industry & reform
Public schools do a great job despite every effort to make that as hard as possible .
Reason Australia senate candidate Jane Caro . Photo : supplied
An ‘ absurd ’ situation
One perspective on the current state of public / private school funding .
Jane Caro interviewed by Emilie Lauer
School funding is under the spotlight once again thanks to a recent report from the NSW Teachers Federation which revealed that about 130 private schools were overfunded by a total of 120 million dollars , leaving a government funding shortfall for public schools .
Author , activist , social commentator and Reason Australia senate candidate Jane Caro believes “ all funding of private schools by public money is stupid and absurd ”.
According to Caro , the Australian school funding system keeps on increasing the inequality gap .
She joined Education Review to discuss the disparity in funding public and private schools , and the impact of the upcoming federal election on the education system .
ER : You recently participated in a webinar tackling the issue of overfunding in private schools . What are your views on the matter ? JC : Overfunding is one thing , but in my view , all funding of private schools with public money is stupid and absurd . It very rarely happens anywhere in the rest of the world and Australia is quite out on its own in terms of the way that it publicly funds private schools .
It not only gives them ridiculous sums of money , it does so without asking for any reciprocal obligations . Private schools are all in receipt of public money yet they are also able to pick and choose which kids they will and won ’ t educate . They can decide which communities they will and won ’ t serve . They can decide what fees they can charge with no restrictions whatsoever .
The public subsidy of private supply is always inflationary unless you cap the fees that the private supplier can actually charge . We ’ ve seen that happen here before with the first home owner ’ s scheme and also with childcare subsidies . The private supplier simply pockets the public subsidy and then charges parents what they were going to charge them in the first place .
Quite apart from the social justice aspect of it , it is fiscally irresponsible and it means that Australia puts far too much money behind already well-resourced kids who are doing fine , and far too little money behind kids who are born into disadvantaged families who actually need much more resources , smaller class sizes , more teachers , more remedial lessons , more intensive educational help that they don ’ t get . It drives our entire educational system down . It ’ s criminally irresponsible .
To what extent does school funding create inequality among students ? There is no perfectly equal system anywhere in the world , but no child is disadvantaged through any of their own doing . They ’ re disadvantaged because they ’ ve been born to a family which has been less well able to navigate society than some other kids ’ family .
Most countries use their publicly funded education systems to try and close that gap . But in Australia we actually use it to drive that gap wider . We know the one thing that predicts educational achievement across the world is not the ownership of the school , but the SES or socioeconomic status background the child comes from . The higher the economic background of the child ’ s family , the better they ’ re likely to do at school .
In Australia , we try to make those gaps even worse . That ’ s quite extraordinary to me . We are rapidly approaching a society
8 | educationreview . com . au