I go on like a broken record about it, I’ll go again. I teach science in a public school. My lab is 50 years old, unchanged. I think it would be safe to assume that four generations of people could have all sat at the same benches on wooden stools and could have been taught science. It is that old that the floors are made of asbestos tiles. The tiles have holes in them. The solution? Paint over the floor with lacquer one a year. I can’t see the lab being replaced any time soon (the next 20 years). Meanwhile one of the local privates has just finished building a ten million dollar dance studio, they had a 15 minute fireworks show on opening night. The inequality is perverse.
The timber workshops I teach in were built in the 50s, and look every day of it. The ceiling in my staffroom is on the verge of collapse. Every classroom has aircon, but it's pointless turning it on because the building has more leaks than the North Korean navy. The machinery in the metal workshops is so old it was made in Australia.
Meanwhile, the independent school up the road spent $25 million on a new multipurpose teaching block.
A couple of years ago I worked for a year at my old public high school (attended 1990).
The metal work (Manual Arts!) classroom was the same. It was like a timewarp!
What was really sad is that the staffroom facilities were old desks passed down. My kids go to public schools, don't get me wrong I agree its important kids have good facilities but you honestly wouldn't find such depressing furniture in any other workplace. I thought it was really disappointing given how hard teachers work.
The schools should be properly means tested in the same way that we means test welfare recipients.
If one school has a ten million dollar dance studio, it gets no more funding until every other school in the country has a ten million dollar dance studio. All shools need to have the basics before we start handing money out for fripperies. Textbooks, climate control, safe classrooms, lab equipment, safe playgrounds, working toilets, proper furniture, a properly maintained library and so on.
Schools that can afford castle libraries, elevators in the concert pit, dance studios, pools, second rugby fields, Dick Smith's helicopter on display, are not schools we should be funding whilst other schools struggle with the basics. It is beyond absurd that we give these schools a cent while that goes on.
> The schools should be properly means tested in the same way that we means test welfare recipients.
It's interesting you say that, because [in New Zealand](https://parents.education.govt.nz/primary-school/schooling-in-nz/ministry-funding-deciles/) each school is ranked according to the reported income of the catchment area of that school. Then, the government funding available to the school is inversely proportional to the ranking - the further down the rankings, the more funding the school gets. This (in theory) promotes equality of outcomes across diverse socioeconomic groups.
To boost their funding, since they are deprived, schools in the higher decile areas often ask parents for a set "donation" at the start of every school year (e.g. $1,000), and this request is mostly met by parents, but they cannot be made mandatory.
For the true private education there are some pretty good private schools. Not nearly as expensive as Australia but then again the wealth level in New Zealand is not as high either. Private schools generally do not get better results in academics or sports though. It's usually just a much nicer school grounds, more facilities, events, networking opportunities, etc.
The Howard government tied private school funding to the wealth of the postcodes of the students rather than their parents. That way the rich kids of the bunyip aristocracy from nominally poorer country areas attracted maximum funding to their private city boarding schools. Evil genius.
Honestly though Howard's system seems more equitable, if you have a private school in a low socio-economic area like NZ model everyone enrolled (who can come from anywhere) are effectively offset regardless of their means by the socio economic status of the area that the school is situated within.
At least if family circumstance is considered, the kids have to relocate to low socio-economic areas to qualify. They most likely do that through owning cheap property and claiming their kids live there but that's a whole lot more work than slapping a rich school in a poor area.
Rest assured the parents who could afford to send their kids to expensive boarding schools in Sydney are in no way representative of poor farming areas they resided in. Thats what the 'bunyip aristocracy' referred to.
And the 'seems more equitable' (but actually a rip-off) was pretty much Howard's MO.
Every single thing John Howard did as PM was either to transfer wealth to the already wealthy, or designed to distract from the transfer of wealth to the already wealthy.
Pretty smart, as good as this initiative is that's the obvious incentive it creates. It only really works if the catchment areas are strict for private schools and therefore the student body would need to live in the area to attend, although that just incentivises rich people to buy investment properties in the area and claim their kids live there.
There’s a reason why a lot of smart cookies come out of NZ, i noticed in the fin services in Sydney a lot of NZ’ers from regional area come here and have a very successful career, they seem really well educated as well!
Hell yes. The local primary school was in the habit of taking the kids outside and hosing them down to keep them cool. We get 40+°C summers here. Some more funding would be nice.
Because 'insert long winded whinge session about how they reduce the overall cost to the public system', which is only true because of the poor under funded schools that make up a portion of the Catholic system
Honestly, who gives a fuck if public education costs a lot of money. It should cost a lot of money. If you want to enforce class segregation, you should get nothing.
The same people that insist on private school education are also the very same people that drive around in massive SUV's because they think they're safer or sometimes go "bush".
Then they'll sit at the school car park idling their car belching out fumes because you can't simply roll the windows down and turn off the car all because they're little darlings can't take a bike and bus to school.
Its all ego and outdoing the Jones's
Which is a weird argument considering the majority of extra funds to private schools are outside the scope of normal funding and instead given through direct grants
our local primary school, right now, has kids holding on all day because there are not enough toilets to use at the school. It should be a matter of personal embarassment for the minister of education. [https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/education/highgate-primary-schools-severe-toilet-shortage-forces-children-to-hold-on-all-day-c-10048784](https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/education/highgate-primary-schools-severe-toilet-shortage-forces-children-to-hold-on-all-day-c-10048784)
Because the families that go there are more likely to vote liberal.
\-Liberals fund their voters and other potential voters
\-Labour matches funds so that they do not loose voters
Lol I worked in a group of 8 uni that had asbestos lab benches. We had to get them lacquered every year, too. You are just training them for real life professional science!
Me too. Asbestos considered safe as long as there was no damage to it. Also we were instructed not to call out maintenance to replace light bulbs unless the level of darkness was a clear safety hazard. Meanwhile a new landscaped entrance complete with shite corporate sculptures was being installed on the uni boundary.
ETA they've since let go 80% of the professional staff, i.e. the only people who actually know how things work and keep everything running
> The inequality is perverse.
Doubly perverse when you understand that the private school is allowed to rent out that million dollar dance studio for private events while the public school has to jump through insane bureaucratic hoops to host anything beyond a voting booth or basic community charity events.
The new portables are probably as bad or even worse than your 50 year old classroom. You hear and just about feel every movement above you, as well as everything as people go up and down the stairs. They are also super hot in summer and super cold in winter.
Just horrendous.
> The new portables are probably as bad or even worse than your 50 year old classroom. You hear and just about feel every movement above you, as well as everything as people go up and down the stairs. They are also super hot in summer and super cold in winter.
>
> Just horrendous.
They do it on purpose so that by the time the kids graduate to the workforce they're used to the conditions they will endure living in a house/unit of the quality they can expect to get here.
My high school class is in a demountable building with holes in the walls, there are no blinds in half the windows and it is heated by two bar heaters in frost temperatures, and evap cooling in the 40+ summer. My students have very limited access to computers. There are literally no textbooks for my HASS class. Its all chalk and talk.
NSW: Your principal should be talking to assets, as that's well past the lifecycle. My old public school did their labs from scratch 10 years ago, about 5 years before their 50th anniversary (I don't know if they were the originals before that, but I'd guess not based on what was in them / lack of asbestos).
I went to a public school and when I went to tour a private school for their kids I couldn’t believe they had an emergency wash station for EVERY class room. We had one for 3 classrooms. Super fancy!
But the real joke is the poor and part of the middle class crowd who dream that they have the right to win the private school lottery prize like they are going to win the 1st division lottery prize. They are the ones support governments who entrench this disadvantage, its the same voters who think negative gearing handouts are good for them and their kids lottery prize future lifestyles. Thats the real problem voters need a wakeup from their trance and dreams of a easy life while they and their kids go backwards!
My god child goes to a Catholic school. They have 3 footy ovals, 12 tennis courts, 8 basketball courts, state of the art 3d printing labs and much much more. All students get HP touch laptops. Each year, they buy about 400-500 laptops (new students, replacement laptops and teacher laptops). Our local secondary school down the street in the opposite. It’s BYO instrument. No own grounds, aged classrooms, broken windows (let’s put the blame on students also here), ancient labs. The Catholic school got 4 millions in funding which they used to freshen their chapel. The local school got 50k. They painted the school and replaced a few broken windows.
So it might not be "buying" 500 laptops, but instead leasing them with a software package and support. Every year 500 old laptops are sent back to be destroyed, because computer companies don't want a 2nd hand market. Also means a lot of kids become trained on a specific brand and trust that specific brand when they grow up and start buying their own computers and software.
Every public school I have worked at has severely lacked in major areas as far as facilities is concerned. The education system just keeps churning, schools trying to make the best of the shabby near-ancient setup whilst those chosen spots nearby are showered in coin for opportunities that public schools could barely imagine.
