industry & reform where if you ’ re unlucky in the lottery of birth , then you ’ re stuffed for life .
Do you believe private schools need funding ? No , most of them don ’ t need funding at all . If they can ’ t actually function on the kinds of fees they charge , then clearly they shouldn ’ t be operating . The average cost of educating a child in a public school , let ’ s be generous and say it ’ s somewhere around $ 10 – 12,000 a year . Now , some kids in public schools cost a lot more than that because they ’ re rural and remote , or they ’ re kids with a disability , or they ’ re kids from very chaotic , disadvantaged , deprived backgrounds , non-English speaking , or they ’ re Indigenous .
There are private schools that are charging up to $ 50,000 a year plus to educate one child . How can you argue that schools that charge that kind of price need public subsidy ? Clearly they don ’ t .
I don ’ t think it ’ s going to be politically possible to take the public subsidy away just like that . One of the possible solutions would be to say to schools there ’ s a sliding scale if you get much above $ 15,000 a year in fees , when the cost of educating your average kids is about $ 12,000 – and maybe once you get above $ 50,000 , you don ’ t get any public subsidy at all . That would seem to me to be at least reasonable .
What are the long and short term solutions ? In the long term , I think we should aim to get a system where public money goes to public schools and private money goes to private schools . I also think that the Australian public school system should be resourced so that it is of a very high standard and that the most disadvantaged , the neediest kids who need the most help , should get the resources and the help they need to reach their potential . That ’ s just the minimum to me .
If people insist on subsidising private schools , I ’ d like to see all public schools brought up to the minimum school resource standard . At the current time , no public school in Australia is funded to the minimum school resource standard except for a handful in the ACT . So that ’ s something we could change pretty quickly .
I think we should do things like put caps on fees , depending on how much public money , which influences the amount of public money you get . And we should start asking for reciprocal obligations .
We should also have laws which say things like the first school to open in any area must be a public school and the last school to close in any area must be a public school .
Kids at public schools these days will say they go to the ‘ povvo school ’, the povertystricken school . And the difference in resources is quite outrageous : the kinds of conditions in which public school teachers have to work in comparison to private school teachers . During COVID , the differences were very stark in terms of HEPA filters and the ability of public school teachers to keep themselves safe .
It ’ s hard for everyone , but there was far less resources put into making public schools safe places than there was for many private schools . This is outrageous . It means we ’ re picking kids we want to keep alive and teachers whose health we want to protect and kids we don ’ t care about and their teachers .
Public schools continue to do an extraordinary job with the very slender amount of resource they ’ re given . When you correct for social disadvantage , there is literally no difference in results between kids who went to public schools and kids who went to private schools . So the other crying shame is the amount of private money that ’ s being wasted by families that often can ill afford it .
We know public schools do a great job despite every effort to make that as hard as possible . We also know that public school students from comprehensive public schools outperform both their private school and their selective school peers at university . So it beggars me what on earth Australia as a society is getting for all the money they pour into these private schools , some of which are literally palaces of luxury now . None of this makes a sods worth of difference to the results of those children .
The bizarre thing is that private schools in Australia get more public funding than all 37 of Australia ’ s universities put together . Presumably people spend ridiculous amounts of money on these schools to get their kids into a prestigious university . But when they get there , the prestigious university is about as starved of funds as the public school those parents rejected . It is weird .
How do you think education will play out in the upcoming election ? The Labor Party have promised that they will bring every public school up to the agreed minimum resource standard , so that ’ s a good thing . The Liberals clearly have no intention or desire to do that . Also , early childhood education is very important and the Labor Party is certainly offering to make that more affordable for parents .
There are some better policies , I think , on the Labor side . But they run in fear of the private school lobby , the religious lobby and particularly the Catholic School lobby . If the Catholic school lobby doesn ’ t want it to happen , it doesn ’ t happen . It ’ s a great tragedy . Once upon a time , I think that the churches supported their schools . Now the schools support their churches . They ’ d really have hardly any relevance without the schools they run .
The Greens have a much better policy . They ’ re opposed to the public funding of private schools . I suspect that Australians are becoming a little bit uneasy and uncomfortable about school funding . They ’ ve been bamboozled by it because it ’ s highly complex . It ’ s split between state governments and federal government . There ’ s all sorts of different things that apply to one sector and don ’ t apply to the other . So that allows people to make just about any argument they like with the statistics and make it sound the way they want it to .
Which model do you think we should try to follow when it comes to funding our schools ? Everybody talks about Finland as having one of the best systems . They have some charter schools , I think , otherwise everybody goes to their local public school , which I think is a really good model and it ’ s the one we used to have and we walked away from it , which is a great shame and it ’ s gone to shit ever since .
I do note that Chile , under Pinochet , had a voucher system that basically has now gone right round the other way and I think no longer gives any public money to private schools . So maybe one day Australia will come to its senses and we ’ ll go back to having a really well resourced public school system and leave the private schools to their own devices .
I always think never say never , and we should never give up . Just because a fight feels impossible , doesn ’ t mean you should stop fighting it . It only becomes truly impossible when you give up . ■
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