Public Schools vs Private Schools

So private schools are full of super rich, arrogant families with a born to rule attititude and a lust for ripping cash from the public purse. Public schools are overrun by the stalinist Teacher's Federation and lawlessness rules the school grounds...If only life were that simple.


Sadly the debate about education has been captured by groups that have an axe to grind and would rather not deal in the facts and try to develop a better education system for all..On both sides there are simple minded and selfish ideologues who perhaps were beaten puppies in a former life, such is their need to drum up anger and bitterness.

So let's first deal with some facts...


IF you take all the money provided by governments for education in Australia and compare the the OECD you find that in fact Australia overall spends LESS on education than do many other countries...



This is the major issue and one that gets lost as successive governments have preferred the fight to be public vs private rather than everyone against the government.


Secondly if you look at total government funding for education (Federal and State) then you find that each public school student's education is funded to the tune of around $10,715 per student (numbers from 2007) and each private school student is funded to the tune of $6,054 by public funds....So to be clear public school students get government funding that is 60% HIGHER than government funding for private school students.



Now there is a skew between the feds and the states. Under Howard the feds did increase spending on private school education but to be fair you have to look at TOTAL public funding when making comparisons of how all levels of government fund education.


Moving on.


The current funding mechanism for private schools is a joke. This is NOT to say that private schools deserve more or less but rather the allocation is wrong..On the north shore of Sydney you have 2 schools that are less than 4 km apart. One school gets DOUBLE the per student subsidy from the government?? Why???




The premise behind the new private school funding system sought to fund schools on the basis of their parent population's' economic status (SES)...If you have poorer parents you got more...if you had richer parents you got less..Seems fair....Except there was also a little clause that said that a school would not be disadvantaged..So unless I am mistraken....adn I am happy to be told I am wrong..... if the new system suggested you should get $2000 per student and you were currently getting $4,000 per student then you were allocated the $4,000 per student...no time line to recalibrate to the right level just more money than you should get forever....Ridiculous! and grossly unfair....


Then you have the situation of really well off schools (large grounds, large endowments) that happen to be located in less wealthy suburbs...They too get a disproportionate allocation because of their geographical situation and historic subsidies...even if their parent population has changed!!..



Further you have really, really well off schools that can spend enormous amounts of money (e.g. a Sydney school that was able to buy a historic building that they can't redevelop for $35m...these guys do not need help from anyone)......

Therefore you have a reasonable premise for funding bastardised by self-interest and poor execution. We do need a new system that provides the same or similar funding per student with any deviation from the average determine by the financial resources of the school (which would include fee structures, endowments, net assets etc).


As to what the average should be...it should be closer to the lower end of the current subsidy range as opposed to the higher end with any excess funds seperately allocated on a case by case basis to truly needy schools.


Now some believe that private schools should not get any government funding. This is a stupid and ill informed position to take for many reasons..To just take one point.. Parents of private school children pay tax and some of their taxes fund education therefore they have a RIGHT to some of their education taxes coming back to them in the form of education funding. It is nonsensical and unfair to say that just because you made a financial sacrifice to put your child in a private school that you are now not allowed to get any education funding...

Also as I have noted above if anything the private school student's family SUBSIDISES the public school students (...because the government allocation is biased towards public students and because on average private school families pay more tax than on average the public school families...combination is a healthy subsidry going on for public schools).



I actually think this subsidy model is a good one...The better off in society should help out those less well off. It is the way a good society works..However this does not mean that private schools should therefore get no funding..If funding to private schools was stopped a lot of private schools would close and then what.....


What would happen if tomorrow the approximately 30%- 40% of all students that attend a private school suddenly left and went to the local public school?? What would happen is that the education system would collapse because suddenly the government would have to inject hundreds of millions of dollars in capital works to build more public schools AND they would have to increase the annual operating expenses for public education...by how much....well at least by 60% if you just look at the operating expenses as discussed above BUT in reality alot more if you include massive capital works....Education in this country would go back 50 years...



So to those small minded fools that hate private school and wish they would close...be careful what you wish for.....Also do not assume all private schools are flush with money (like that school in northern sydney that I mentioned above). Most are not flush with $m in loose change and most are populated by normal, hard working families that have made a choice to sacrifice something to allow their kids to go to a private school..It is not just not fair to assume these families are all made up of snooty, snob investment bankers....Ok some schools have disportionate representation by these oxygen thiefs but not all nor most.. And yes there are some private schools that are an embarassment to the majoity of private school families, due to their excess, values and ethos.

However picking out the few schools that are elitist, abuse the use of govt funding and produce nauseating, up themselves young men and women is like picking on the couple of public high schools that have far too regular occurences of violence (to students and teachers) and assume all the public system is modelled on these unfortunate schools...


Are private schools necessarily insitutions of great virtue and morality..Sadly not...Some private schools, as I mentioned above, do engender a culture of exclusion and privilege. They serve their students poorly by pandering to the insecurity of the parents and creating this environment that suggests the students are above those in normal society. These schools do nobody a favour. They breed young men and women that wander around with a sense of entitlement...young people with no sense of the broader society and their responsibilities to help build a better world....



By the way sadly the problem in these schools is often the influence of the "old boy's"...Often a bunch of stufy throwbacks to victorian england...racsist, elitist, intolerant and downright insular...A group that likes the idea of a tiered society, people with entitlement and close groups and clubs......However the great majority of families that attend private schools do not accept these dinosaurs as role models..All they want is what every family wants...the best possible education for their child...Whether their particular prviate school will deliver this is not the point. the point is their motives are no different to any family.



What should happen....All parents and families, public and private, should stop attacking each other but rather turn on our governments and demand more to be spent on education (of all forms)...where will this money come from.....hmmmm how about spending less on sport (Uh Oh I can hear the stampede of the nutty olympics people thundering towards me)....Maybe even tax us more to put more into education...I will bet that if we knew that an extra 5% of tax was going directly to education (or even in the form of a tax credit each family could use towards education) the majority of Australians would agree with a tax increase....




Also for the good of the education system the private school funding model needs to be changed to ensure private schools that have significant stores of cash have their govt subsidies cut back to the lowest level available...This would only be fair and just.....