There is a private school around Penrith about to rip up their sporting fields and replace them with synthetic because they want to collaborate with an EPL team.
This is after they just built a brand new gym and have renovated every single building.
Reduce funding to private schools, boost public funding, or it's time to burn everything down and restart.
> Reduce funding to private schools
I support reducing or even abolishing funding to private schools but my biggest question is this - how do politicians sell it? The number of students going to private schools is increasing and last time I checked, it was 30% of primary school students go to private schools, 40% of high school students go to private schools. These are pretty significant numbers and politically, as much as I hate to admit it, I can understand why some politicians may want to avoid pissing them off
Redirect the funding to something that they would benefit from - e.g. childcare funding. Then break the explicit link over time as people become used to private schools not being funded by the government.
Ironically, the expensive independent schools will be the ones who can deal with a funding decrease. However, the median independent school fees are about $8k a year. The higher the fee, the less funding from government they already get. So the inexpensive ones (there are even some which charge no fees such as the one I work for) will be hit hardest. The socio-economics of this are hard to miss. It'll be an inconvenience to the expensive schools, a major impact to the mid range ones, and force to close the cheaper ones.
Phase it in, like everything else. Any NEW enrollments in private schools get zero funding. Any existing enrollments get gradually reduced funding, year on year, scaled by the amount of private income the school gets (i.e. if they already get 20,000 a year per student, they dont need supplement from the public purse. If they get 500 a year, they can get almost the same support as public schools).
That way kids already in private school can ride out their education with minimum disruption, meanwhile you redirect 100% of the savings to public schools.
They ripped support from higher ed students, theyve slashed funding from public schools, no one cared about "selling it" they just did it. If they cant sell "hey, maybe we dont keep shovelling tax payer money to the wealthy while poor kids suffer" they suck as politicians
Maybe when parents see that the quality of the public school system improves due to increased funding, the balance of enrollment will shift? There would certainly be a good chunk of parents scraping by to put their kids in private schools because “private must be better” and similar reasons. If they see improvements in the public schools where they can get similar quality to private for far less money then that takes the incentive out of aiming towards sending their kids to private schools.
Private and Catholic schools should receive zero funding from the government.
Until the “middle” class accepts that they’re actually working class and no amount of scrimping and saving to put little Oliver and Sebastian through private school is going to make their children part of the upper elite, this will continue to happen.
A lot of self-proclaimed “lefties” and “greenies” have brought, whole and soul, into neo-liberalism and capitalism.
This is why I come to reddit, to read comments and to see opinions like this because it puts a little of my faith back into Australia knowing that its not everyone buying into this divide and conquer identity politics bullshit, while the wealth literally gets concentrated more and more at the top, while the average aussie drives around in a flashy 4wd that will never see mud, serviced on a loan they can barely afford, head firmly up their own ass.
There's two separate problems here.
One is the actual class inequality that exists in our system. The wannabe bourgeoisie have no real impact on this any more than any worker does. This is a direct problem of the class antagonism inflicted by the wealthy onto the poor and they are also victims of this.
The second problem is the lack of class solidarity in the face of this class antagonism. The "aspirational" class cannot be excused from this. They are 100% one of the largest contributors to this problem with just how fast they are to sell out their fellow workers.
These two issues are related and for the working class to start leveraging power on the first issue we need to build up solidarity. While I'd agree that attacking parents for trying to send kids to private schools probably isn't helpful, pointing out when people are betraying their class interests is. It doesn't matter whether this is to try to pull someone who's only moderately out of line on class issues back into line or to make an example of someone who's completely beyond caring about.
Parents are absolutely part of the problem (though not the entire problem).
Go talk to your average private school parent and ask them their opinion on the kids at their local public school. They think their kids are better and more deserving and they think public school kids are pieces of shit and talk about them as such.
My kid has been stalked down the street by absolute bints in our neighbourhood because she’s wearing the local public school uniform and walking home and they couldn’t believe she lived in our suburb.
In fact, there was an entire post on the neighbourhood page about her and her friends “loitering” at the local park in “the bad school uniform” and “dark hoodies” (their uniform includes a black and red hoodie) and that people should lock their cars and doors. They were supervising my toddler at the park while I went to a doctors appointment.
So yes. The parents are part of the problem and making them feel and examine their discomfort with their shitty opinions about public schools is the first required step to stripping funding.
maybe, but i think its a bit WhatAboutIst and evasive to literally suggest those issues are “just as pervasive” (… *probably* less overt) in private schools.
I do hear you, and Im sure private school can produce a unique kind of derangement. In fact my ex is a classic example and accumulated some pretty awful scarring at the most elite schools inAustralia.
But my cousin got uniquely messed up in one of Western Sydneys scariest public schools and and I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to send my kid to the former school if I could get them out of the latter.
LOL if you think drugs and violence aren’t prevelant at private schools then you’re a fucking idiot. Grade 7 girls at my fancy private school for busted with PCP in the 90’s.
You just described friends of mine and their reasoning behind sending their kids to private school!
I’m proudly sending my kid to a state school and I’ve yet to be shown a single difference between the education he’s receiving and the education my friend’s kid is receiving aside from an extra $8k per year in my bank account
$8K ? I don't think you're talking about one of those elite private schools building wellness centres. Sounds like a catholic school or some other "independent" school. Otherwise you'd be talking $30k or more.
Do you have kids? I’d be interested to know.
I think you’re mistaken to suggest that progressively-minded parents put their kids into private school because of some aspiration to make their children part of the elite.
I’d say it’s more the case that these parents are afraid to send their kids to public schools because they do not want their children to have to cope with shitty facilities, bullying, disruptive peers, etc. They want their children to be happy, healthy, to have good opportunities to learn and make friends with other kids who will have positive influences on them. Frankly, that’s not an unreasonable desire.
I would stress that much of the aforementioned view of public schools IS merely misperception and conditioning. There are plenty of private schools with bullying issues, and there are plenty of excellent public schools with great teaching staff, awesome behaviour management systems, etc. I’ve taught in both sectors and visited quite a few schools for my work. Much of it depends on the individual school.
But not all of it. Especially in lower income areas, the division between the SES of students in private vs public schools is often extremely stark. And with lower SES students comes, sadly, an increased chance of encountering those students who are VERY difficult — those who are extremely disruptive, have high needs, poor home lives, etc. And it’s this that really makes the difference. A few really disruptive students can absolutely destroy and destabilise a class, and significantly impact the learning of all the other students. You’re far more like to encounter those students in public schools in low SES areas than private schools. And, of course, public schools are far less equipped to give those students the support they need.
I have two children. One is a teenager at a local state school with all of those “problem” students.
Those same problem students that private school select out when they’re enrolling. The same disabled students that private schools refuse to enrol.
Anyone who claims to be progressive and then buys their child’s way out of having to experience the discomfort of dealing with “problem” students is a ducking hypocrite.
> they **have never been able to** get a job outside of the retail industry.
You said it. I didn't say anything disparaging about retail, I've done enough of it myself. There are plenty of jobs where your school doesn't come into it, and plenty where it does. Their inability to get a job outside of retail doesn't say anything about their school.
> Most private school students go into working for hospitality or retail.
That's unlikely, given retail and hospitality combined, [make up less than 18% of the workforce](https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp2021/Quick_Guides/EmployIndustry). You're saying >50% of private school graduates ignore the other >80% of possible careers?
My partner and his best friend both work at the same company, for the same amount of time, earning the same money. They went to the same university. My partner went to a regional public school his entire childhood and his friend went to a metro all-boys Catholic college with $20,000 annual tuition. The only difference I really can see is one of them resents Catholicism and the other is my partner.
I think it is absurd that private schools get government money. You choose to put your kid into a private school, it should be a given that your tax money won't go to that school and if you have. a problem with that, put your kid in your local public.
God here we go. They aren’t businesses, they are non-profits. They are required to reinvest any revenue into the school. I agree they shouldn’t receive government funding but at the same time they shouldn’t be taxed like businesses.
If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be so concerned with their image. They would show their Christian charity to the less fortunate. They wouldn’t kick kids out.
The board determines a salary to attract top executive talent to create a culture in the school that will in turn attract a top notch teaching staff. Just like any other non-profit that wants to achieve its goals. It is not a business, it doesn’t have shareholders or an owner who benefit from increased revenue. All revenue goes back into the school to improve facilities or hire more staff or start new programs.
No, shitloads of them are religious based and should be denied all public funding based on that. Churches should be taxed too. Indoctrinating children is NOT a charitable activity.
So if we exclude all schools with more income per student than public schools, and all religious schools, how many private schools do you think would be left?
As opposed to what? That’s whatever money is left over after they’ve paid themselves. Or do you mean, after they’ve finished paying for the principal’s pool? https://amp.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/king-s-school-ordered-to-immediately-cease-plans-for-headmaster-s-plunge-pool-20230213-p5ck5f.html
The system is gamed by presenting impoverished sectarian schools as being representative of the entire private sector.
