Public Education
Astrid O’Neill discusses Public Education in Australia.
The Australia I knew as a child in the 1950s is very different to the Australia we live in today. If my grandchildren make the same comparison in the future, how will that future Australia measure up? Will they be living in a society which is strongly divided between the haves and the have nots? Divisions based on income, on ethnicity, or religion? Gated communities?
The Australia in which I grew up largely went to government schools. Public education was the norm, for rich, for poor, for migrants, for people born in Australia, and for the original inhabitants of the land. The only systemic exception was the Catholic parish school system, and in general the Catholic schools had much in common with the public education system other than the religious teaching. There were a few private schools, but these were largely self funded.
I grew up in a Brisbane suburb which had a good mix of people - established private houses and new housing commission houses. The schools I attended were very big, quite multicultural, and the families ranged across the socio economic spectrum. If you look at the background of many eminent Australians, including the leaders of big business and politicians, you will find that most went to public education.
The public education system, then as now, is focused on providing a free, secular, quality, non-discriminatory education available to everyone. It is inclusive, not exclusive. It is a social institution which, in my childhood, ensured that the Australia we now have is a vibrant, prosperous, and largely socially cohesive society. In the future will our Australia, now being encouraged by the Liberal Government to stream its children into schools according to religion and capacity to pay, be an egalitarian society, or a fragmented society? And why has the Labor Opposition abandoned any semblance of priority funding for a public education system? Their so called “needs based” funding, which continues the Liberal Government’s of even the wealthiest private schools, is a dagger at the heart of public education.
Will the public education system of tomorrow become a second rate safety net education system, purely there for those poorer families who can’t afford anything better, while the bulk of public spending goes to the wealthy private and religious education systems? Will the private system cherry pick the best and brightest, the cheapest to educate? Will it leave the public system to cope only with the expensive students, the ones who have disabilities, who have socio-economic disadvantage, who have geographical disadvantage or other special needs? That is where the policies of the two big parties heads.
In campaigning for public education, I am often told that “I pay my taxes. Why shouldn’t my taxes go to support the school of my choice for my children?” I support your right to send your child where you choose - if you can afford it, and if you don’t value the mixing pot which an egalitarian school provides. However there is no automatic “right” to a share of taxes. In paying my taxes, I also support a public police force, and a public transport system. They are there for the benefit of everyone in our society. I can’t expect to have my choice of a private security firm to protect my house, or my choice of an expensive car for family transport, to be subsidised by the taxpayer. Why should it be any different for education? There are no other countries in the world which allow the subsidising of private education to dominate the government agenda to the extent which the Australian Liberal government does here. In the US, which this government seems to follow fairly blindly, there is no such subsidising!
A government’s first responsibility must be to provide public education. Why should the public subsidise private schools which can discriminate in selecting their students? Which can expel the troublemakers and force them out of their system rather than putting in the effort to overcome the problems? Why subsidise schools which are not accountable for their spending of public money, or which don’t have to provide figures on student achievements? Which exclude through high fees? Which are far better resourced than public schools?
The answer is that the federal Liberal Government is driven by competition ideology. It has no commitment to equity and fairness, to a cohesive economic community which cooperates for the common good. It ignores the economic wellbeing a society gains by educating all its people to their full potential, not just those who can afford to pay. It promotes an ideology of the individual. Many public commentators now believe the Liberal Government is not just pro-private, it is actively anti-public education. The Labor Party, in it’s “me too” phase, is in the business of buying off vested interests and not rocking any boats. Its hopes the majority of parents won’t notice. It is committed to maintaining the current unfair indexation agreement which delivers the massive payout to the private system, and which will continue to increase funding to even the wealthiest of the private schools. It will not review the current inequitable model of funding education. So very wealthy schools will continue to get even wealthier.
Much of the infrastructure society now enjoys - water on tap, sewerage service, electricity and gas, public hospitals, school buildings, rail and roads, were provided by past generations. They also developed an effective public education system which has been steadily eroded in the past few decades. A strong public education system is the only system which can meet the challenges Australia now faces. This includes the need to reduce climate change, to develop and implement sustainable energy technology, and to replace our increasingly dilapidated infrastructure.
We need a commitment to fund 2 full years of public preschool for all Australian kids, started with the most disadvantaged. We need to review the current funding model for education. In the interim we need to end the funding of the wealthiest public schools and to pool that money for a national equity program for public schools. Funding should be increased for Aboriginal education, for specialist support staff in schools, for children with disabilities and special needs, for English Learning Centres, for traumatised refugee children.. We should adequately fund the TAFE system as the dominant provider of vocational and further education. We need to recognise that the skills shortage in Australia, which is hampering our economic effort, is partly the result of the massive cuts in TAFE funding and is false economy. While it is quite clear that the federal Liberal Government has an ideological hatred of TAFE, the Labor Opposition has so far made absolutely no mention of any TAFE policy.
Some figures - In 2006, for every $1 of direct federal recurrent funding per public student, the private schools were given $6 per student. Private schools now receive 35% a year more from the public purse, state and federal, adjusted for inflation, than since 1996, when this Liberal Government assumed office federally. Yet public education has 70% of the students of Australia. The OECD “Education at a Glance 2007″ Report confirms 11 years of underfunding and neglect of public preschools, schools and TAFEs. It states that Australia has the third lowest proportion of public expenditure on schools education. It is estimated that public schools require an extra $2.9 billion in recurrent funding to achieve the National Goals of Schooling. On the current trajectory, public schools will receive only 31% of total federal education funding by 2012, despite having far greater numbers of students.
The funding that rich private schools receive is not just at the expense of public education funding. It reduces the money available for other public services and infrastructure such as public health. A society can be judged by the public education it provides, and in turn the vision we have of our society’s future can be linked to our public education system.
The Federal Government tries to blame the state government, but that is buck passing. There is nothing in any constitution that dictates which tier of government has responsibility for funding public education. Both tiers have responsibility, and Labor at state level also bears some blame for the inequality. However increasingly it appears that the Federal Government sees itself as responsible only for private schools, not for public schools. Unfortunately, it’s that government which has all our tax money, not the state governments which are left with residual responsibility for public education..
Earlier this month the Parramatta Association of the NSW Teachers Federation ran a public education forum. Candidates from Labor, Liberals, and myself as the Greens candidate, spoke. The President of the NSW Teachers Federation, a Vice President of the Parents & Citizens Association, and the NSW Secondary Principals Council’s Judy King were united in their opinion that the Greens policy on public education was far superior to those of the other parties. It made me proud to be standing for the Greens, and supporting the re-election of Senator Kerry Nettle in the Senate, but so sad for public education.
Ironically, a recent study of university students in NSW shows that once they gain admission to a uni, public school students perform far better at uni than private school students. They are more self reliant, more motivated.
Ideally I hope that my grandchildren will attend a public school which contains a representative slice of the society in which they live, and which will equip them with the ability to form friendships with, and appreciate, children of all or no religion, all racial and ethnic backgrounds, and all the other diversity to which they will be exposed as adults. Ideally it’s a public school which is well funded, and at least the equal of the wealthiest public school. I know it will be a quality school, with great teachers.
Astrid O’Neill
Greens Candidate for Parramatta
