Tag Archive for 'private schools'

(Private) education revolution?

Published
by
Kim
3 months ago
in Education
. 115 Comments

Although the AEU has been dismissed as one of the dreaded teachers’ unions by Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, some others have actually been looking at the evidence in the evidence-free policy of the Kevin Rudd “education revolution” narrative. And that’s some clever people who’ve actually been reading an evidence based report.

Ross Gittins:

Because the Rudd Government promised to leave the funding formula unreformed during the next funding quadrennium ending in 2012, McMorrow projects that whereas another four years will see annual grants to the private schools increase by 3 per cent in real terms, real grants to public schools will fall by 2 per cent.

All this will occur while Rudd is pressing schools to publish far more information about their performance and encouraging parents to “walk with their feet” if they don’t like what’s revealed.

The state education bureaucracies and their unions have their own reasons for continuing to resist federal pressure to publish performance indicators. But Rudd is giving them a valid argument that his competition is biased against them.

Continue reading ‘(Private) education revolution?’

Continued subsidies to private schools will entrench disadvantage

Published
by
tigtog
5 months ago
in Education and Parenting
. 70 Comments

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.