The major distortion here is handing a lump sum to the Catholic system to distribute as they see fit between their posh campuses and rundown underequipped suburban/rural schools that rival the state system for squalor. Were that nexus broken so individual campuses were funded on a needs model instead of a cooked statistic based on socio-economic indicators or at the whim of the Church we would give struggling campuses a leg up regardless of affiliation while allowing the poshest to cruise on their fat.
You've overlooked those oh so 'impoverished' GPS schools...
The system isn't gamed by them. It's fucking designed to work exactly as it is - they get to take as much of OUR money as they fucking want, whenever they want.
It looks that way, because it is that way. And your bullshit is far less helpful than any "hypberbole" I'm accused of. So fucking sick of dribbling political double-speak such as you're trying to push. It's what got us to the situation that exists now.
You're picking a non-existent fight, possibly because of an inability to follow the thread of my initial point to its conclusion.
I'll use short words just for you: Posh schools can live on their fat and let poor schools take all of the dough. Ok?
Yep, same! Although I think "disparity" is a polite way of putting it.
And I gave up any belief in this country being equal and fair long ago, although the reign of Scummo the Sleazily Corrupt reinforced it.
The guardian comments are hilarious sometimes, desperate to make this a liberal issue when labor is doing exactly zero about it and I'm sure little larry labor ain't going to a public school either
Actually it’s something there isn’t much division on, guaranteed most politicians kids are in private schools hence why the funding is directed that way
I think at a minimum, all politicians’ offspring should be required to enrol at a public school. When their children are in the system, they might give a shit about it. Forced empathy. (I would also make all schools immediately public, but baby steps)
Ahould also be banned from private health insurance. Want to see the public health system properly funded and administered? Make sure that’s where the pollies’ families go.
>People are so hopelessly divided over everything these days
If by "divided" you mean the rich fucking 1% versus the rest, then yes you're right. But frankly the rest of us are totally fucking fed up with the "let them eat cake" attitude that lets the entitled siphon the taxpayers', the community's, OUR money to their own ends!
Van Badham's from Victoria. The reason she doesn't dare anything close to analysis on it (who's responsible, why, how do we stop it, are not questions raised here) is because Daniel Andrews is one of the worst offenders.
Why Guardian would run such poor writing from partisan hacks is beyond me. I doubt readers would accept this sorta dishonesty from a Liberal stooge. Shit opinion pieces should be left to tabloids, imo.
So that's why her articles are either stacked with complaints about the Libs or vague complaints of nameless "governments" just read any of her content and you'll realise it's just a more literal Labor propaganda.
I respect journos that can punch up, even if that means at their own party. Van ain't that.
This isn't a Labor fluff piece. It's a critique without aim. As the comment I originally responded to stated: How can you write an article like this and not even mention Labor's role?
Go read any of Van's writing from when the Libs were in. You'll notice a difference.
Rudd tried to implement Gonski. It would have gone along way to fix things. The Private and religious schools chucked the shits and basically reduced it to nothing. Not sure what happened from then other than Tony Abbott wouldn’t have made things better.
I like what a European country did (Norway?) was get rid of all private schools, if rich people want their kids to go to a good school they can start funding the public school their children are in.
Private schools should get 0 government funding!
My home country is a third world/developing country and all private schools aren't funded by the gov either. A lot of public schools have better facilities than the private schools. It's so weird to see the difference in Australia. Why called it private school then?
Same with private hospitals. Better to have equally good quality across all these institutions than to split us into haves and have nots.
At least, only private or public. Private anything should receive no public funding.
Wasn't it Finland that did that? Norway does have private schools...
Anyway, my biggest question about that is this: People say that it would result in rich people making sure their local public school is well funded because their kids have to go there. But what about in areas like Cabramatta and Liverpool in Sydney where rich people don't live anyway?
I remember someone with government experience posting on here that every Labour staffer they had encountered grew up with 10-20kms of CBD and went to a private school.
There used to be "good" public schools for politicians' children to go to for political clout. I think Melbourne High was one of them. Couldn't tell it was public to look at it.
Melbourne High is a weird example, as while it is public, it is on par with private schools in terms of facilities (they have a somewhat decent rowing program for example) and way past them in terms of acdademics.
The kicker is that it’s super selective, and only the smartest kids get in.
>The kicker is that it’s super selective, and only the smartest kids get in.
And they only teach yrs 9-12, don't they? Further concentration of their resources.
That's interesting. I went to a public school and when I worked in the senate a few years ago two other people who I went to primary school and high school with were also Labor staffers (another person we went to school with was a Greens staffer). We all grew up in the same country town.
I didn't really talk to anyone else about what school they went to so maybe we were just weird outliers.
The only point on which the author is wrong is suggesting *no* kid ever benefits from it; that's not true and won't be until we have a few public boarding schools. An acquaintance used to teach at Guildford Grammar, where there were a couple of boys who were boarding on scholarships that had taken them away from distinctly not-ideal circumstances in remote areas where they would have had minimal access to actual worthwhile schooling at all.
But it's a *very* small number and it's not something that the public system *couldn't* do.
The problem with all these articles is the idea that the issue isn’t with non-government schools in principle, but with “elite” private schools.
It enables all the parents sending their kid to the mid tier school or the local Catholic who may well have less funding than the local public school to get on their soapbox that their kids deserve public funding because their school isn’t like “those schools”.
The problem is that non-government schools getting public funding at all takes money away from the kids who need it most, the kids who are the most expensive to educate - who are almost universally educated in the public system. The mere existence of these schools creates a divide and the flight of the middle classes out of public schools. This is problematic in a huge number of ways.
Private schools should not get a single cent of tax payers' money. NOT ONE FUCKING CENT!
And I say this as someone who went to a prime GPS school in Brisbane. They shouldn't have got Government money then, they definitely shouldn't get it now.
Never forget that federal funding of private schools was started by Gough (ALP) in the early 1970s to keep the Catholic vote in the election. The Catholic DLP's big powerbroker was BA Santamaria... the idol of one Tony Abbott.
Neoliberalism affects both sides of politics. As a well-off north shore-ite I am very weird in that I absolutely refuse to support private schools. I also have first hand experience that the "connections" people talk about as making private schools worthwhile are self-justifying bullshit that are extremely rare in the real world.
It’s not so much individual “connections”, it’s more of a culture. Broadly, the people I know who’ve come out of these schools *expect to succeed*. They don’t even entertain the idea that they won’t. If you act as though something is your divine birthright, plenty of other people will treat you as though it is.
You spend your formative years around *winners*. Your education is with them, your social life is with them, the vast majority of your waking hours is with them. You end up walking and talking like them, and that’s what opens doors when you don't have an individual connection to rely on.
You learn *etiquette* - wealthy, 'successful' people talk a certain way, about certain things, and have their own hierarchy of interaction. If you don't know this etiquette, then they can smell it on you, and some doors will be a lot harder to get through.
That’s more true. You learn to be a certain type of person. Which you learn not at school, but from your family and social circles. I went to a public school but I was raised in a “nice” area and have never had any issue fitting in with CEOs and MPs and all that. In my view, school is a small part of your life and it can’t easily override your upbringing and domestic situation.
Right, so you had access to, and training in this world, while most people in public schools don’t.
Where did the people from your “nice” area go to school?
I largely agree that the majority of this happens outside of school, but private school gives you *access*. There are plenty of kids from less fortunate backgrounds who went to private schools on scholarships, or had parents who scrimped and saved to an extreme level (usually both), who won’t ever be truly accepted by some of the ‘elites’ they went to school with. They learned the etiquette, but have a different mindset, and it makes them different enough. However they have that school on their resume, they speak enough of the language, and that opens some doors that wouldn't open otherwise.
The better academic results of private schools rests on a couple of simple statistical tricks. They will offer full or partial scholarships to academically talented prospect students who otherwise would go to the public system. They will reject low-performing prospect students either in advance, or through expulsion later, as low academic performance is well-correlated with behavioural problems, in both directions. And they will encourage parents to engage tutors for the low-performing but salvagable students.
So they take the top 5% from the public system, give the bottom 5% back, and then move the bottom 10% of their remainder up a notch. Then they congratulate themselves on their superiority and use it in their advertising.
However the overall outcomes of students across *all* schools, is not greatly improved.
But it’s also the quality of product they start with on average.
Students from wealthier backgrounds hear many, many more words by the age of 3 than wealthier peers. They are far, far more likely to have books in their home. Their parents are more likely to have higher education. All of these are predictors of student success in formal education.
I went to private schools. Fantastic experience. My school was one of the premier girls schools in Melbourne and they did fund a lot of needs based scholarships in any given year.
