



Tide of inequity to blame for falling education results


David Gillespie

"Because such a large proportion of government education spending is diverted to fund private choices, the public schools become progressively more and more decrepit."

"Because such a large proportion of government education spending is diverted to fund private choices, the public schools become progressively more and more decrepit." Photo: Louise Kennerley

Education is a very big line item in state and federal budgets. Thanks to incessant demands for smaller classes, it is getting bigger at an astounding rate. But rather than address the obviously impaired state of our education system, the government's plan is to send you the bill.

In 2011-12, Australian governments spent a tad over $47 billion on running the country's schools. But only three-quarters of that went to government-owned schools. The remaining $10 billion or so went to ''private'' (Catholic and independent) schools. Governments are not normally big fans of throwing public money at private choices. If I hire a security guard because the local coppers are not doing the job to my liking, a request for funding from the government will fall on deaf ears.

Treasurer Joe Hockey may think the age of entitlement is over but, when it comes to funding private educational institutions, it is anything but. The average Australian ''private'' schoolchild costs the taxpayer about 60 per cent as much as they would if they were in the other kind of government school.

From the government's perspective, that's a great thing. And it's getting better all the time. Australians are stampeding from state-run schools. But the enormous growth in non-government schools has not been spread evenly. The average growth of the sector between 1998 and 2013 was 30 per cent. But the number of students attending Islamic schools tripled and the schools aligned under the banner of Christian Schools Australia (CSA) exploded to more than 55,000 students last year.

The parents rushing out of the public sector are not choosing an Anglican grammar school or even the local Catholic. They are choosing small, strongly faith-based, low-fee, suburban independents. Anyone would think we had all suddenly become devoutly religious but the research suggests that couldn't be further from the truth.

In 2008, the ISCA (Independent Schools Council of Australia) commissioned a study to get to the bottom of why parents chose a ''private'' school. The answers were, in order, ''educational excellence, good teachers, a supportive environment and good facilities''. Religion barely scored a mention.

The flipside to that survey is, of course, that parents think they will not be getting those things from a public school. Massive increases in teacher numbers (because of reductions in class size) since the 1970s, combined with significantly greater employment choices for women, has meant that the academic aptitude of the average teacher has steadily declined. Over the same time frame, the unionisation of the teaching workforce has meant that, should a teacher be hopeless, there is nothing anyone can do about it. Independent schools have more flexibility when it comes to hiring and firing teaching staff. And they play off that in their marketing to parents worried about dud teachers.

Because such a large proportion of government education spending is diverted to fund private choices, the public schools become progressively more and more decrepit. And so the vicious cycle continues.

If you love the purity of markets, then I suspect you will be saying ''so what?'' You might be thinking the push to ''private'' education is a good thing. The problem is, in Australia, we already know how this story ends. And it doesn't end well.

In the middle of the 19th century, almost all our education was publicly funded but delivered by churches. The result was a massively unequal society. Some communities were significantly over-serviced, with schools competing with each other for the best students and those students receiving the very best education available. Other communities had a choice of just one school and most of the population had no access to schooling at all.

The solution was to bring in free mandatory secular education for all and to immediately de-fund the ''private'' sector. By the start of the 20th century, Australia was a shining beacon to the world. It had a high-equity, high-performance education system that anyone and everybody could and did access.

But we are on the fast train to inequity again. And, as the studies have predicted, the more the tide of equity sinks, the worse our education results as a nation become.

Running away from the public system is not the solution to Australia's education woes. It simply drives wedges into cracks in Australian society and replays the disaster movie our education system has seen once before. Any government that encourages that as a solution is looking after its bottom line, not your child's future.

David Gillespie is the author of Free Schools: How to get a great education for your kids without spending a fortune, published by Macmillan.


  • It's a good article, with lots of good information, facts, research - but the conclusion? Might I suggest parents are choosing to support something other than a system which is broken, and which has not kept pace with C21st values, standards, or practice. It's the public school system which needs fixing, and maybe the people who run it aren't up to scratch (living in some other world to the one the rest inhabit daily). Some tiny steps have been made in a very few tiny corners. Maybe emulating a system which does work would be one approach. That might suggest re-addressing the "business model".

    Drag - Bootstraps
    Date and time
    March 12, 2014, 6:04AM
    • Well, a good start would be to stop throwing money at private schools and investing it in the 'broken' system. How do you expect to fix something when you ignore it? I pay a lot in tax every year and I''m not happy seeing it wasted on new sporting facilities as Scoits College.

