Private Schools

Remove this Banner Ad

HavUEvaSeenTheRain said:
.... the son of a third generation dole bludger being given a lesser education then the son of the local doctor or the local $50m station owner just seems wrong on so many levels. The very least that should be done is to remove any payments to private schools from governments imo.
Click to expand...

The home is an oft ignored factor not only on education, but respect for others. Its easy to focus on the money & run the lines above but it ignores the people working 2 jobs to send their kids to private schools. People go without to give their kids the best opportunity as they see it, not as you see it.

A good education can be a good start but a high school education neither limits or guarantees you for life.
 
Suspense said:
Explain why, due to geography alone, a high-quality state-run education system works in Finland but would not work in Australia.
Click to expand...
Because Finland is far smaller and more urbanised than Australia, thus allowing infrastructure and service efficiencies that do not exist in Australia

It is easy to run a public school system in an area with enough students to have many schools in close proximity, a good mix of students with different SESs and academic abilities, selective and special needs schools, and a large local teaching workforce

The tyranny of distance is a huge thing in Australia and people who live in Sydney/Melbourne/Brisbane don’t really get it
 
Kwality said:
The home is an oft ignored factor not only on education, but respect for others. Its easy to focus on the money & run the lines above but it ignores the people working 2 jobs to send their kids to private schools. People go without to give their kids the best opportunity as they see it, not as you see it.

A good education can be a good start but a high school education neither limits or guarantees you for life.
Click to expand...
This is sort of the point though. The kids not from good families are again pushed back. If abandoning the private schools gains a better outcome for everyone like we see in Finland then the country is the winner and that’s what the government is supposed to base its approach on. This is the job of government.
 

Log in to remove this ad.

Caesar said:
Because Finland is far smaller and more urbanised than Australia, thus allowing infrastructure and service efficiencies that do not exist in Australia

It is easy to run a public school system in an area with enough students to have many schools in close proximity, a good mix of students with different SESs and academic abilities, selective and special needs schools, and a large local teaching workforce

The tyranny of distance is a huge thing in Australia and people who live in Sydney/Melbourne/Brisbane don’t really get it
Click to expand...
Australia is more urbanised then Finland albeit marginally. The distance is a real concern but you are more looking at 2-5% of the population not within commuting distance to fairly major town, so a lot less disadvantaged and considering only a minority from these areas are going to private schools anyway it’s actually more like 1% are possibly remote and that’s probably a stretch.
 
HavUEvaSeenTheRain said:
This is sort of the point though. The kids not from good families are again pushed back. If abandoning the private schools gains a better outcome for everyone like we see in Finland then the country is the winner and that’s what the government is supposed to base its approach on. This is the job of government.
Click to expand...

Wealth is not a measure of a caring family in terms of education - the idea its up to the school is common in my experience.

Not sure that a one size fits all approach to education will ever produce the best results, perhaps hold back some to improve an overall result. Is that why we have selective high schools in most States.

Even in terms of footy, some schools do it better than others, particularly boarding schools for country kids.
 
HavUEvaSeenTheRain said:
Australia is more urbanised then Finland albeit marginally. The distance is a real concern but you are more looking at 2-5% of the population not within commuting distance to fairly major town, so a lot less disadvantaged and considering only a minority from these areas are going to private schools anyway it’s actually more like 1% are possibly remote and that’s probably a stretch.
Click to expand...

Are you talking about Victoria only?
What size is a major town?

Methinks you've been seduced by the averages.
 
Caesar said:
Because Finland is far smaller and more urbanised than Australia, thus allowing infrastructure and service efficiencies that do not exist in Australia
Click to expand...
What service inefficiencies exactly - and what is the measurable extent of their impact on educational outcomes?

Finland's educational system is highly decentralised. They have a national curriculum but decision making re: how the curriculum is taught and implemented is done locally - meaning that it caters to its local area - be it rural or urban.

The lack of administrative overhead is what keeps their teaching and learning relatively cheap:

Finland is by no means the highest spender per pupil among OECD countries, so money cannot be an important factor in explaining Finland’s success. Teacher salaries are in the middle range for European countries. Schools are quite small in size, but they have minimal administrative overheads. Even in larger schools, principals are expected to teach, and the resources of the school are tightly focused on the classroom. Because of their commitment to the inclusion model, the costs of special education are significantly lower than in countries that rely more heavily on separate classrooms for special education students. Finally, because Finnish schools are mostly a function of municipal government, there are no separate school districts and no intermediate education units sitting between the municipalities and the ministry. Therefore, except for the costs of the national educational administration, virtually all of the money spent on education in Finland is focused on schools and classrooms.

