitudes to be very important (see mercurius, I was trying to rise above anecdata!) This leads to a huge self-selection problem in comparing private schools with state schools.
Mercurius, is there any substantial difference between a voucher system as described by Razor (and various libertarians of various stripes, I think) and our medicare system for funding general practice? In that system you get a voucher for a visit to a doctor, and the doctor gets to charge you anything he or she likes – you pay the difference. The government then provides block funding to hospitals and some community health services to make sure that equity concerns are addressed.
I’m interested to see explanations for what aspects of education are sufficiently different to health care that education can’t be handled the same way.
@39 – but the individualised funding is the way to achieve equity. Blanket funding is inequitable because each child is different in so many ways.
Funded – staffed – resources
What is missing from this equation?
Parented – What do the parents want for there kids? Do they want them going to that school? Do they have a preference for another school for any number of reasons? Shouldn’t they have that choice? Is a one size fits all approach the best?
“It is interesting following the BER that you consider Capital spending squandering. ”
I regard the private system spending some 3.5 times what the public schools spend per school on capital works as the “squandering”.
Interstingly, it was the OO that pointed that figure out – despite their long running campaign agaisnt BER.
BER seems to have been quite economical.
sg – I would support the view anecdotally that the Parents’ attitudes are important. Having seen the behaviour just at birthday parties of kids who are at the government school that my kids would have gone to and the attitude of their parents to discipline, manners and authority I am eternally grateful that my children don’t get exposed to them more often than absolutely necessary.
Your position manages the difficult feat of being both circular and contradictory. If ‘blanket funding’ is inequitable, as you assert, then how is this solved by giving each child a voucher of equal value? It’s still one-size-fits-all, but with an icing layer of “choice” built in. It’s Hobson’s choice, if the choice is between schools that are adequately funded, and schools that aren’t.
‘Needs-based’ funding with ‘equity at its heart’ means that people who need more, will get more. And if you don’t need it, you won’t get it.
That’s equitable.
If you don’t support that principle, Razor, then you don’t really believe in equity. Your position is closer to the standard “stuff you Jack, I’m alright”‘.
Sorry, parents. It’s not about you.
@34 I was sure when I read that letter on the day that it was published that it was tongue-in-cheek although the writer could have made it a tad more obvious. I still believe that. One or two follow-up letter writers did see it that way too.
The American voucher system is used to close poor performing public schools and rebadge the school as a private charter school. Sounds like a land grab, if vouchers are introduced in Australia the Anglican and Catholic churches would intensify their grab for more schools.
Equity: I like idea that all schools are well maintained, well equipped, freshly painted and pleasant learning environments, unfortunately that is rarely the case. Paying big fees doesn’t guarantee an optimal learning environment (won’t mention the girls school) but it makes it more likely.
Can I recommend Jon Stewart on Greedy teachers and poor Wall St bankers
and Jon Stewart interviewing Diane Ravitch on poor schools have poor results and testing causes education standards to deteriorate. Australia is following the US.
The previous comment should have recommended that people check out Jon Stewart’s interview with Diane Ravitch at http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-march-3-2011/diane-ravitch
Chris – using the road isn’t compulsory. And you seemed to have missed my second comment that altered what I said in the first.
@44 – Mercurious – I made it quite plain @35 “a needs based funding model that funds a voucher system”.
I never said “each child a voucher of equal value?”
Is there some part of “needs based funding” that I needed to expand on for you?
And as for your comment “Sorry, parents. It’s not about you.” – do you really believe that?
I’ve got teacher parent interview next week. If the Teacher said that to me I would be after her job.
Are you a parent? Because I just can’t believe a parent would say that.
Probably more than you have, Helen. Tell me your experience and I’ll tell you whether or not my suspicion is correct.
The latest PISA 2009 report found that SES is the critical factor. If you take out a student’s SES and the school’s SES (comprised of the average of the student cohort’s SES) then there is no difference in the results across public and private schools.