      Date and time
      March 12, 2014, 6:36AM
    • Well a "..system which does work.." is mentioned in the article: " mandatory secular education for all, and to defund the private sector..". However, that's the last thing conservative governments want, so it just won't happen, because it would detract from the LNP's "business plan" of welfare for the well-off. (P.S. - Schools aren't businesses; they are educational facilities.)

      Lewis Winders
      Date and time
      March 12, 2014, 7:01AM
    • The article identifies the valid reasons why people send their children to private schools and acknowledges that it costs the tax payer less per child by doing so. If the public school system is broken then the solution is probably not to defund private schools, as they will increase their fees, resulting in many children returning to the public system at greater cost to the Government.

      Date and time
      March 12, 2014, 7:16AM
    • I don't know what private school your kids go to Mike, but one of the main reasons I took my kids out of private schools was because they promote 19th century values. Ridiculous uniform rules that would be great if you attended garden parties and balls with strict dress codes, but useless in a society in which adults actually have to make decisions about appropriate work wear. Constant remedial parenting lectures, on-line parent portals to track homework and detentions etc more appropriate to a child care centre than a high school in which many children are almost adults.
      Oh, and the generally uneducated teachers who rarely treated the kids with respect.
      Their public high school is full of competent, smart, committed teachers who treat the kids well and are respected in return.

      Date and time
      March 12, 2014, 7:27AM
    • Jace - if private schools did not get Government funding then their fees would increase. Rich families would still be able to send their children to private schools but many lower income families would no longer be able to afford it. That would be a crazy situation and counter to a society that values egalitarian principles.

      Date and time
      March 12, 2014, 7:31AM
    • The public school system has its problems - but it is definitely NOT broken.

      Schools are a community asset: we need to address the problems as a community. Not encourage a run-away-and-wait-for-things-to-change approach.

      Many people who send their kids to private high schools are happy to send the same kids to local public primary schools first. Why? It's the same public system.Same teachers. Same bureaucrats.

      Res publica
      Date and time
      March 12, 2014, 7:47AM
    • @ David, Drag & Jace,

      3/4 of public money funding government schools and only 1/4 funding private/independent schools indicates private/independent schools are more efficient - why????

      Because parents pay the extras!!!!...

      You miss out on the reasons behind the majority of Catholic schools educating children in the 19th century was because they were funded by parents and priests and nun's were teachers (often very good) working for the "kingdom of God" not big salaries....The "Goulburn Solution" as is is known, was when the government stopped funding catholic/independent schools so these schools they closed their doors. The government schools could not cope with the extra students and therefore the government had to continue finding private schools, as it currently does.

      Private/independent schools are doing the tax payer a great service!!! - a fact!!!

      They are much more efficient and supportive for families and at the end of the day, even if you don't believe in God, no one can deny Christian values are good for society.

      BTW: 65% of Australians identified as Christian in the last census..

      Date and time
      March 12, 2014, 8:06AM
    • Australians are stampeding from the public school system to the private school system and our international rankings are in decline. Does anyone else notice the irony in this? Perhaps religious schools are much better at indoctrination than education.

      The public sector is under constant attack from the private system because they are businesses and they need an marketing edge to get parents to part with money. Certain politicians love and encourage this because of there own religious views and their despising of the secular state. My kids public school is fantastic and the teachers are great.

      Despite the survey results I would also suggest 90% of people who chose Catholic do so on religious grounds. I know this from chats with friends and neighbours who have gone this way and frankly I have no problem with it, but apparently they are now scared to admit it to strangers.

      Date and time
      March 12, 2014, 8:41AM
    • @Drag - just look at the top OECD countries and private schools are just that - privately operated and funded with no public funds allocated to them. Have a look a number 2 in the world (Finland) where the concept of private schools is frowned upon and where the children are expected to attend their local school. It not only brings the weaker children up but also gives the stronger children many benefits too and as the funding goes only to that school the teachers do face to face for three days and spend the other 2 developing individual learning programs for their students. This works as there are 2 teachers for the class.

      The current system leaches funds from the public sector without giving the benefits to the students that Finland has for example. So we have the silly system where the good schools get funding they don't really need for education purposes like private buses don't actually teach them anything but transport them to sporting events. Yes they get good academic results but it like being on the titanic where the first class passengers pay to be able to get to the pointy end out of the water quicker but the ship is sinking so that all that happens is that they drown last. That is what is happening to our education system as the private students may be perceived as being at the top here but they are still falling behind everyone else in the world.

      If parents want to have a child go to a school with the big halls, swimming pools, sporting facilities that a AFL club would love then they should pay for but not expect the public to subsidies those things.

      Date and time
      March 12, 2014, 9:23AM

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