It is easy to run a public school system in an area with enough students to have many schools in close proximity, a good mix of students with different SESs and academic abilities, selective and special needs schools, and a large local teaching workforce
Click to expand...
And yet you promote a solution that actively discourages "a good mix of students with different SESs and academic abilities" - something that would improve the quality of schooling in state schools?

Why do you think special needs schools in rural areas would not exist under a state run system?

The best way to attract HQ teachers to state schools in rural areas is to improve the quality of the schooling in those settings - why do you think teachers are fleeing the new amalgamated super-school en masse in Shepparton? (It's not because of "it's rural" - it's because of Govt mismanagement has made the school a terrible schooling environment)

Everything that you claim is inherent to poor quality state schooling in rural areas is exacerbated a public/private system.

The tyranny of distance is a huge thing in Australia and people who live in Sydney/Melbourne/Brisbane don’t really get it
Click to expand...
Who are you referring to? Grew up on a dairy farm, educated in rural Victoria and have taught in low-SES state schools in Shepparton and Melbourne fringe.

As a student in a rural area, the most significant factor was having to catch a bus to school.

As a teacher, having class-sizes of 25+, with almost all students from low-SES and/or ESL backgrounds, with between 5-10 behaviourally challenging students (the same students private schools simply expel from their system - because "educating all students" is not in their remit), on a shoestring budget, has a far greater impact on the quality of learning than the fact that Melbourne happens to be 2.5 hrs away.
 
Last edited:
Caesar said:
IIRC the ABS has ~30% of the Australian population in rural and remote areas

My understanding is that Finland is less than 15%
Click to expand...
71% is major cities, 100,000 plus.

Finland under that metric would be closer to 45%

Kwality said:
Are you talking about Victoria only?
What size is a major town?

Methinks you've been seduced by the averages.
Click to expand...

no Australia wide.
 
1618233184123.png

This small pocket of Perth contains 7 top private schools and 0 public high schools.

Caesar said:
No, because private schools are a vital avenue for tax-paying parents to escape the geographic discrimination of the public system

Why should access to good education be even further limited to those who live in elite inner-metro suburbs?
Click to expand...

The majority of kids that go to these schools live in the area or come from wealthy farming families. If you grow up in Armadale your parents aren't sending you to Scotch. You might go to Lumen Christi (Catholic) or John Wollaston (Anglican) that are about $5k a year, but you're not going to a school that's almost $30k a year on the other side if the city. You just aren't.

If people with lots of money want to have elite private schools that cost $50k a year for their kids to go then great, but why would govt funding go towards it? It seems counter productive.

Surely if you had a bunch of public schools in these affluent areas they would be high performing due to the socioeconomics the surrounding areas. If there was a public school in Dalkeith, it would be good. And you would probably be wealthy enough to go a private school anyway. The better public schools by area tend to be pretty high performing, and then some areas don't have them at all.
 
Kwality said:
IF these parents decided to send their kids to government schools what would be the cost to the taxpayer, more or less.
Ignore any boarding schools in the area you nominate to make it straight forward.
Click to expand...
Answered a long time ago: buy the private school grounds, run boarding schools to cater for rich farmers kids.

Or school of the air. It's not rocket science.
 

(Log in to remove this ad.)

Chief said:
Answered a long time ago: buy the private school grounds, run boarding schools to cater for rich farmers kids.

Or school of the air. It's not rocket science.
Click to expand...
It will cost the taxpayer $ more ad infinitum.
Its not as if our education sector can read or add up.
The idea only rich kids board is an example of bog ignorance, again.
 
Kwality said:
It will cost the taxpayer $ more ad infinitum.
Click to expand...
And if it was just a matter of money, that would be a good argument.

But you're talking about people's lives. Equality of opportunity. Social mobility. It's worth paying for.
 
Chief said:
And if it was just a matter of money, that would be a good argument.

But you're talking about people's lives. Equality of opportunity. Social mobility. It's worth paying for.
Click to expand...
Taking choice from people is good, yeh yeh yeh .....
Reducing further the ability to read/write is not equality of opportunity.

Do you get out often?
.
 
Kwality said:
Many very ordinary people go without for their kids, they arent rich. Strange you'd prefer to pay for the rich to be educated.
Click to expand...
Lol. Strange you think that’s my argument.

Private school does nothing public school couldn’t if it was funded properly.
 
Caesar said:
That’s a little bit no true Scotsman
Click to expand...
There’s no magic ingredient provided by some religious education institution but evasion of responsibility for child rape, and lack of adherence to non-discrimination law.
 
Chief said:
There’s no magic ingredient provided by some religious education institution but evasion of responsibility for child rape, and lack of adherence to non-discrimination law.
Click to expand...

No similar problems in other schools, oops !!

Its unacceptable anywhere anytime & here its being USED in a totally unscrupulous manner by someone who should be better than that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Remove this Banner Ad

Back
Top