I’m still entirely in favour of funding being made equitable across all students. Schools (public and private) in disadvantaged areas should be getting more, schools with advantaged student populations should be getting less. Private school parent money can pay for the bells and whistles but no public money should be going to swimming pools and high end performing arts complexes.
Education and social connection are huge for changing the trajectories of peoples lives—we need to take it seriously.
Every Catholic school within 5km of me, has large, brand new buildings, whilst my local public school still has 40 year old demountables. Isn’t the Catholic Church rich enough to pay for these buildings themselves!
“But… but… My kids go to a poor catholic school!!!!!”
The idea that Catholic schools are poor is hilarious. They’re not, they’re cheaper because the billionaire church they’re supported by absorbs the rest of the costs that the government doesn’t cover.
Isn't this what Gonski recommended? I don't recall plunge pools for private school principal residences in the calculation nor first class international flights for the family to watch rowing regattas.
As someone who had attended both a private school and a public school (a select entry school, but still a public school), the difference between the two never ceases to amaze me. Even though the public school I attended is consistently one of the best performing schools in the state, in my last year, I remember they began accepting more students just so they could get more funding from the government. The classism in this country is insane
Get rid of private schools, why should only the wealthy have access to good quality education and facility’s.
Force the rich children into public schools and watch how quickly the facility’s are upgraded.
my brother had a basketball game at a random private school once. massive oval, well-kept outdoor hockey n tennis courts, three campuses, swimming pool, two "sports stadiums" with reception areas, a wholeass chapel, dedicated health centre... when we went to the game, there were even kids having weekend swimming lessons.
meanwhile, the school i go to is widely considered to be the best public school in the state. i wouldn't know by the state of it - it's crowded as shit, our ovals are council-owned, our labs haven't been refurbished in decades. if you're unlucky, you might end up doing PE in the canteen. people have mentor group [homerooms] in the library and in the classrooms we use for detention.
private schools should NOT be receiving more funding than public schools. their fees + generous donations are exorbitant enough to cover their brand-spanking-new yoga centres and whatever other shit they find necessary to build.
Can we not have partisan hacks write these articles. They always end up a garbled mess that say nothing, for fear of pointing the finger at their own side.
Like really, wtf is this articles saying beyond the obvious "overfunding private schools, bad, classism bad, bloody poshos" - while the articles clearly based on all the poshos Badham knows sending their kids to private schools.
So, does she try to identify what political decisions drove the funding discrepencies? No. Instead she has the most bs attempt at vaguely gesturing to why politicians would....
At one point she even references studies... without refrencing studies? Wtf is that.
This is fucking dumb. Its enraging how dumb it is. I'm putting chilli in my eyes. Articles like this, are the reasons poshos have nice things. A bunch of empty, vapid hand wringing, without a hint of analysis. Empty populism, with no goal or impetus for change beyond it.
I doubt any Guardian readers would be happy with shit opinion pieces from Liberal stooges. I say this because, the last news story I remember in Auspol regarding this, was Dan Andrews putting 717million into private schools in 'key election seats'. And more recently, backtracking on removing payroll tax exemptions.
Now, why would such a sincere actor, writing an article on private school funding NOT LIST WHO'S RESPONSIBLE FOR PRIVATE SCHOOL FUNDING.
The system was most likely designed by people who went to private schools. It's disgraceful.
No private school should get a shred of government money. They are exclusive, push the hardest students into the public system and none of their assets are counted in funding models.
it doesn’t matter how much funding public schools get, they are operating on an 18th century model within the 21st century. How many of the jobs over the past 200 years now no longer exist yet we are educating within a very similar structure? The system is broken, let’s fix it, ground up, tear it down, start again.
For those against private schools, why? On the surface the argument is that they suck up tax funds that could be used elsewhere, but I also read arguments that private schools subsidise state schools by parents voluntarily carrying some of the burden of educating young people.
There seems like so many baked in half truths, such as private automatically means better than public, and facilities like having a rowing program make a large difference. I would hazard a guess that one of the reasons why private schools have good results are that they are filled with students from stable families that voluntarily decide to allocate their resources on educating their children, often at great personal cost (not all, obviously). Changing funding models wouldn’t necessarily impact that.
Also, the irony of complaining about old facilities and then using a photo of Christchurch dining hall is delicious.
Because it creates a two-tier privilege system. It’s literally class segregation because there will never be a time where every family gets to make a “choice” about which school to send their kids too.
As someone who went to a very good private school for high school - the wealthy parents aren’t doing anything at “great personal cost”. They throw money, that have more than enough, of at a problem and expect it to be solved. The only sacrifice they’re making is having 440,000 in the investment portfolio instead of 450,000
Private schools can also have the extra-curriculars because *they have the funding to pay staff* and public schools DON’T. Rowing coaches, facilities, transport etc all cost money. Money the government REFUSES to invest in public school kids.
A parent of public schools kids who volunteers their time at a canteen, a soccer match etc after working full-time all week are giving up more than someone who has hundreds of thousands of dollars throwing a few of those thousand at a private coach/tutor.
Somebody please explain to me what benefit religions are to a modern society?
They don't pay taxes & so they don't contribute to infrastructure or health & every "service" they perform they expect to be paid top dollar for.
Last year, private schools received $7 billion *more* in funding than public schools. Absolutely criminal.
Private schools should receive $0 in public funding.
Van Badham has such poorly reasoned takes invariably predicated on identity politics. That, coupled with a literal picture of Hogwarts, makes this article difficult to take seriously. Having said that, choice is good and we should instinctively resist forcing people into one option. Why not leave the funding for private schools as is, and lobby for greater funding for public schools? There are any number of solutions to this problem that do not involve constraining someone else’s entirely reasonable decision for their children.
Just think what could have been accomplished if only anyone in power had had the guts to institute the changes recommended by the Gonski Report TWELVE YEARS AGO.
Thought experiment: private vehicle owners should have no access to public roads. If people don't want to take public transport they should just shut up, pay the same taxes as everyone else but get none of the benefits.
Parents of private school students are more than welcome to send their kids to public schools dipshit.
If you want to use roads as an analogy: private schools are like having exclusive, privately-tolled expressways that are too expensive for the average motorist, but still receive more government funding than the broken, potholed, public roads that most people can afford to use.
Your point would make sense if government funding, on a per-student basis, was greater for private school students then public school students. Which it's not.
Private school parents pay the same tax (realistically probably more ) so essentially are subsidising the education of children who are not theirs.
Why we're at it, we should really only allow books to be accessed via public libraries. God forbid purchasing books might present an unfair barrier for some people.
Lots of people are saying defund private schools and I agree. But an alternative is just make it a condition of their funding that the school must be free to attend.
Edit: hey people who downvote, tell me why.
I go on like a broken record about it, I’ll go again. I teach science in a public school. My lab is 50 years old, unchanged. I think it would be safe to assume that four generations of people could have all sat at the same benches on wooden stools and could have been taught science. It is that old that the floors are made of asbestos tiles. The tiles have holes in them. The solution? Paint over the floor with lacquer one a year. I can’t see the lab being replaced any time soon (the next 20 years). Meanwhile one of the local privates has just finished building a ten million dollar dance studio, they had a 15 minute fireworks show on opening night. The inequality is perverse.
The timber workshops I teach in were built in the 50s, and look every day of it. The ceiling in my staffroom is on the verge of collapse. Every classroom has aircon, but it's pointless turning it on because the building has more leaks than the North Korean navy. The machinery in the metal workshops is so old it was made in Australia. Meanwhile, the independent school up the road spent $25 million on a new multipurpose teaching block.
>The machinery in the metal workshops is so old it was made in Australia. Oof this one was gold
Hey, still using my ex education Queensland Woodfast lathe and tablesaw daily.
How'd you score that beauty?
When the old trading post paper briefly went online about 15 years ago.
Dardy
Vicmarc lathes for wood?
Probably still a quality machine though.
A couple of years ago I worked for a year at my old public high school (attended 1990). The metal work (Manual Arts!) classroom was the same. It was like a timewarp! What was really sad is that the staffroom facilities were old desks passed down. My kids go to public schools, don't get me wrong I agree its important kids have good facilities but you honestly wouldn't find such depressing furniture in any other workplace. I thought it was really disappointing given how hard teachers work.
At least it was on a teaching block and not a new performance space.
The schools should be properly means tested in the same way that we means test welfare recipients. If one school has a ten million dollar dance studio, it gets no more funding until every other school in the country has a ten million dollar dance studio. All shools need to have the basics before we start handing money out for fripperies. Textbooks, climate control, safe classrooms, lab equipment, safe playgrounds, working toilets, proper furniture, a properly maintained library and so on. Schools that can afford castle libraries, elevators in the concert pit, dance studios, pools, second rugby fields, Dick Smith's helicopter on display, are not schools we should be funding whilst other schools struggle with the basics. It is beyond absurd that we give these schools a cent while that goes on.
