Public vs Private

Recently I posted a link to this article on ATARNotes. It started off a debate about the public versus the private system. Here were some of the points that I made: 



Let's get a few things straight first of all:

• This report concludes that private schools receive a much greater portion (about 50% more) of government funding, that is before fees are taken into account at all.

• It is folly to suggest that private schools are inherently good for the school system because students achieve better results in the private system

Students in the private system get more money from the government (+50%) and then have fees added on top of this, which in many cases will double the amount of funding from the government. The net effect of that of course is that the private school system is much better resourced than the public school system. The result of that? A much better education. This is of course reflected in NAPLAN and VCE results.

With the emotional arguments aside, it's not hard to imagine why this is a bad thing for the education system at large. Essentially, it encourages a gulf between the two systems and means that students who aren't able to afford private education are condemned to an increasingly second rate education. The flow on effects from this are enormous, having a huge impact on those people's lives. Students from the public school system are less likely to go to university and are less likely to have high paying jobs. With the current system, this is exacerbated (remembering that this kind of funding is only a relatively recent phenomenon). Clearly, the issue with this is that talent is wasted. Rather than having the best students receiving the best education, it is those who can best afford it who receive the best education. This way, a huge amount of ability is wasted as truly brilliant students are held back by an under resourced system that desperately struggles to create an academic environment.

Considering the emotional arguments, this is completely unfair. Even the most ardent conservatives could hardly suggest that a student should be condemned to poverty because their parents were poor before them. With these arrangements, that's what we're effectively doing. Obviously, this is not the case for every person. BUT, this kind of gap between public and private has a huge effect on social mobility. It's a completely untenable idea that the quality of a child's education should be determined by whether or not their parents were successful, not whether they were. In fact, to me this seems like a very Liberal argument. That you get what you put in from life. It seems only fair that we foster an environment where you're able to do that. The system at the moment merely helps to entrench the divide between the elite and the poor, and make sure that the same people stay on each side of the divide.

That's my considered sensible approach. In reality, this really pisses me off (as you may have noticed from the original post). Whilst I was at school, I saw classmates put up with the most incredibly awful circumstances and then having to put up with an awful school was just adding insult to injury. These were kids who had to live through being physically abused by their parents, coming to school with their uniform in tatters because they couldn't afford a new one and not being able to do their homework because their mum and her new boyfriend had decided it was high time they have a root on the couch (I really do wish that were a joke, sadly not). These kids should be able to find solace at school and should be able to work hard to change their lives, as they intend to. Instead, they are met with an unworkable school environment that condemns them to experiencing the same poverty they so desperately want to leave behind for the rest of their lives. It beggars belief then that for some reason, the government finds a greater need in taking money away from already desperate public schools and feeding it into a non-government sector that can hardly decide what to do with their new cash. It's pathetic.

Privatisation or Elitism?

An article in The Age yesterday confirmed yet again that the government school sector is receiving a smaller portion of government funding than its non-government counterpart. It absolutely beggars belief that this is still the case in contemporary Australia.


It is important to note first of all that the funding that private schools receive from the government is on top of the ludicrous fees that families have to pay to send their students to them. Even without parent contributions, the gap is already staggeringly big between the government and non-government sectors in terms of funding. In real terms, private schools receive almost 50% more per student from the government alone. Combined with private funding, which often matches the level of government funding, it is not wonder that our state school students are left behind.


Without doubt, this is a senseless way to fund our schools. Blind Freddy could quite easily tell you that this is contributing to inequality and helping to limit social mobility in Australia. In giving private schools a clear advantage, successive Australian governments had set a bad precedent for young Australians: that your talents are secondary to your finances.

This is an extremely concerning notion. Rather than supporting talent and encouraging students to flourish, the government has instead directed its funding towards the élite. This way, it is not students with a real capacity to learn, with creativity, determination and an aspirational attitude, that receive the best education; rather, it is those students whose parents have many 0s on their back balances that receive it. Not only does this completely fly in the face of the Australian way of the fair go, but perhaps more worryingly, this condemns Australia to a second rate future, where the most highly educated aren't necessarily the most intelligent.


Education ought to be a chance to aspire and a chance to depart from inter-generational poverty. With the current funding arrangements, the opportunity to do so is severely limited. A child's opportunity to succeed should not be based on their parents' hip-pocket, rather their determination, their creativity and their talents.

So I've Become a Bookworm...

I've never really been a big reader. Sure, I've done the dash with Harry Potter and plenty of other series of the like. I've had the odd times when I've really given a book a good flogging, reading it in a single day. This has never been, however, a long-standing pattern. Normally, I run out of steam and distract myself with easier things (=TV).

Lately, however, I've been reading a lot. Despite an insanely busy timetable at Uni, this is probably the most I've read in my life. Since the start of semester (five weeks ago), I've read a number of books. Those I can remember:

• 100 Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez)
• The Latham Diaries (Mark Latham)
• Billionaires and Battlers (Andrew Leigh)
• 1984 (George Orwell)
• Take Your Best Shot (Jacqueline Kent)
• Mother Tongue (Bill Bryson)
• Fabric of the Cosmos  (Brian Greene)
• Not Dead Yet (Mark Latham et al.)

Most of these books have been non-fiction, with the exception of 100 Years of Solitude (which is dreadful by the way). A few of them have, particularly, concerned the politics of inequality and how to prevent it, and also why it's necessary to prevent it (The Latham Diaries, Billionaires and Battlers, Not Dead Yet all concern this topic). In many ways, this reading has mobilised my thoughts on this matter and have brought up latent feelings of distress about it. This is a really emotional matter for me, and I'm glad that these book have helped to inspired that emotion. I also feel as though my thinking and, in particular, my opinions are becoming more set on these matters. No doubt, they will continue to change as they learn more, but I feel as though I'm more confident in these areas, I understand them better and can now validate my instincts about these topics with facts.