Public vs Private School funding

[Carn The Berries]

Well, just this once...

The Morrison government’s overblown funding of private schools exacerbated inequality, undermined social cohesion and sabotaged cultural creativity.​

​

By Elizabeth Farrelly.​

Why Australia should ban private schools​

The images are spectacular: slinky ovoid stairwells, glamorous foyers, expensive materials and exquisite detailing. The purpose-built music centre at Meriden girls school in Sydney’s inner west, opened by the New South Wales governor last month, is a collection of beautifully appointed auditoriums, recording studios and recital rooms carapaced beneath soaring roofs, with leafy courtyards and gracious loggias. Yes, music is glorious. And yes, prioritising girls helps rebalance Australia’s antediluvian gender equation. So isn’t this multimillion-dollar music emporium a good, culture-building thing?


It’s not. Actually, I’d go further. Not only is it not a good thing, but this lovely building – and the hundreds of others like it proliferating in the manicured grounds of private schools across the country – is a very, very bad thing for us all. Why? Because these immense educational ostentations represent the debasement of all that is best and proudest in Australian culture.


Education is the key to civilised life – which is why, if I could change one thing about Australia, it would be this. I’d ban private schools. Not because such schools are necessarily bad, nor do they necessarily produce bad people. Rather, private schools are systemically toxic to the kind of vibrant and inventive future we desperately need to create.


At the heart of this debasement is a collective amnesia. After three decades of obediently swallowing the neoliberal Kool-Aid, we’ve forgotten we’re more than just individuals, haggling in life’s marketplace for the smartest buys and most lucrative sells. We’re not just consumers. We’re also citizens. And to create citizens, as opposed to market hagglers, our system must radically change. To generate a culture that maximises talent, nurtures creativity and builds a better world, all schools must be excellent, revered and freely open to all. But, but… you’ll say. What about the good ones? What about choice? What about freedom? The answer is the same as the vaccination answer. It’s not just about you.


Most obvious is the equity argument. The statistics are legion but, in essence, while the country’s top 50 private schools have assets valued at $8.5 billion, plus millions in annual profits, public schools don’t even have guaranteed funding for heating and cooling. While private schools happily invest tens of millions on palatial new facilities – such as Shore’s $52 million pool and physical education complex, Melbourne Grammar’s $30 million science and technology hub and Cranbrook’s vast new $132 million sandstone-clad, turf-topped pool and athletic centre – public school kids can’t even count on security fences or hygienic bathrooms. While the wealthiest private school, Sydney’s Shore, posted a surplus in excess of $23 million in 2019, public school parents must fundraise for air-conditioning or shelter from rain. While private schools’ assets rose by 42 per cent between 2015 and 2019, easily outstripping the benchmark Australian stock index, public schools barely have assets. For most, even modest drama, sporting or performance facilities are on the never-never.


Covid-19, too, showed class preference. While private schools could temperature-test all kids upon entry and separate them during lessons, public school classrooms were already full to bursting, with no capacity for separation. Electronic testing was out of the question.


This obscene ostentation exacerbates an already dramatic class divide. But even more galling is how all this has been actively fostered by public funding. Over the four years to April, the Morrison government directed an extra $10 billion of funding to private schools, while underfunding public schools by at least $6.5 billion every year. So children who were already networked into the ruling class, already secure in their future, receive yet more cushioning at considerable public expense, while those less privileged drift further down the ladder.


Naturally, this suits entrenched self-interest – not just of individuals and dynasties, but of the schools themselves, which have become increasingly corporatised. The more a school can hike its fees, the more it grows its reputation as a prestige establishment, enhancing its attractiveness to silver-spooners and its likelihood of producing the bankers and stockbrokers who can be tapped for named halls and other philanthropic status-funding in the future. That’s a nasty little cycle all by itself, a system of ever-more-entrenched born-to-ruleism that both relies on and nurtures the clubbiness of Australian culture. It’s a system in which the children of the wealthy, and their children, grow up to regard the rest as plebs and pass around the lucrative sinecures, board memberships and ministerial posts between them. There’s a name for this: a caste system.