They also found that students of whatever SES do better in a school with a higher SES. It seems to be the benefits that accrue from being in a cohort of higher SES students that makes the difference.
Perhaps those SES benefits include a greater desire for acaedemic excellence, more supportive parents, fewer discipline issues, more experienced teachers, better teacher-student relationships?? If they are the SES benefits, the question of funding becomes more about how do you inculcate those dispositions. FWIW I think the early years and parenting programs and support is the area that needs to be targeted.
come on Razor, I thought it was about the children.
Won’t anybody think of the childreeeeeeeeeeeen!?
Nigel,
that is actually, when you think about it, how most regulation works: Standards don’t stipulate how something should be done, just how it needs to perform when it’s down, or what it is.
So, while educational outcomes can be standardised, which simply means described, there can be flexibility in the methods used to achieve those standards.
It’s also important to remember that as important as education is for the society etc. etc. education is actually self-education. Ofcourse, there is a lot of very credible evidence about the relationship between level of education and quality of life etc. And there is a legal obligation to attend school until a certain age, but people need the freedom to see that they are improving themselves.
As Helen was saying above, learning to weld might be just the thing a person needs when they’re 16, it shouldn’t mean that they don’t have access to studying history at 20. I wonder if it would be possible to include HSC-like qualifications in TAFE courses. So you would perhaps have to lift the academic standard of some TAFE courses, but it would also prepare people for a further academic career in the future if they so wished?
The other issue is, how do you define “the discipline problem” at schools? I have to admit, I don’t know anything much about this — but it seems that some kids, and Razor’s example above might be a good example, aren’t fitting in to school like they’re supposed to, so how can these kids be “educated” in a way, which improves their ability to understand and interact with the world they live in? That might mean teaching reading and arithmetic as a technique for doing practical things like learning to get a boat licence?
So, to summarise, I’d like to see a more equitable system of education, but with more differentiation and flexibility wrt what people have access to.
In other words Razor, you simply can’t deal with the fact that it’s not all about you.
And nice choice of gendered pronoun for ‘teacher’.
If any teachers of Razor Jr are reading, just tell Mr and Mrs Razor what they want to hear at the interview next week (or Mr big swinging dick will be after your job!!), and then go back into the classroom and do your actual job
I serve the children, not the parents.
Peace Out
Yes, Razor needs a reality check.
1. In Victoria, teachers are compelled by statute to report if they believe a student of theirs is the victim of parental abuse. Clearly in this case the teacher’s primary responsibility is to the child, not the parent. I imagine something similar pertains in other jurisdictions.
2. The teacher is required to teach the curriculum, not what the parent wants his/her child to be taught. If the teacher refuses or fails to teach the curriculum, regardless of the desires of the parent, then the teacher is liable to disciplinary action from education authorities. Education authorities have determined what is beneficial for students. Classroom teachers act as agents of education authorities. the content of the curriculum is not negotiable with individual parents. Clearly if the parent disagrees with education authorities and with teachers as agents of those education authorities, the interests of the student override the desires of the parent.
Razor said:
“Having seen the behaviour..of kids who are at the government school…I am eternally grateful that my children don’t get exposed to them more often than absolutely necessary.”
That sort of confirms my hypothesis that private schools are all about ensuring that your kid does not have to mix with the riff raff (ie those whose parents cannot afford school fees) rather than providing better teaching, per se.
Murph @1 – Indeed! Corrected. I prefer my spelling though.
I think in general hearing the different anecdotes is helpful, because it reinforces the reality that people across the country are in different situations and logically are driven to make different choices about the education of their children.
Personally I’m unashamedly dogmatic in my support for public schools, but my partner isn’t so much, so if we ever have kids, it is likely to present a difficult decision. Someone I know has a quite gifted kid who the parents found, after actually talking directly with a number of local schools, that a local private school was best suited to the needs of that kid, because it had programs aimed at making the most of his development level. What they didn’t want is for the kid to stagnate and be bored in class all day, and that from a parent’s perspective that is pretty understandable.