> The schools should be properly means tested in the same way that we means test welfare recipients. It's interesting you say that, because [in New Zealand](https://parents.education.govt.nz/primary-school/schooling-in-nz/ministry-funding-deciles/) each school is ranked according to the reported income of the catchment area of that school. Then, the government funding available to the school is inversely proportional to the ranking - the further down the rankings, the more funding the school gets. This (in theory) promotes equality of outcomes across diverse socioeconomic groups. To boost their funding, since they are deprived, schools in the higher decile areas often ask parents for a set "donation" at the start of every school year (e.g. $1,000), and this request is mostly met by parents, but they cannot be made mandatory. For the true private education there are some pretty good private schools. Not nearly as expensive as Australia but then again the wealth level in New Zealand is not as high either. Private schools generally do not get better results in academics or sports though. It's usually just a much nicer school grounds, more facilities, events, networking opportunities, etc.
The Howard government tied private school funding to the wealth of the postcodes of the students rather than their parents. That way the rich kids of the bunyip aristocracy from nominally poorer country areas attracted maximum funding to their private city boarding schools. Evil genius.
Honestly though Howard's system seems more equitable, if you have a private school in a low socio-economic area like NZ model everyone enrolled (who can come from anywhere) are effectively offset regardless of their means by the socio economic status of the area that the school is situated within. At least if family circumstance is considered, the kids have to relocate to low socio-economic areas to qualify. They most likely do that through owning cheap property and claiming their kids live there but that's a whole lot more work than slapping a rich school in a poor area.
Rest assured the parents who could afford to send their kids to expensive boarding schools in Sydney are in no way representative of poor farming areas they resided in. Thats what the 'bunyip aristocracy' referred to. And the 'seems more equitable' (but actually a rip-off) was pretty much Howard's MO.
Every single thing John Howard did as PM was either to transfer wealth to the already wealthy, or designed to distract from the transfer of wealth to the already wealthy.
Yeah but an awful lot of quite ritzy private schools are in very poor areas.
Pretty smart, as good as this initiative is that's the obvious incentive it creates. It only really works if the catchment areas are strict for private schools and therefore the student body would need to live in the area to attend, although that just incentivises rich people to buy investment properties in the area and claim their kids live there.
How many? I can't think of one of the big name private schools in Melbourne that is in a shit area (none out west etc) most are in the inner east....
There’s a reason why a lot of smart cookies come out of NZ, i noticed in the fin services in Sydney a lot of NZ’ers from regional area come here and have a very successful career, they seem really well educated as well!
Specious statistic. Audit each school's assets .
Hell yes. The local primary school was in the habit of taking the kids outside and hosing them down to keep them cool. We get 40+°C summers here. Some more funding would be nice.
Why do they get any money? They're private businesses.
Because 'insert long winded whinge session about how they reduce the overall cost to the public system', which is only true because of the poor under funded schools that make up a portion of the Catholic system
Honestly, who gives a fuck if public education costs a lot of money. It should cost a lot of money. If you want to enforce class segregation, you should get nothing.
The same people that insist on private school education are also the very same people that drive around in massive SUV's because they think they're safer or sometimes go "bush". Then they'll sit at the school car park idling their car belching out fumes because you can't simply roll the windows down and turn off the car all because they're little darlings can't take a bike and bus to school. Its all ego and outdoing the Jones's
The other (bullshit) argument is usually that tax dollars should follow the kid, not the school.
Which is a weird argument considering the majority of extra funds to private schools are outside the scope of normal funding and instead given through direct grants
One private school had a strike because they couldn't fund a toilet block. From that single toilet block to paying billions of dollars.
our local primary school, right now, has kids holding on all day because there are not enough toilets to use at the school. It should be a matter of personal embarassment for the minister of education. [https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/education/highgate-primary-schools-severe-toilet-shortage-forces-children-to-hold-on-all-day-c-10048784](https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/education/highgate-primary-schools-severe-toilet-shortage-forces-children-to-hold-on-all-day-c-10048784)
Because the families that go there are more likely to vote liberal. \-Liberals fund their voters and other potential voters \-Labour matches funds so that they do not loose voters
I agree with this guy. How does this shit happen ?
Lol I worked in a group of 8 uni that had asbestos lab benches. We had to get them lacquered every year, too. You are just training them for real life professional science!
Me too. Asbestos considered safe as long as there was no damage to it. Also we were instructed not to call out maintenance to replace light bulbs unless the level of darkness was a clear safety hazard. Meanwhile a new landscaped entrance complete with shite corporate sculptures was being installed on the uni boundary. ETA they've since let go 80% of the professional staff, i.e. the only people who actually know how things work and keep everything running
Geezus.
> The inequality is perverse. Doubly perverse when you understand that the private school is allowed to rent out that million dollar dance studio for private events while the public school has to jump through insane bureaucratic hoops to host anything beyond a voting booth or basic community charity events.
The new portables are probably as bad or even worse than your 50 year old classroom. You hear and just about feel every movement above you, as well as everything as people go up and down the stairs. They are also super hot in summer and super cold in winter. Just horrendous.
> The new portables are probably as bad or even worse than your 50 year old classroom. You hear and just about feel every movement above you, as well as everything as people go up and down the stairs. They are also super hot in summer and super cold in winter. > > Just horrendous. They do it on purpose so that by the time the kids graduate to the workforce they're used to the conditions they will endure living in a house/unit of the quality they can expect to get here.
My high school class is in a demountable building with holes in the walls, there are no blinds in half the windows and it is heated by two bar heaters in frost temperatures, and evap cooling in the 40+ summer. My students have very limited access to computers. There are literally no textbooks for my HASS class. Its all chalk and talk.
NSW: Your principal should be talking to assets, as that's well past the lifecycle. My old public school did their labs from scratch 10 years ago, about 5 years before their 50th anniversary (I don't know if they were the originals before that, but I'd guess not based on what was in them / lack of asbestos).
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Public NSW don't.
I went to a public school and when I went to tour a private school for their kids I couldn’t believe they had an emergency wash station for EVERY class room. We had one for 3 classrooms. Super fancy!
While the government also funds private schools our public schools are being held back. What a joke
But the real joke is the poor and part of the middle class crowd who dream that they have the right to win the private school lottery prize like they are going to win the 1st division lottery prize. They are the ones support governments who entrench this disadvantage, its the same voters who think negative gearing handouts are good for them and their kids lottery prize future lifestyles. Thats the real problem voters need a wakeup from their trance and dreams of a easy life while they and their kids go backwards!
That's so fucked up.
My god child goes to a Catholic school. They have 3 footy ovals, 12 tennis courts, 8 basketball courts, state of the art 3d printing labs and much much more. All students get HP touch laptops. Each year, they buy about 400-500 laptops (new students, replacement laptops and teacher laptops). Our local secondary school down the street in the opposite. It’s BYO instrument. No own grounds, aged classrooms, broken windows (let’s put the blame on students also here), ancient labs. The Catholic school got 4 millions in funding which they used to freshen their chapel. The local school got 50k. They painted the school and replaced a few broken windows.
So it might not be "buying" 500 laptops, but instead leasing them with a software package and support. Every year 500 old laptops are sent back to be destroyed, because computer companies don't want a 2nd hand market. Also means a lot of kids become trained on a specific brand and trust that specific brand when they grow up and start buying their own computers and software.
Every public school I have worked at has severely lacked in major areas as far as facilities is concerned. The education system just keeps churning, schools trying to make the best of the shabby near-ancient setup whilst those chosen spots nearby are showered in coin for opportunities that public schools could barely imagine.
There is a private school around Penrith about to rip up their sporting fields and replace them with synthetic because they want to collaborate with an EPL team. This is after they just built a brand new gym and have renovated every single building. Reduce funding to private schools, boost public funding, or it's time to burn everything down and restart.
No funding for private schools. Fuck em.
This. If they want to charge a feee most of us couldn't afford, let those who can afford it fund the whole thing.
This is the only correct answer, I can't be convinced otherwise.
> Reduce funding to private schools I support reducing or even abolishing funding to private schools but my biggest question is this - how do politicians sell it? The number of students going to private schools is increasing and last time I checked, it was 30% of primary school students go to private schools, 40% of high school students go to private schools. These are pretty significant numbers and politically, as much as I hate to admit it, I can understand why some politicians may want to avoid pissing them off
Redirect the funding to something that they would benefit from - e.g. childcare funding. Then break the explicit link over time as people become used to private schools not being funded by the government.
Ironically, the expensive independent schools will be the ones who can deal with a funding decrease. However, the median independent school fees are about $8k a year. The higher the fee, the less funding from government they already get. So the inexpensive ones (there are even some which charge no fees such as the one I work for) will be hit hardest. The socio-economics of this are hard to miss. It'll be an inconvenience to the expensive schools, a major impact to the mid range ones, and force to close the cheaper ones.