Three arguments are typically used to justify private schools. One, choice. Two, burden. And three, quality. Each is only valid – and sometimes barely that – from the viewpoint of individual rights. When the case is viewed through a culture-making lens, the answer is obvious.


Taking these arguments in reverse order – first, quality. Our culture is increasingly in thrall to the belief that if you don’t, or can’t, cough up the $30,000–$45,000 per year per kid for private schooling, you’re a bad parent. Your child, forced instead to attend a public school, will miss out. This is far from proved, however. David Gillespie’s book Free Schools details his research finding that, for all the glamorous facilities and emerald lawns, private schools don’t deliver better education. Once you correct for socioeconomic advantage, even the most expensive schools add little to educational outcome.


The burden argument relies on the notion that the rich, by removing their children from the public system, are somehow lifting a burden from the public’s shoulders. This allegedly frees up funding to support more needy kids – some of whom, out of the goodness of their hearts, the private schools also pluck up with scholarships. What’s really happening here is a creaming-off of talent, money and energy to sustain the schools’ placing in the academic or sporting leagues, further reinforcing their status and income while leaving the public sector impoverished.


The choice argument implies that education is like shampoo, or a phone plan. The consumer should be free to select whichever product they like and can afford. But with education, such choice is illusory. It’s not as if you can run a controlled experiment with your kid in this or that school, then revise your choice accordingly. Plus, the choice is not equal: some have it, most do not.


And even consumer behaviour has moral content. And here, the true disaster of the private-school hegemony becomes apparent. Choosing a shampoo hinges only partly on individual rights and desires, determined by, say, price, fragrance and softness. It’s also about wider responsibilities, such as avoiding toxic chemicals, harm to orangutans and single-use plastics. Although education is vastly more important, we’re oddly reluctant to consider what our wider responsibilities are in this arena: what kind of culture we want, or need, to create.


From this viewpoint, and especially when combined with inequality, the right to choose looks less like freedom and more like separatism. Teaching our children wealth- or religion-based separatism before they outgrow their booster seats can only engender hatred and distrust. Indeed, when one side talks freedom but keeps most of the wealth and power to itself, the whole system comes uncomfortably close to the ideals of “separate development” – or apartheid.


Quite apart from the injustice, such a system wastes talent. And talent, given the kind of future we’re likely confronting, is not something we can afford to waste.


Further, the effect of this system, in combination with a million-dollar mortgage, is to tie parents so relentlessly to the treadmill that they have no time to look up, much less query, create, volunteer or discuss. This makes for a society of stifling dullness and conservatism – the opposite of the cultural agility we’re going to need.


By converting all schools to public schools, diverting even half of their wealth and energy to the public sector, the quality of public education could be transformed. Teachers could be properly paid, so that teaching in the public system would no longer be a sacrifice and could therefore require high-level tertiary qualifications. Together, these changes would bestow on public school teaching the reverence it deserves. Nationalising schools would also channel parental and student energies into a system that would encourage peer-to-peer learning – enriching and empowering all, instead of the few.


If you think Australia incapable of such bold steps, consider John Howard’s gun laws, which took us from a dangerous confusion to a country whose policy is now held up as an exemplar to the United States. And if you think such dramatic school reform is impossible, look at Finland.


Forty years ago, Finland had an education system much like ours – a highly competitive mix of public and private schools that, despite the hype and the choice, produced worsening test scores. The then education minister, Professor Pasi Sahlberg (now deputy director of the Gonski Institute at UNSW Sydney), took a radical approach. Nationalising all schools, he required all teachers to be highly qualified, paid and respected. At the same time, he reduced children’s study hours and homework and extended holidays. Within a few years, Finland shot to the top of the league tables – and there it has remained, more or less, ever since.


Why wouldn’t we do the same?

These articles always annoy me because they focus on the top 1% of non-goverment schools. It's not the entire picture and doesn't acknowledge the good work that low fee paying non-government schools do in low socio-economic areas (and actually appears to patronise the work some of the "elite" schools do with marginalised students as well).