I also take the point raised by Mercurius @32 – at some point we all need to move past our anecdotes and our individual grievances and think about what will actually work for the nation as a whole. Hopefully that is what the review commitee will achieve.
Personally I think either the Federal Government or the State Governments (preferably the latter) should be given direct responsibility for all schools, and that a funding model should be established that guarantees a minimum tier of needs-based funding for public schools. I’m not sure I understand a system of funding whereby a non-government school can hypothetically get money that is then used to support the upkeep of its olympic-sized swimming pool, when there are still some public schools struggling to get the basics in place.
Hence the need for a model governing funding that covers all schools, that is strictly needs-based and delivers equity in a transparent way.
Yonks ago one of my extra little jobs as a teacher was to liaise with the mangement and staff of the shopping centre across the road from my school.
Cos, you see, we kept on getting complaints about all the horrible things our kids were up to in their shops and we couldn’t convince them that it wasn’t our kids cos they were all present and accounted for elsewhere than in the shopping centre.
One day I was over in the centre pouring oil on troubled waters when a shoppy came into the management centre office to announce she had caught a bunch of our kids redhanded doing something.
Off we went.
And it wasn’t our kids [grey uniform with blue trim] but a gang of kids from ….you guessed it …the nearby private school [green uniform with College of the Sacred Flame embroidered ..or something like that].
I asked the shoppy, and hangers on, why they didn’t recognise that the uniform was:
-not our kids [cos the locals are familiar with such]
-but that of the private school [ cos the locals are familiar with such]?
No answer.
Incidentally the cunning college kids had been giving false names and false school name [guess who they blamed and who the shoppies believed were to blame?] when caught.
See hannah’s dad, these people will make admirable CEOs in the future! Well done children.
ps. I hope you’ve changed your curriculum appropriately. Can’t be falling behind the Higginbottom McCalloms-Wallcock’s next door!
Joe,
Yes, I agree to a point. It’s difficult even to reach a standardised outcome.
My son is homeschooled – he’s at the high end of the autistic spectrum – very capable, but he has special interests, so it’s helpful for us to be able to be flexible in his subject matter. It’s been an education in itself watching him pursue his own information. He has plenty of guidance from us, but is allowed to be fairly independent in his pursuit of knowledge.
Regarding Diane Ravitch – she used to be the Assistant Secretary for Education under the Bush Administration. They put in place the No Children Left Behind program which Ravitch now sees as an abysmal failure (she wrote a book on it)…that’s the one Labor is using as its model. Bit of a worry.
Hannah’s Dad, yes, that is the problem – the public imagination of government schools always trumps reality. Cf. Razor’s definitive & scientific assessment of the behaviour of public school kids based on some kid’s misbehaviour at a birthday party, which trumps quite frequent reports in the press of criminal and/or violent anti social behaviour by children from elite schools.
Helen – least I am putting my money where my mouth is.
Actually Razor I see you as putting your mouth where your money is.
I’m keen for my children to be educated in the public system because I can avoid the kind of parents who opt for the private system.
In NSW we don’t do a bad job of trying to educate a range of people. The TVET system in high school allows kids who are so inclined to start a TAFE certificate while still in high school. We have kids in from both public and private schools to our TAFE and most are well-behaved *because* they see a (vocational) value to what they are doing. The idea of non-vocational education is a nonsense to the majority, including Julia Gillard, alas.
Hannah’s Dad – cutting. . .
Sorry Razor, it just came to me and so I typed it.
Razor, your characterisation of public school kids as not the type you’d want your child to mix with is laughable. In Melbourne, it’s always kids from the really expensive schools who are getting into trouble and behaving disgracefully. Remember, money can’t buy class.
Chookie prefers to send his/her kids to public school to avoid the private-school parents.
Razor prefers to send his kids to private school to avoid the public-school kids.
Seems like the current arrangements are keeping everybody happy.
Those of you reckoning that Razor’s wrong in saying it is all about the parent need to get a grip.
Teachers are in loco parentis, and the rights of the child do not extend to choosing their educational establishment or judging the relative merits of a school.
