Public vs Private School funding
- Thread starter Gralin
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- May 1, 2016
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Then that's very, very silly of them.
... then there's a bit of money to be made for a young enterprising journalist to do a bit of investigative work at particular schools, seeing what they can get to demonstrate it.
At the end of it, I know any number of people whose response to such a thing - or an attempt to sugarcoat it with 'encourage them down a more realistic path - would not be pretty.
Sttew
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No doubt. But depends on the University too. Mt daughter went to Monash, and then did a Masters at RMIT University. She was assigned to work with a group of Asian students who had poor English and worse writing ability. My daughter's role was to correct the grammar and writing of her cohorts or else the group failed. I mentioned this to an academic friend, who told me this is happening at all universities that have full fee paying overseas students. course!
I'm still not sold on the business case proposition for doing this. Say you "manage" a kid out at Year 10, that's $10-$15k of funding walking out the door for 2 more years. Say the VCE cohort is 100 kids (which would still be relatively small) you're talking about 1% contribution to your overall average ATAR. Are you really going to gain an extra enrolment if your average ATAR drops from 75 to 73? Even if the student was an exceptionally poor performer, it's not making that big an impact.
Business Managers would be pulling their hair out and making plenty of noise if this was a common thing.
I don't doubt that there's a lot of discussion around potential pathways that students may take. If a student expresses that they want to go down the medical pathway, then part of the discussion is what suite of subjects suit their strengths to maximise their chances of getting in to a highly competitive course. I'm just using medicine as an example but the same would apply for other avenues.
Then there's the flipside, where parents are pressuring their child to go down a specific pathway that the student clearly doesn't really connect with. Those discussions are especially difficult as you are actually trying to suggest alternative pathways that the student wants, but the parental pressure is a beast of a thing to overcome for everyone.
So, what do we do? Not have these conversations as they may be viewed as the school trying to maximise their school's ATAR average, or try and help the student get where they want to be?
Just as an aside, though... it would not surprise me if there are people who are not great at these conversations, framing it solely around ATAR scores. This is likely where the negative perception is coming from, in my opinion. This also doesn't excuse anyone who actively directs a student away from a passion (eg gethelred's music teacher!). That's very poor teaching.
Then there's the flipside, where parents are pressuring their child to go down a specific pathway that the student clearly doesn't really connect with. Those discussions are especially difficult as you are actually trying to suggest alternative pathways that the student wants, but the parental pressure is a beast of a thing to overcome for everyone.
So, what do we do? Not have these conversations as they may be viewed as the school trying to maximise their school's ATAR average, or try and help the student get where they want to be?
Just as an aside, though... it would not surprise me if there are people who are not great at these conversations, framing it solely around ATAR scores. This is likely where the negative perception is coming from, in my opinion. This also doesn't excuse anyone who actively directs a student away from a passion (eg gethelred's music teacher!). That's very poor teaching.
- Jul 27, 2013
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bingo. it called "pathways counselling" and there are some geniuses at it believe me.
And this is where I think the media holds a significant part of the blame for that distrust. I absolutely acknowledge that there are schools that have failed in their duty of care of students in a just horrendous and inexcusable ways. The media just loves to lap this up and report on it, because our news cycle is flooded with negative news as that creates the "clicks". However, for every one one of those reports of failures, there are multiple schools doing pretty amazing things for their students and supporting them through various individual difficult journeys. You'll never hear of these. So, your distrust is understandable, but I find it sad that we'll never be able to break that, especially in the current news climate.
I love any analysis of news organisations that completely ignores that they give people what they want.
Business as usual or people doing their job isn't news, and it never has been.
Well done to all those schools working hard and effectively to help students.
Business as usual or people doing their job isn't news, and it never has been.
Well done to all those schools working hard and effectively to help students.
- Oct 4, 2016
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People going above and beyond is also often not news. That's the point I'm trying to make. Good news is not great news apparently.
However, I completely understand that this falls foul of human nature. We are drawn to bad news.
That level of care is not specific to private schools. Government schools are amazing at it as well.
In any case, I've discussed this before as well. Abolishing private schools doesn't remove the 'ovarian lottery'. Rich areas will still exist and have the schools with the best facilities and resources as they'll be supported by donations from the families that live in that area.
The current funding model is flawed. It needs to be fixed. More funding is needed for education as a whole. But, in my opinion it's a pipedream to think that all schools across the country can be created equal.
This isn't new news... These over-funding situations have been known for many years and all schools are on a pathway to 80% SRS funding. Stay tuned for this same revelation to appear in 12 months time.
- Oct 4, 2016
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never a good idea to post before reading the article. a particular set of recent circumstances were the centrepiece.
What "recent" circumstances would they be?
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