I get the underlying message about trying to improve equity and outcomes for all, but it would be nice to read an article that is actually attempts to show some level of balance and critically assess the entire state vs. non-government landscape, not the headline grabbing items that allow them to cry "woe is us". Its disingenuous.

 

[Not Important]

These articles always annoy me because they focus on the top 1% of non-goverment schools. It's not the entire picture and doesn't acknowledge the good work that low fee paying non-government schools do in low socio-economic areas (and actually appears to patronise the work some of the "elite" schools do with marginalised students as well).

I get the underlying message about trying to improve equity and outcomes for all, but it would be nice to read an article that is actually attempts to show some level of balance and critically assess the entire state vs. non-government landscape, not the headline grabbing items that allow them to cry "woe is us". Its disingenuous.

it’s black & white 4 me. if u want 2 send your kid 2 a non gov’t school for educational or religious reasons u pay full whack. gov’t funds should go 2 gov’t schools.

 

[Carn The Berries]

it’s black & white 4 me. if u want 2 send your kid 2 a non gov’t school for educational or religious reasons u pay full whack. gov’t funds should go 2 gov’t schools.

And what is the basis for that? Education is an entitlement for all, why shouldn't there be some (reduced) funding for non-government schools? Do you have the same opinion of people who chose to go to private hospitals (which are also partially government funded)?

 

[mill204]

And what is the basis for that? Education is an entitlement for all, why shouldn't there be some (reduced) funding for non-government schools? Do you have the same opinion of people who chose to go to private hospitals (which are also partially government funded)?

By and large private hospitals cater for privately insured patients. In instances when there are exceptional circumstances - like a pandemic - private hospitals are opened to those not insured. It's the exception, not the rule. False equivalence.

I'm all for the Finland model. Works a treat both in terms of fairness and standards.

Education in Finland: A Model For Equality

Education in Finland produces top tier students that works for everyone. 93 percent of Finns graduate from high school and there are no private schools.

borgenproject.org

 

[Carn The Berries]

By and large private hospitals cater for privately insured patients. In instances when there are exceptional circumstances - like a pandemic - private hospitals are opened to those not insured. It's the exception, not the rule. False equivalence.

I'm all for the Finland model. Works a treat both in terms of fairness and standards.

Education in Finland: A Model For Equality

Education in Finland produces top tier students that works for everyone. 93 percent of Finns graduate from high school and there are no private schools.

borgenproject.org

How is that any different to non-government schools only being available to those who pay the fees? It's pretty much exactly the same as paying an insurance premium, it's fee-for-service. Both receive government funding (recurrent funding, not additional funds provided as part of the pandemic).

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

These articles always annoy me because they focus on the top 1% of non-goverment schools. It's not the entire picture and doesn't acknowledge the good work that low fee paying non-government schools do in low socio-economic areas (and actually appears to patronise the work some of the "elite" schools do with marginalised students as well).

I get the underlying message about trying to improve equity and outcomes for all, but it would be nice to read an article that is actually attempts to show some level of balance and critically assess the entire state vs. non-government landscape, not the headline grabbing items that allow them to cry "woe is us". Its disingenuous.

Obviously you're not old enough to remember a time before John Howard turbocharged funding to already over-appointed private schools.

I went to a private school in the late 70s - early 80s because I won the birth lottery, and my parents were able to pay for it.

Private schools were predominantly self-funded, and yet amazingly, they didn't go to the wall!

This is like the scare campaign the Libs mounted when Bill Shorten proposed returning franking credits to the sensible arrangement that existed for before Howard/Costello turbocharged it. The sky was going to fall in! Never mind the system had worked perfectly well for years.

Where'd you get this 1% figure from?

Personally, regardless of what percentage of elite private schools receive funding they don't need, I think it's pretty disingenuous to suggest that we all just have to accept that grotesque situation as the price for the wonderful work the lesser schools do with their funding.

I mean, are we a sophisticated, skilled nation or not?