I’m interested in the assumption that more money leads to better outcomes. Why is it that Victoria manages to spend substantially less per child than NSW yet receive substantially better outcomes?
And class sizes – is it still considered accurate, without any substantial evidence otherwise, to suggest that there’s a linear correlation between class sizes and education outcomes?
Absolutely wilful.
Re class sizes, they do impact on outcomes.
Mind you it does very strongly depend on what is presumptively defined by whoever as to what is ‘outcomes’.
Then the linearity of class size to ‘outcomes’ can be fudged easily.
And of course there are one or two dozen other factors involved also which can fudge the linearity even further.
Here try this for one such factor, its American but the students there are guinea pigs in much the same sort of maze our kids here are running so some parallels cam be noted.
http://scienceblogs.com/mikethemadbiologist/2010/07/poverty_and_science_education.php
Here is a key comment of his:
“Poverty is something that’s never mentioned in improving K-12 science education, yet it’s critical to performance. ……. the biggest variable is income inequality. The more I look at these data …….–poverty keeps rearing its head. I realize that correlation does not equal causality ….. but the signal is so strong and stark that it is overwhelming other demographic factors.”
BTW, Mike, whoever he is, has some interesting reads on education in the good ole US of A.
Check his more recent efforts out and you’ll find articles on hunger in classes and the invalidity of ‘Value added teacher evaluation” or whatever name that goes by.
wilful @ 71 – seems a bit counter intuitive, but there appear to be better ways to improve student outcomes than reduce class size.
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2010/s3066084.htm
Fine @ 69 – thats a pretty broad stereotype too
I’ll defend to the end the right of any idiot to bleed money to send their kids to corporate owned schools.
But I shouldn’t have to pay more taxes to subsidise your lifestyle choices. Did you ask the taxpayers before you had children? No? Then get the hell out of the public purse subsidising elitism.
No public funding of corporate schools!
The education debate’s an ego trip for breeders justifying their lifestyle choices.
@71 Wilful I can’t for the life of me work out what you are trying to say in your (several) points.
Yes…and…?? If teachers really are “in loco parentis” then they have certain prerogatives and a modicum of professional agency to exercise on matters pedagogical. And on matters of child safety/welfare. And on some matters of personal development (at least as they pertains to academic achievement). Razor clearly doesn’t believe teachers have a ‘loco’, or any prerogative, at all — other than to do his bidding. In which case, home-school would be the best option for Razor Jr.
Are you? That’s nice. Where is this assumption to be found, among the interlocutors here, pray?
I think you’ll find Guy’s original suggestion is that a system with “equity at its heart” is what’s called for. That doesn’t in the slightest imply that “more money=better”. What it asserts is that “more equity=better”.
It’s worth reminding readers that the world’s best education system measured on PISA performance is that of Finland. It doesn’t spend the most money in absolute terms per student. But it does have the most equitable per-student spend — as in “needs based funding” — as per the OP.
Well, if you can find anybody here (or anywhere) who actually believes “there’s a linear correlation between class sizes and education outcomes”, why don’t you ask them and get back to us?
Since I can’t seem to beat ‘em on the appeal to avoid anecdata, I’m going to join ‘em:
When I’err n’oung lad, it was a matter of regularly-tested and proved lore at our school that the best top-shelf drugs were to be purchased from a couple of the prestigious private schools two suburbs over. And they were schools (and families) you have heard of. Of course, we public-school riff-raff could only afford the occasional joint laced with low-grade amphetamines, but the charming bowter-boys (they had such lovely manners at birthday parties!) had easy access to hallucinogens (LSD and the early generation of “designer” drugs) and hydroponically-grown marijuana from their baby-boomer ex-hippy-turned-yuppies parents; and, on a couple of legendary occasions (spoken of only in hushed, awed whispers), coke.
Cheer up Razor, your budget-busting school fees are providing Razor Jr with access to a better class of teenage drug experimentation.