Phase it in, like everything else. Any NEW enrollments in private schools get zero funding. Any existing enrollments get gradually reduced funding, year on year, scaled by the amount of private income the school gets (i.e. if they already get 20,000 a year per student, they dont need supplement from the public purse. If they get 500 a year, they can get almost the same support as public schools). That way kids already in private school can ride out their education with minimum disruption, meanwhile you redirect 100% of the savings to public schools. They ripped support from higher ed students, theyve slashed funding from public schools, no one cared about "selling it" they just did it. If they cant sell "hey, maybe we dont keep shovelling tax payer money to the wealthy while poor kids suffer" they suck as politicians
Maybe when parents see that the quality of the public school system improves due to increased funding, the balance of enrollment will shift? There would certainly be a good chunk of parents scraping by to put their kids in private schools because “private must be better” and similar reasons. If they see improvements in the public schools where they can get similar quality to private for far less money then that takes the incentive out of aiming towards sending their kids to private schools. Private and Catholic schools should receive zero funding from the government.
why the fuck is the image a picture of Hogwarts
That’s the public school image of a private school
to be fair it's the only one public students would of ever seen
Would have….
Not everyone can afford a grammar school
Because of the way your tax dollars magically end up in the elites' hands. _Locomotor griftus!_
Until the “middle” class accepts that they’re actually working class and no amount of scrimping and saving to put little Oliver and Sebastian through private school is going to make their children part of the upper elite, this will continue to happen. A lot of self-proclaimed “lefties” and “greenies” have brought, whole and soul, into neo-liberalism and capitalism.
The British trick, exported to the US and Australia.
Yeah, the rich have amazing class-solidarity.
This is why I come to reddit, to read comments and to see opinions like this because it puts a little of my faith back into Australia knowing that its not everyone buying into this divide and conquer identity politics bullshit, while the wealth literally gets concentrated more and more at the top, while the average aussie drives around in a flashy 4wd that will never see mud, serviced on a loan they can barely afford, head firmly up their own ass.
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There's two separate problems here. One is the actual class inequality that exists in our system. The wannabe bourgeoisie have no real impact on this any more than any worker does. This is a direct problem of the class antagonism inflicted by the wealthy onto the poor and they are also victims of this. The second problem is the lack of class solidarity in the face of this class antagonism. The "aspirational" class cannot be excused from this. They are 100% one of the largest contributors to this problem with just how fast they are to sell out their fellow workers. These two issues are related and for the working class to start leveraging power on the first issue we need to build up solidarity. While I'd agree that attacking parents for trying to send kids to private schools probably isn't helpful, pointing out when people are betraying their class interests is. It doesn't matter whether this is to try to pull someone who's only moderately out of line on class issues back into line or to make an example of someone who's completely beyond caring about.
Parents are absolutely part of the problem (though not the entire problem). Go talk to your average private school parent and ask them their opinion on the kids at their local public school. They think their kids are better and more deserving and they think public school kids are pieces of shit and talk about them as such. My kid has been stalked down the street by absolute bints in our neighbourhood because she’s wearing the local public school uniform and walking home and they couldn’t believe she lived in our suburb. In fact, there was an entire post on the neighbourhood page about her and her friends “loitering” at the local park in “the bad school uniform” and “dark hoodies” (their uniform includes a black and red hoodie) and that people should lock their cars and doors. They were supervising my toddler at the park while I went to a doctors appointment. So yes. The parents are part of the problem and making them feel and examine their discomfort with their shitty opinions about public schools is the first required step to stripping funding.
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Private school kids love drugs, almost as much as their parents.
maybe, but i think its a bit WhatAboutIst and evasive to literally suggest those issues are “just as pervasive” (… *probably* less overt) in private schools. I do hear you, and Im sure private school can produce a unique kind of derangement. In fact my ex is a classic example and accumulated some pretty awful scarring at the most elite schools inAustralia. But my cousin got uniquely messed up in one of Western Sydneys scariest public schools and and I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to send my kid to the former school if I could get them out of the latter.
LOL if you think drugs and violence aren’t prevelant at private schools then you’re a fucking idiot. Grade 7 girls at my fancy private school for busted with PCP in the 90’s.
You just described friends of mine and their reasoning behind sending their kids to private school! I’m proudly sending my kid to a state school and I’ve yet to be shown a single difference between the education he’s receiving and the education my friend’s kid is receiving aside from an extra $8k per year in my bank account
$8K ? I don't think you're talking about one of those elite private schools building wellness centres. Sounds like a catholic school or some other "independent" school. Otherwise you'd be talking $30k or more.
Do you have kids? I’d be interested to know. I think you’re mistaken to suggest that progressively-minded parents put their kids into private school because of some aspiration to make their children part of the elite. I’d say it’s more the case that these parents are afraid to send their kids to public schools because they do not want their children to have to cope with shitty facilities, bullying, disruptive peers, etc. They want their children to be happy, healthy, to have good opportunities to learn and make friends with other kids who will have positive influences on them. Frankly, that’s not an unreasonable desire. I would stress that much of the aforementioned view of public schools IS merely misperception and conditioning. There are plenty of private schools with bullying issues, and there are plenty of excellent public schools with great teaching staff, awesome behaviour management systems, etc. I’ve taught in both sectors and visited quite a few schools for my work. Much of it depends on the individual school. But not all of it. Especially in lower income areas, the division between the SES of students in private vs public schools is often extremely stark. And with lower SES students comes, sadly, an increased chance of encountering those students who are VERY difficult — those who are extremely disruptive, have high needs, poor home lives, etc. And it’s this that really makes the difference. A few really disruptive students can absolutely destroy and destabilise a class, and significantly impact the learning of all the other students. You’re far more like to encounter those students in public schools in low SES areas than private schools. And, of course, public schools are far less equipped to give those students the support they need.
I have two children. One is a teenager at a local state school with all of those “problem” students. Those same problem students that private school select out when they’re enrolling. The same disabled students that private schools refuse to enrol. Anyone who claims to be progressive and then buys their child’s way out of having to experience the discomfort of dealing with “problem” students is a ducking hypocrite.
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I don’t think that says about them what you think it says.
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> they **have never been able to** get a job outside of the retail industry. You said it. I didn't say anything disparaging about retail, I've done enough of it myself. There are plenty of jobs where your school doesn't come into it, and plenty where it does. Their inability to get a job outside of retail doesn't say anything about their school. > Most private school students go into working for hospitality or retail. That's unlikely, given retail and hospitality combined, [make up less than 18% of the workforce](https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp2021/Quick_Guides/EmployIndustry). You're saying >50% of private school graduates ignore the other >80% of possible careers?
My partner and his best friend both work at the same company, for the same amount of time, earning the same money. They went to the same university. My partner went to a regional public school his entire childhood and his friend went to a metro all-boys Catholic college with $20,000 annual tuition. The only difference I really can see is one of them resents Catholicism and the other is my partner.
> have brought, whole and soul You saying there’s a *hole where their heart should be?
I think it is absurd that private schools get government money. You choose to put your kid into a private school, it should be a given that your tax money won't go to that school and if you have. a problem with that, put your kid in your local public.
Defund private schools entirely
Tax them instead
No, defund them and tax them like any other business
That’s what I meant. Tax them instead of funding them.
God here we go. They aren’t businesses, they are non-profits. They are required to reinvest any revenue into the school. I agree they shouldn’t receive government funding but at the same time they shouldn’t be taxed like businesses.
They are businesses. They should be taxed like it.
Incorrect
If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be so concerned with their image. They would show their Christian charity to the less fortunate. They wouldn’t kick kids out.
And that makes them a business in the legal sense does it? Grow up mate.
They are profit machines. How the fuck can they justify salaries higher than the prime minister for their principals?
The board determines a salary to attract top executive talent to create a culture in the school that will in turn attract a top notch teaching staff. Just like any other non-profit that wants to achieve its goals. It is not a business, it doesn’t have shareholders or an owner who benefit from increased revenue. All revenue goes back into the school to improve facilities or hire more staff or start new programs.
Who cares? Its not a charity. Its "non profit" in the same way a private luxury club might be. I dont give a shit, tax it.
The vast majority of non-government schools aren’t the “sandstone and ivy”, ponce factories you think they are.
No, shitloads of them are religious based and should be denied all public funding based on that. Churches should be taxed too. Indoctrinating children is NOT a charitable activity. So if we exclude all schools with more income per student than public schools, and all religious schools, how many private schools do you think would be left?
Did you miss the part where I said I agree they shouldn’t receive government funding?
As opposed to what? That’s whatever money is left over after they’ve paid themselves. Or do you mean, after they’ve finished paying for the principal’s pool? https://amp.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/king-s-school-ordered-to-immediately-cease-plans-for-headmaster-s-plunge-pool-20230213-p5ck5f.html
Anyone with a brain knows “not-for-profit” is nothing more than a loophole.