It would be perfectly simply to engineer a funding cap, beyond which schools receive nothing more, and the money saved goes into deserving public schools for things like functioning toilets, aircon in summer and decent heating in winter.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

And what is the basis for that? Education is an entitlement for all, why shouldn't there be some (reduced) funding for non-government schools? Do you have the same opinion of people who chose to go to private hospitals (which are also partially government funded)?

It's pretty simple. We need to make budget savings to pay for our spending priorities.

A comprehensive secondary education is available for all in Australia.

If, on the other hand, you want your child privately educated, fine, pay for it.

When I went to school, before Howard went mad with our money, if you couldn't afford a private school (most people), you enrolled at the local state school.

Simple and fair.

 

[Carn The Berries]

It's pretty simple. We need to make budget savings to pay for our spending priorities.

A comprehensive secondary education is available for all in Australia.

If, on the other hand, you want your child privately educated, fine, pay for it.

When I went to school, before Howard went mad with our money, if you couldn't afford a private school (most people), you enrolled at the local state school.

Simple and fair.

That didn't answer my question though. Do you feel the same about private health? People pay premiums for a better service (when universal healthcare is available) and the government contributes to that.

It's exactly the same.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

That didn't answer my question though. Do you feel the same about private health? People pay premiums for a better service (when universal healthcare is available) and the government contributes to that.

It's exactly the same.

I strongly believe in universal healthcare so I would be happy to see subsidies for private cover withdrawn.

The only reason private healthcare has any sort of market share is because John Howard penalised anyone who didn't take it out. (At the time I thought "What's he doing? Private healthcare is so clearly not worth the money." I was still pretty naive back then, and that was my first exposure to how ideologically-driven the right-wingers like Howard were, to the degree they would subsidise an inefficient, lazy industry solely to try and weaken the public system. What an arzehole.)

 

[HairyO]

It's pretty simple. We need to make budget savings to pay for our spending priorities.

A comprehensive secondary education is available for all in Australia.

If, on the other hand, you want your child privately educated, fine, pay for it.

When I went to school, before Howard went mad with our money, if you couldn't afford a private school (most people), you enrolled at the local state school.

Simple and fair.

Then Labor increased the spending on private schools and massively increased the spending on school chaplains. Both sides do it.

I dont have a problem with the Feds topping up the under-spending by the states, but I do have a problem with the formula because it gave some of the richest schools in the country huge amounts of money.

Properly done it saves taxpayers money, because the cost of educating a child in the public system is crazy. If all the public money was taken away from the private schools the total cost to taxpayers of the public system would go up a lot.

Only senseless class warriors (tautology) would see that as a good thing.

 

[Gralin]

That didn't answer my question though. Do you feel the same about private health? People pay premiums for a better service (when universal healthcare is available) and the government contributes to that.

It's exactly the same.

If we were funding public schools fully and had left over money in the budget there would still be better uses for it than private schools

 

[kranky al]

My library had science books that were 20 years out of date. They had no staff to advise students on year 12 prep or uni prerequisites. They had teachers who needed students to run the physics and calculus classes because they didn't understand the course material themselves.

But yeah, we were the same as Scotch and Xavier

Quite literally this.

Our chemistry teacher would give us a bunch of questions about balancing chemical reactions - when we had finished hed start solving them on the board.

Hed get half way through, be buttfunked lost and get the jet german kids work and copy that up.

My maths two teacher was a drunk - if you had him last period before lunch or knockoff he was a nasty pos who was jonesing for a swig.

Went bb to the pub in year 12 at lunch with a coupla big hairy mates - we all looked older - we are having a beer and in comes ol <redacted> he orders a double - sits down - sips, looks around - sees us and a look of - you say nothing, i say nothing passed between us.

Yeah we had some ok teachers but no great ones - and some godawful ones who were so oast their use by date even woolies wouldnt try sell them.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

Then Labor increased the spending on private schools and massively increased the spending on school chaplains. Both sides do it.

No, one side did it and then the other didn’t have the balls to stand up against the very rich and, (given private schooling is so much about Old School Tie), extremely powerfully-connected private school lobby.

This is why we should never elect Coalition governments. They do damage that is very, very hard to undo.

