Education is big this year, very big, with John Howard seeking to resurrect the old chestnut of state funding for religious schools. The big issue, though, is whether all Australian kids have the right to a good education regardless of their means, and what the consequences might be for Australia if this principle is abandoned in favour of user pays.
Carmen Lawrence rolled the ball last year in A fair go education system: the advantages for all of us. Late last year I asked a new Webdiarist, Mark Notaras, to pen a piece on what�s happening in education, but I lost his essay in the end of year rush. Here it is, if anything more timely now.
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The Myth of choice
by Mark Notaras
The �Myth of Choice� in education is perpetuated by the John Howard and his merry team, now thrice elected by the Australian public. While Homeric scripts endure in captivating readers through tales of triumph and tragedy, this Government seeks to hoodwink the Australian public with fanciful reasoning confined to tragedy. The folkloric diatribes of the prejudiced policy playwrights pretend that increased funding to the private school system at the expense of public school system is a rational and even-handed method of securing Australia�s educational future.
Our Prime Minister continually claims that we Australians live in an egalitarian society, yet his Enrolment Benchmark Adjustment (EBA) for schools funding is yet another piece of the purist policy puzzle reflecting a blatant lack of parity in society.
In December 2000 the Federal Government�s controversial Education Bill was whisked through the Senate with the tacit support of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). The net results of the EBA are frighteningly prejudiced against the greater goals of public education. Briefly, Commonwealth education funding is directed from the needy public school system to the private system, in particular to the 58 wealthy category 1 schools that house a fraction of Australia�s school children.
Under the guise of providing �choice for Australian parents�, this tight-fisted policy defies reason and aids the Liberal Party in appealing to key constituencies. In monetary terms, the EBA allocates $25 billion to all schools over 4 years. $16b is directed to private schools and $9b is reserved for government schools who educate 70% of Australian school children. State government grants go some way to addressing this growing imbalance but an additional $4b per annum is required to create equal opportunity in Australian schools.
It is well known that in 1996 the Commonwealth cut $2.2b from University funding and introduced inequitable full fee-paying arrangements enabling those with more money to qualify for courses where they were below entry level standard. Such an inspiring idea has parallels with the present school funding structure. In both situations, the wealthy can buy their way into premium education to the detriment of those without such a choice.
Previous studies conclude that high investment levels in education in the short term will facilitate improvements in many social indicators in the long term including higher literacy rates, lower crime rates and increased high school completion rates. The EBA funding arrangements will undoubtedly have community ramifications for years to come and dispel another myth, that of the �Clever Country�.
When the Australian States became a Federation a century ago, the constitution stipulated that our elected �leaders� should be committed to their societal obligation to achieve equality of educational opportunity for all children. Wretchedly, it is now commonplace for public or government schools to rely on small change from the latest Parents & Citizens lamington drive to assist in financing school luxuries such as electricity, tables, chairs, textbooks and toilet paper. Parental contributions are increasingly filling in the funding gap that has been created by governments of all persuasions in recent years. At present, it is estimated that up to 7% of total expenditure on public schools comes from locally raised private funds.
Private schools receive the majority of their funding (approximately 60%) from fees paid by parents, as they should do. Nonetheless, an increasing proportion of funding comes from the taxpayer who in 1997 provided 29% of total funding, rising to 40% by 2004. It is no secret that the elite private schools do not cater for a broad cross-section of the Australian community, Elite private schools are readily accessible to the proportion of the population who can afford the $10,000 odd required per year per child for non-boarding fees. Alternatively, one needs to be a genius to attain one of the few academic scholarships that exist.
Demographics indicate unquestionably that the independent (non-Catholic) private schools cater primarily to Anglo-Celtic children, predominantly those residing in areas of affluence. Coincidently, an extremely disproportionate number of these schools operate within the leafy hamlets of the North Shore and the Eastern Suburbs. Merely by chance, no doubt, prosperous schools are situated in Liberal party strongholds. Also by fluke, Vaucluse High School (located near Cranbrook) has ceased trading independently and Hunters Hill High School (up the road from Saint Joseph�s College) had to fight a bitter battle to survive, no thanks to the NSW state government. In another twist of fate, these doomed public education institutions are located on prime land. Doesn�t one get the impression that current policies are a direct reward for continuing voter and corporate loyalty?
OK, maybe I�m a tad cynical.
Private schools, though unaccountable for the manner in which they spend public money, do have a right to exist. Their charter is to provide an alternative system resourced by private income (hence the name), for those who can afford the fees without disadvantaging those who can�t. In the meantime, the Federal Minister for education, Dr. Brendan Nelson, wants to continue his government�s savage attack on the powerless and disadvantaged in society by forcing the �worst� performing schools to shape up (with ever-diminishing funds) or shut down.
Dr. David Kemp, who has since been expelled from the crucial education portfolio, was the mouthpiece of the EBA scheme. A scheme that assists The King�s School, one of the most exclusive in Australia, to install a new pool, but fails to assist the poorest high schools to purchase up to date maths textbooks. Shameful! I do not have a problem with private schools or private school students despite some of their archaic practices. A free market economy (which in the eyes of the Kemps, Nelsons and Howards of this world solves everything) allows such schools to operate freely and independently in our democratic capitalist structure. Why, therefore, is there a need for taxpayers to fund opulent sectarian schools? Has the universal remedy known as �the market� failed?