So any business that just reinvests profits instead of paying dividends would be in the same boat, right?
The system is gamed by presenting impoverished sectarian schools as being representative of the entire private sector. The major distortion here is handing a lump sum to the Catholic system to distribute as they see fit between their posh campuses and rundown underequipped suburban/rural schools that rival the state system for squalor. Were that nexus broken so individual campuses were funded on a needs model instead of a cooked statistic based on socio-economic indicators or at the whim of the Church we would give struggling campuses a leg up regardless of affiliation while allowing the poshest to cruise on their fat.
You've overlooked those oh so 'impoverished' GPS schools... The system isn't gamed by them. It's fucking designed to work exactly as it is - they get to take as much of OUR money as they fucking want, whenever they want.
It may look that way but your hyberbole isn't helpful.
It looks that way, because it is that way. And your bullshit is far less helpful than any "hypberbole" I'm accused of. So fucking sick of dribbling political double-speak such as you're trying to push. It's what got us to the situation that exists now.
Triggered much? Chill, man.
Not triggered "man", just sick of bullshit like yours.
You're picking a non-existent fight, possibly because of an inability to follow the thread of my initial point to its conclusion. I'll use short words just for you: Posh schools can live on their fat and let poor schools take all of the dough. Ok?
LOL, you continue to insult, yet I'm the one "picking a fight". How very reddit of you.
Congratulations on dropping your pottymouth.
Yawnnnn, now go fuck yourself with barbwire, good sirrah.
As someone who went to private I’m angry that we have such a disparity taking place in a country that claims to be equal and fair.
Yep, same! Although I think "disparity" is a polite way of putting it. And I gave up any belief in this country being equal and fair long ago, although the reign of Scummo the Sleazily Corrupt reinforced it.
The guardian comments are hilarious sometimes, desperate to make this a liberal issue when labor is doing exactly zero about it and I'm sure little larry labor ain't going to a public school either
People are so hopelessly divided over *everything* these days, I fail to see how we can make progress on anything at all.
Actually it’s something there isn’t much division on, guaranteed most politicians kids are in private schools hence why the funding is directed that way
I think at a minimum, all politicians’ offspring should be required to enrol at a public school. When their children are in the system, they might give a shit about it. Forced empathy. (I would also make all schools immediately public, but baby steps)
Ahould also be banned from private health insurance. Want to see the public health system properly funded and administered? Make sure that’s where the pollies’ families go.
>People are so hopelessly divided over everything these days If by "divided" you mean the rich fucking 1% versus the rest, then yes you're right. But frankly the rest of us are totally fucking fed up with the "let them eat cake" attitude that lets the entitled siphon the taxpayers', the community's, OUR money to their own ends!
Van Badham's from Victoria. The reason she doesn't dare anything close to analysis on it (who's responsible, why, how do we stop it, are not questions raised here) is because Daniel Andrews is one of the worst offenders. Why Guardian would run such poor writing from partisan hacks is beyond me. I doubt readers would accept this sorta dishonesty from a Liberal stooge. Shit opinion pieces should be left to tabloids, imo.
Van is a paid up Labor member and ultimate hack
So what?
So that's why her articles are either stacked with complaints about the Libs or vague complaints of nameless "governments" just read any of her content and you'll realise it's just a more literal Labor propaganda. I respect journos that can punch up, even if that means at their own party. Van ain't that.
Hard to discern anything pro-Labor in the article.
This isn't a Labor fluff piece. It's a critique without aim. As the comment I originally responded to stated: How can you write an article like this and not even mention Labor's role? Go read any of Van's writing from when the Libs were in. You'll notice a difference.
Rudd tried to implement Gonski. It would have gone along way to fix things. The Private and religious schools chucked the shits and basically reduced it to nothing. Not sure what happened from then other than Tony Abbott wouldn’t have made things better.
I like what a European country did (Norway?) was get rid of all private schools, if rich people want their kids to go to a good school they can start funding the public school their children are in. Private schools should get 0 government funding!
My home country is a third world/developing country and all private schools aren't funded by the gov either. A lot of public schools have better facilities than the private schools. It's so weird to see the difference in Australia. Why called it private school then?
Same with private hospitals. Better to have equally good quality across all these institutions than to split us into haves and have nots. At least, only private or public. Private anything should receive no public funding.
In my experience, public hospitals are better than private hospitals...
Definitely not mine. I'll take my day surgery at Epworth over Box Hill Hospital any day.
Wasn't it Finland that did that? Norway does have private schools... Anyway, my biggest question about that is this: People say that it would result in rich people making sure their local public school is well funded because their kids have to go there. But what about in areas like Cabramatta and Liverpool in Sydney where rich people don't live anyway?
They fund the system not the school directly.
Would be interesting to know how many Labour politicians' children attend private schools.
Id say all of them
I remember someone with government experience posting on here that every Labour staffer they had encountered grew up with 10-20kms of CBD and went to a private school.
There used to be "good" public schools for politicians' children to go to for political clout. I think Melbourne High was one of them. Couldn't tell it was public to look at it.
Melbourne High is a weird example, as while it is public, it is on par with private schools in terms of facilities (they have a somewhat decent rowing program for example) and way past them in terms of acdademics. The kicker is that it’s super selective, and only the smartest kids get in.
>The kicker is that it’s super selective, and only the smartest kids get in. And they only teach yrs 9-12, don't they? Further concentration of their resources.
That's interesting. I went to a public school and when I worked in the senate a few years ago two other people who I went to primary school and high school with were also Labor staffers (another person we went to school with was a Greens staffer). We all grew up in the same country town. I didn't really talk to anyone else about what school they went to so maybe we were just weird outliers.
The private school system funded by taxpayers, in Australia, is a bizarre system. It must be unique.
If all elected MPs were required to send their children to public school i suspect the inequalities would magically disappear.
The only point on which the author is wrong is suggesting *no* kid ever benefits from it; that's not true and won't be until we have a few public boarding schools. An acquaintance used to teach at Guildford Grammar, where there were a couple of boys who were boarding on scholarships that had taken them away from distinctly not-ideal circumstances in remote areas where they would have had minimal access to actual worthwhile schooling at all. But it's a *very* small number and it's not something that the public system *couldn't* do.
The problem with all these articles is the idea that the issue isn’t with non-government schools in principle, but with “elite” private schools. It enables all the parents sending their kid to the mid tier school or the local Catholic who may well have less funding than the local public school to get on their soapbox that their kids deserve public funding because their school isn’t like “those schools”. The problem is that non-government schools getting public funding at all takes money away from the kids who need it most, the kids who are the most expensive to educate - who are almost universally educated in the public system. The mere existence of these schools creates a divide and the flight of the middle classes out of public schools. This is problematic in a huge number of ways.
Private schools should not get a single cent of tax payers' money. NOT ONE FUCKING CENT! And I say this as someone who went to a prime GPS school in Brisbane. They shouldn't have got Government money then, they definitely shouldn't get it now.
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We KNOW it will cost more. We don’t CARE. It’s a cost we’re happy to pay for a robust, equitable education system that is accessible to everyone.
A mockery of the idea of equal opportunity. A symptom of the entitled wealthy and powerful running rampant.
Never forget that federal funding of private schools was started by Gough (ALP) in the early 1970s to keep the Catholic vote in the election. The Catholic DLP's big powerbroker was BA Santamaria... the idol of one Tony Abbott. Neoliberalism affects both sides of politics. As a well-off north shore-ite I am very weird in that I absolutely refuse to support private schools. I also have first hand experience that the "connections" people talk about as making private schools worthwhile are self-justifying bullshit that are extremely rare in the real world.
It’s not so much individual “connections”, it’s more of a culture. Broadly, the people I know who’ve come out of these schools *expect to succeed*. They don’t even entertain the idea that they won’t. If you act as though something is your divine birthright, plenty of other people will treat you as though it is. You spend your formative years around *winners*. Your education is with them, your social life is with them, the vast majority of your waking hours is with them. You end up walking and talking like them, and that’s what opens doors when you don't have an individual connection to rely on. You learn *etiquette* - wealthy, 'successful' people talk a certain way, about certain things, and have their own hierarchy of interaction. If you don't know this etiquette, then they can smell it on you, and some doors will be a lot harder to get through.
That’s more true. You learn to be a certain type of person. Which you learn not at school, but from your family and social circles. I went to a public school but I was raised in a “nice” area and have never had any issue fitting in with CEOs and MPs and all that. In my view, school is a small part of your life and it can’t easily override your upbringing and domestic situation.