If all the public money was taken away from the private schools the total cost to taxpayers of the public system would go up a lot.

Only senseless class warriors (tautology) would see that as a good thing.

Not at all. It can be done. (Do I hear the strains of Jean Sibelius’s most emblematic composition?) You only have to go a mere two decades back in our own history. Australia before Howard turbocharged private school funding was hardly a third-world economy.

 

[HairyO]

No, one side did it and then the other didn’t have the balls to stand up against the very rich and, (given private schooling is so much about Old School Tie), extremely powerfully-connected private school lobby.

This is why we should never elect Coalition governments. They do damage that is very, very hard to undo.


Not at all. It can be done. (Do I hear the strains of Jean Sibelius’s most emblematic composition?) You only have to go a mere two decades back in our own history. Australia before Howard turbocharged private school funding was hardly a third-world economy.

It started with Menzies, it didnt start 20 years ago. Its been around for 60 years, and it has reduced the strain on the public system. Massively.

Labor has had many chances to change it but never did. And as I said, they have increased funding from time to time. The issue is where the funding goes, not that it exists.

If Labor is unable to fix problems, BTW, then they shouldnt be in power. The idea that they cant change things or correct errors is a ridiculous copout.

Tomorrow they could declare a change in the funding structure and declare that it will be wound back to zero over the next 8 or 10 years. That is plenty of time for the states to raise taxes to pay for all the new schools they will need to build. Then its a matter of recruiting all the unemployed private school teachers and getting them to join the union. A win for all, Comrade.

 

[Carn The Berries]

It started with Menzies, it didnt start 20 years ago. Its been around for 60 years, and it has reduced the strain on the public system. Massively.

Labor has had many chances to change it but never did. And as I said, they have increased funding from time to time. The issue is where the funding goes, not that it exists.

If Labor is unable to fix problems, BTW, then they shouldnt be in power. The idea that they cant change things or correct errors is a ridiculous copout.

Tomorrow they could declare a change in the funding structure and declare that it will be wound back to zero over the next 8 or 10 years. That is plenty of time for the states to raise taxes to pay for all the new schools they will need to build. Then its a matter of recruiting all the unemployed private school teachers and getting them to join the union. A win for all, Comrade.

The state sector in Victoria is going to have a hard enough time finding the additional 10% of teaching staff that are going to be required over the next 3 years.

 

[HairyO]

The state sector in Victoria is going to have a hard enough time finding the additional 10% of teaching staff that are going to be required over the next 3 years.

In theory the private school teachers no longer needed would go to public. In reality the older ones would retire and there probably would be a massive shortage.

But reality isnt welcome in SRP.

 

[mill204]

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

It started with Menzies, it didnt start 20 years ago. Its been around for 60 years, and it has reduced the strain on the public system. Massively.

Labor has had many chances to change it but never did. And as I said, they have increased funding from time to time. The issue is where the funding goes, not that it exists.

If Labor is unable to fix problems, BTW, then they shouldnt be in power. The idea that they cant change things or correct errors is a ridiculous copout.

Tomorrow they could declare a change in the funding structure and declare that it will be wound back to zero over the next 8 or 10 years. That is plenty of time for the states to raise taxes to pay for all the new schools they will need to build. Then its a matter of recruiting all the unemployed private school teachers and getting them to join the union. A win for all, Comrade.

1. I didn’t say Howard started it, I said he turbocharged it.

2. Politics is the art of the possible. Every government has to triage what’s in front of them.

It’s a reality that the dominant player in Australia’s media is actively trying to destroy Labor and on the other hand give the Coalition an easy ride. It’s perfectly possible that Rudd and Gillard weighed up the downside of picking a fight with the conservative media and decided it didn’t stack up.

This is not to excuse them, but to say they didn’t deserve to be in power is a disingenuous ignoring of the political reality.

Having said that, this recent election may be a sign that Murdoch’s power, in particular, is fizzing, and if so,

3. I hope Labor has the courage to grandfather a transition out of obscene private school overfunding as you suggest.

 

[Bloods86]

I think the bolded bit is the unspoken crux of the whole private-or-public school debate. I shouldn’t generalise, but I think only people who don’t know what it’s like to be poor have the luxury of worrying about those things.