As a reformed drug pig who attended several public high schools and one private high school, i second Mercurius’ anecdote.
hey mercurius, get off yer fuckin high horse. Firstly, you’ve badly overcooked your argument against Razor. He was merely stating pretty clearly and obviously that the parents are the final arbiters here. As they always will be.
As to the other point, it’s pretty damn obvious that the underlying theme here is that there’s inequality due to underexpenditure. The second word that Guy used was “funding”, and he spends a lot fo time talking about this.
We are all talking about money here. I don’t know if it’s true or not that it matters so much, I’m asking a question. If that’s not the assumption, then all of the arguments put forward so far are pretty weak, trivial.
hey wilful — breathe now — in with anger, out with love!
“Parents are the final arbiters” — of what? They are not the arbiters of curriculum, assessment, reporting, textbooks, subject choices or staffing — you know, the core business of schools.
Choice of school? Big deal. In a system that lives up to the principle of “a needs-based funding model that has equity at its heart,” choice of school is immaterial because people can and should be able to send their children to the nearest convenient school and be confident it will serve the needs of their child. That was, is and remains the aim of a comprehensive public system of education.
“Choice” is a chimerical if the “choice” is between schools that have the requisite resources to do the job, and schools that don’t.
And since you seem to be impatient with long answers to your questions, here are some short ones, not delivered on horseback:
…doesn’t exist among people who make the funding decisions.
No.
Yes, enjoy that illusion of choice Wilful.
In addition to Merc’s very complete catalogue of why the “choice” you speak of is illusory, let me add one more.
No school is allowed to exist unless it satisfies stringent state certification. This certification is intrusive and multi-dimensional. But let me mention just one element: all schools, must adhere to the curricula strictures imposed by government-run assessment authorities. Results (“success” in Razor’s term) are distributed by assessors employed by and answerable to these assessment authorities.
Thus, in order to achieve “success” ALL schools must adhere to the standards and demands imposed by the state.
Well Katz, there’d be one easy way to bring real choice into education — remove the public money from private schools and, in doing so, free those private schools from the strictures of the state-mandated curriculum.
The status quo is that the State purchases a considerable amount of private schools’ freedom. Essentially the deal is, “OK, you can have this pubilc money, but only if you adhere to the State’s standards, the State’s curriculum, the State’s compulsory modules of learning”.
I have no idea why the State considers this to be a rational expenditure of public funds. It’s not a good deal for the taxpayer to purchase pedagogical autonomy from people who want to go their own way. Let them go, and good luck to them, I say!!
Mercurius @82,
I disagree. Remember your point that it’s “about the child, not the parents”.
Freeing private schools to teach whatever they liked, would lead to many schools run by nutty religious organisations teaching nonsense like intelligent design.
The children attending such schools have no choice in the matter. They end up brainwashed into holding crazy beliefs and being unfit to participate in the mainstream adult world.
That is not a scenario that any reasonable government should contemplate permitting.
The underlying flaw is that, whatever choice there is, it’s the parent’s choice, not the child’s choice.
It’s not rational. It’s politically logical.
Whitlam was the most determined exponent of this political logic.
From Whitlam’s epoch-making “It’s Time” speech, 13 Nov, 1972:
Private schooling, particularly the middle-ground “cheaper” schools do not guarantee value for money. I am dealing with the horrible reality that I am throwing away a lot of my money on a school where the Principal is in the pocket of the School Council and on a spending spree on a 5 year road to retirement to fund his legacy. I have no idea whether it is our money or taxpayers money that is currently being spent (among other things) on a $725 000.00 organ for the chapel being made in Germany, but I sure as **** am not going to take it any more, especially when it is at the expense of any kind of academic extension programme (scrapped due to “insufficient funding for a teacher”).
They walk a fine line when it comes to fulfilling curriculum, and now this.
Unfortunately that is the scenario we already have. Many schools in Queensland teach creationist doctrines in their scripture classes, while in most schools right around Australia, whether Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or even public so-called secular schools, the story of Adam and Eve and other nonsense from the book of Genesis is taught in scripture classes as scientific and historical fact.