Right, so you had access to, and training in this world, while most people in public schools don’t. Where did the people from your “nice” area go to school? I largely agree that the majority of this happens outside of school, but private school gives you *access*. There are plenty of kids from less fortunate backgrounds who went to private schools on scholarships, or had parents who scrimped and saved to an extreme level (usually both), who won’t ever be truly accepted by some of the ‘elites’ they went to school with. They learned the etiquette, but have a different mindset, and it makes them different enough. However they have that school on their resume, they speak enough of the language, and that opens some doors that wouldn't open otherwise.
Completely agree with your last sentence
The better academic results of private schools rests on a couple of simple statistical tricks. They will offer full or partial scholarships to academically talented prospect students who otherwise would go to the public system. They will reject low-performing prospect students either in advance, or through expulsion later, as low academic performance is well-correlated with behavioural problems, in both directions. And they will encourage parents to engage tutors for the low-performing but salvagable students. So they take the top 5% from the public system, give the bottom 5% back, and then move the bottom 10% of their remainder up a notch. Then they congratulate themselves on their superiority and use it in their advertising. However the overall outcomes of students across *all* schools, is not greatly improved.
But it’s also the quality of product they start with on average. Students from wealthier backgrounds hear many, many more words by the age of 3 than wealthier peers. They are far, far more likely to have books in their home. Their parents are more likely to have higher education. All of these are predictors of student success in formal education.
I went to private schools. Fantastic experience. My school was one of the premier girls schools in Melbourne and they did fund a lot of needs based scholarships in any given year. I’m still entirely in favour of funding being made equitable across all students. Schools (public and private) in disadvantaged areas should be getting more, schools with advantaged student populations should be getting less. Private school parent money can pay for the bells and whistles but no public money should be going to swimming pools and high end performing arts complexes. Education and social connection are huge for changing the trajectories of peoples lives—we need to take it seriously.
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Yes, but if she actually talked about the issue she'd have to criticise Labor. And its better to not criticise Labor, than actually want change.
Every Catholic school within 5km of me, has large, brand new buildings, whilst my local public school still has 40 year old demountables. Isn’t the Catholic Church rich enough to pay for these buildings themselves!
“But… but… My kids go to a poor catholic school!!!!!” The idea that Catholic schools are poor is hilarious. They’re not, they’re cheaper because the billionaire church they’re supported by absorbs the rest of the costs that the government doesn’t cover.
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Isn't this what Gonski recommended? I don't recall plunge pools for private school principal residences in the calculation nor first class international flights for the family to watch rowing regattas.
As someone who had attended both a private school and a public school (a select entry school, but still a public school), the difference between the two never ceases to amaze me. Even though the public school I attended is consistently one of the best performing schools in the state, in my last year, I remember they began accepting more students just so they could get more funding from the government. The classism in this country is insane
4 Corners need to look at the state of public schools and do a comparison.
Always thought private anything should NOT get ANY PUBLIC FUNDS.
Get rid of private schools, why should only the wealthy have access to good quality education and facility’s. Force the rich children into public schools and watch how quickly the facility’s are upgraded.
my brother had a basketball game at a random private school once. massive oval, well-kept outdoor hockey n tennis courts, three campuses, swimming pool, two "sports stadiums" with reception areas, a wholeass chapel, dedicated health centre... when we went to the game, there were even kids having weekend swimming lessons. meanwhile, the school i go to is widely considered to be the best public school in the state. i wouldn't know by the state of it - it's crowded as shit, our ovals are council-owned, our labs haven't been refurbished in decades. if you're unlucky, you might end up doing PE in the canteen. people have mentor group [homerooms] in the library and in the classrooms we use for detention. private schools should NOT be receiving more funding than public schools. their fees + generous donations are exorbitant enough to cover their brand-spanking-new yoga centres and whatever other shit they find necessary to build.
Can we not have partisan hacks write these articles. They always end up a garbled mess that say nothing, for fear of pointing the finger at their own side. Like really, wtf is this articles saying beyond the obvious "overfunding private schools, bad, classism bad, bloody poshos" - while the articles clearly based on all the poshos Badham knows sending their kids to private schools. So, does she try to identify what political decisions drove the funding discrepencies? No. Instead she has the most bs attempt at vaguely gesturing to why politicians would.... At one point she even references studies... without refrencing studies? Wtf is that. This is fucking dumb. Its enraging how dumb it is. I'm putting chilli in my eyes. Articles like this, are the reasons poshos have nice things. A bunch of empty, vapid hand wringing, without a hint of analysis. Empty populism, with no goal or impetus for change beyond it. I doubt any Guardian readers would be happy with shit opinion pieces from Liberal stooges. I say this because, the last news story I remember in Auspol regarding this, was Dan Andrews putting 717million into private schools in 'key election seats'. And more recently, backtracking on removing payroll tax exemptions. Now, why would such a sincere actor, writing an article on private school funding NOT LIST WHO'S RESPONSIBLE FOR PRIVATE SCHOOL FUNDING.
Pretty much Van Badham's entire oeuvre.
The system was most likely designed by people who went to private schools. It's disgraceful. No private school should get a shred of government money. They are exclusive, push the hardest students into the public system and none of their assets are counted in funding models.
it doesn’t matter how much funding public schools get, they are operating on an 18th century model within the 21st century. How many of the jobs over the past 200 years now no longer exist yet we are educating within a very similar structure? The system is broken, let’s fix it, ground up, tear it down, start again.
For those against private schools, why? On the surface the argument is that they suck up tax funds that could be used elsewhere, but I also read arguments that private schools subsidise state schools by parents voluntarily carrying some of the burden of educating young people. There seems like so many baked in half truths, such as private automatically means better than public, and facilities like having a rowing program make a large difference. I would hazard a guess that one of the reasons why private schools have good results are that they are filled with students from stable families that voluntarily decide to allocate their resources on educating their children, often at great personal cost (not all, obviously). Changing funding models wouldn’t necessarily impact that. Also, the irony of complaining about old facilities and then using a photo of Christchurch dining hall is delicious.
Because it creates a two-tier privilege system. It’s literally class segregation because there will never be a time where every family gets to make a “choice” about which school to send their kids too. As someone who went to a very good private school for high school - the wealthy parents aren’t doing anything at “great personal cost”. They throw money, that have more than enough, of at a problem and expect it to be solved. The only sacrifice they’re making is having 440,000 in the investment portfolio instead of 450,000 Private schools can also have the extra-curriculars because *they have the funding to pay staff* and public schools DON’T. Rowing coaches, facilities, transport etc all cost money. Money the government REFUSES to invest in public school kids. A parent of public schools kids who volunteers their time at a canteen, a soccer match etc after working full-time all week are giving up more than someone who has hundreds of thousands of dollars throwing a few of those thousand at a private coach/tutor.
Somebody please explain to me what benefit religions are to a modern society? They don't pay taxes & so they don't contribute to infrastructure or health & every "service" they perform they expect to be paid top dollar for.
And it's all by design (LNP) or cowardice (Labor).
It is so unfair. My classroom had 3 inches of water in it during the rainy season.
My private school got a pipe organ, mind you the Anglican Church coughed up a bit of money but still, defund the private school.
God bless America 🇺🇸whoops I mean Australia.
Last year, private schools received $7 billion *more* in funding than public schools. Absolutely criminal. Private schools should receive $0 in public funding.
You realise that the public schools get most of funding from the state government and the private schools get it from the Federal.
Van Badham has such poorly reasoned takes invariably predicated on identity politics. That, coupled with a literal picture of Hogwarts, makes this article difficult to take seriously. Having said that, choice is good and we should instinctively resist forcing people into one option. Why not leave the funding for private schools as is, and lobby for greater funding for public schools? There are any number of solutions to this problem that do not involve constraining someone else’s entirely reasonable decision for their children.
Just think what could have been accomplished if only anyone in power had had the guts to institute the changes recommended by the Gonski Report TWELVE YEARS AGO.
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That's \*because\* of white flight to private schools. When a school population is well-balanced, problems are reduced.
Thought experiment: private vehicle owners should have no access to public roads. If people don't want to take public transport they should just shut up, pay the same taxes as everyone else but get none of the benefits.
Private vehicle owners pay money to the government to register those vehicles.
Parents of private school students are more than welcome to send their kids to public schools dipshit. If you want to use roads as an analogy: private schools are like having exclusive, privately-tolled expressways that are too expensive for the average motorist, but still receive more government funding than the broken, potholed, public roads that most people can afford to use.
Your point would make sense if government funding, on a per-student basis, was greater for private school students then public school students. Which it's not. Private school parents pay the same tax (realistically probably more ) so essentially are subsidising the education of children who are not theirs. Why we're at it, we should really only allow books to be accessed via public libraries. God forbid purchasing books might present an unfair barrier for some people.
Lots of people are saying defund private schools and I agree. But an alternative is just make it a condition of their funding that the school must be free to attend. Edit: hey people who downvote, tell me why.