My wife and I went to some of Adelaide’s worst public schools. As a kid/teenager you’re exposed to plenty of messaging about how if you apply yourself you can achieve anything! We get this messaging through the media we consume and through our schooling. In public schools it feels like this message never really makes it into the internal culture, and as a student it feels like the teachers are just in a perpetual state of waiting until they can finally be rid of you (and who can blame them with the calibre of some of the students).
For me and the missus, it wasn’t until our mid twenties that we realised that no, we really can achieve anything; those posh kids with the crew cuts from the other schools aren’t any cleverer than us. We aren’t eternally damned to trades and unskilled work. We spent years making up for lost time and are now in much better standing, but we’ll always be late bloomers.

So if private schools foster a culture of competitiveness that sometimes presents as arrogance, I’d much prefer self-belief in any form for my kids than the shitty self doubt that a public school can leave you with.

I disagree. Having grown up in a low, single income household in regional SA, the idea of going to a private school with high fees would have been completely foreign to my family, if one had existed in my hometown. I got to go to the local Lutheran primary school for 2 years, but it wasn't fancy and the fees were pretty reasonable from memory (they had to have been). It's not so much that richer people have the luxury of worrying about these debates, it's that they are the only ones who can afford private school (or public school if they decide on that). I know that's probably what you were also saying, so the debate shouldn't really be about which ones might have better facilities or better teachers (as a generalisation, although most of my teachers were fine), because, duh, private schools have more money to throw at these things. I get that you went to a poor performing school, but as has been mentioned, academic results overall aren't really that different between private vs public (once you factor in socio-economic status).

But if the public system has some poor performing schools, the answer is, let's better fund public schools. And maybe as part of that look at the amount of funding that private schools get. Try and balance up the ability to attract better staff, improve facilities.

Also, it's not competitiveness presenting as arrogance. It's can be just arrogance, although family upbringing and socio-economic status may play a role. As I've mentioned, I've had someone who went to one of Adelaide's top private schools tell me that it breeds a sense of entitlement. And they didn't necessarily see that as a bad thing, so they were just being honest.

 

[Chief]

I think only people who don’t know what it’s like to be poor have the luxury of worrying about those things.

Come on. If anything, my private schooling in high school is one of the sources for my dislike of private schools.

I'm sure some people think a private school is a private school. Within the private school system, there is a pretty decent knowledge of the hierarchy of private schools.

The schools that workers can afford? They look down on public schools. In turn, they're looked down on by the more expensive schools that the middle class can afford. Those schools are all looked down on by the MOST expensive school/s that the capital owners and their most favoured pets can afford.

You think the public school is to blame for the fact that you didn't understand that the hierarchy is bullshit?

It's the private school system that perpetuates this.

It's dumb. It's not needed. It's a waste of resources. Spread those resources out amongst schools and the poorer area schools will get more resources for their difficult students and improve. They will get better leaders wanting to go there.

The best indicator of a kid's achievement in school is where they live.

Improve the poverty situation and you'll improve those kids achievements.

 

[O Grobbecker]

Most years, up to 60 % of the VCE year from APS Schools score in the top 20 % in the State, the top 30 % get 95 plus. Many parents who can afford it consider it worthwhile forking out up to $30,000.00 per year in fees for that alone.

 

[Scallop Industry Thug]

Pretty big discrepancy in skills required to get a good ATAR compared to being a productive employee at modern business.

 

[JyeDye]

If you're really worried about your kids academic results surely the $10k or whatever you are spending a year on private schooling would be better spent on private tutoring.

 

[Chief]

Pretty big discrepancy in skills required to get a good ATAR compared to being a productive employee at modern business.

Which is what the business is supposed to do: train employees.

High school kids should be able to take whatever courses they like without consideration for what McDonald's wants from its burger flippers.

 

[O Grobbecker]

I don’t know, intelligence and a work ethic would be a decent start

Preceded by literacy, numeracy and analytical ability.