Many before me have challenged the government�s policies to demonstrate that current education funding measures are extremely problematic and unscrupulous. To facilitate debate with people devoid of concern for the greater social good, perhaps one has to argue at their level and in their language. For the Liberals, this limits us to discourse in the language of economics; such are the confines of their philosophical and social mindset.
The word �choice�, repeated ad nauseam by the government, implies by definition that a person has �the opportunity or power of choosing� (Collins Paperback English Dictionary, 1986). This power to choose, with respect to schooling, is achieved through financial means. If you have money, then you have a CHOICE. If you don�t have money you have NO CHOICE but to enter the under-funded, under-resourced environment of a government school. Evidently so simple, yet surprisingly unfamiliar logic for the Coalition�s conscience deficient “eco-crats”. �We don�t need no education� to unearth the preposterous disparities that exist with such a funding arrangement. All we require is a sense of classlessness, of integrity and a bit of long-term economic sense.
I invite you to examine the following figures:
* In 1996, the Commonwealth provided $2b to private schools and $1.4b to public schools.
* In 2004, the Commonwealth estimates that it will provide $3.7b to private schools and $1.9b to public schools.
* This represents a funding increase of 84% to private schools and 31% for public schools over the period 1996-2004.
* These figures represent a real increase of $3669 per student in the private sector and $966 per student in the public sector.
* $5282 is spent per student per year in NSW public schools.
* $5038 is spent per student per year in NSW Catholic schools.
* $8117 is spent per student per year in NSW Independent Private Schools.
* By 2004, Trinity Grammar and the Kings School will be receiving an annual increase per student of $1707 and $1351 respectively from the Commonwealth.
* 7% of the school population will shift from private to public schools in the next decade.
* 15% of Australians aged 15-19 are not enrolled in and will not complete upper secondary education. This compares to 9% in Canada and 5% in France and Sweden in 1998.
* Australia ranks 20th of 28 OECD countries in public education expenditure as a percentage of Gross Domestic Products (GDP).
* In the current financial year, 2003-04, private schools receive more funds from the Commonwealth than all of Australia�s publicly funded universities.
The size of the gap between funding invested into the public and private school systems is as great as the gaping hole that waits for a competent political force willing to eradicate this mismatch and restore equilibrium. At the last federal election, Kim Beazley lacked the necessary �ticker� to present a decent alternative education policy to the Australian electorate. According to forecast data, the ALP, if elected to government, would have diverted (wait for it) 0.03% of funding from private schools back to public schools. That�s right customers! (We are �customers� nowadays, by the way.) A mere 0.03% is better than nothing right? I won�t even bother calculating how much that is because it�s offensive for Labor to pretend that they have any more credibility on education that the Liberals.
The most lamentable detail often lost in the education debate, which in itself has been lost for some time, is the role of the Australian people. Are we a naive and ignorant people, concerned about our backyards and our renovations but not the schoolyards or our education? Perhaps. A 2001 poll by the Australian Scholarships Group surveyed 300 000 people, 94% of whom believed that future government funding should be in the public and not the private school system. So why is there not a propensity for little Aussie battlers to vote on such an issue, in the interest of their most valuable assets, their children?
Protests attended by relatively few stereotyped �lefties�, occasional Sydney Morning Herald investigations and the odd nine minute anecdote on the ABC�s 7:30 Report bring these issues to the fore.
Politically, our limited hope lies with the Democrats, the Greens and/or Labor under its new leadership.
If democracy itself is the surface on which John Howard constructs his political puzzle, then it is us, the susceptible voters, who are the pieces that he puts together. With a federal election fast approaching, a generation of concerned and informed voters carry the responsibility of protecting the most important cornerstone of an egalitarian society. Will you as an individual fight to protect every Australian child�s future?
We can walk, we can talk, but more often than not we should baulk at the absolute ineptitude, the blatant elitism and the profound lack of intelligence and vision that exists among the democratically elected policy-makers. Just don�t ever be deceived by those who seek to maintain the pretence that is the �Myth of Choice�. After all, how many politicians send their children to public schools? None in the Federal Cabinet – that�s right, none, and a minority in the parliament overall. This therefore sends a message to the rest of the community that the public school system is not good enough for the children of those who govern and claim to endorse it.
Personally I am extremely grateful for the pre-tertiary education I have received at public institutions over a period of 13 years. It is sad to think that right now, economic polarisation will lead more and more people to the private system further justifying funding increases there. Meanwhile, the majority of parents, devoid of choice, can�well�they don�t have the luxury of an option. The cancerous cycle has begun.
Cliched as it may sound, children are our future and unfortunately their future symbolises an educational schism. Many Australian children will have their chance to realise their full potential diminished. Will that child be one of yours? That, ladies and gentleman, is the truth. I can�t handle the truth! Can you?
The statistics used in this article are freely available government data that has recently been published by �Priority Public�, a non-party-political coalition of citizens.