An article by Jane Caro in yesterday’s Age summarises many of the concerns that have been expressed by public education advocates, including Parents Victoria, for many years. The article is titled, “Our kids are segregated in every way imaginable. We should look to Canada for a solution.”
The article begins:
Over the last half-century, we have created a system of publicly funded schools, both private and public, that is unique in the world.
We have given the chronically underfunded public system all the responsibilities and expect it to accept every child, including the most disadvantaged and so most expensive to teach, while starving it of resources. We have given sometimes extravagantly overfunded private schools all the rights, including the right to isolate themselves from the toughest end of education. As a result, we now have one of the most segregated education systems in the OECD.
The article points out that:
- Our concentration of disadvantaged students in disadvantaged schools is rapidly increasing, and we are continuing to use public funding to increase that segregation.
- Achievement levels in disadvantaged schools are plummeting – this is what’s driving the decline in reading, maths and science results in schools.
- Segregation is not just along class lines – it’s “girls with girls; boys with boys… smart kids with smart kids; rich kids with rich kids; poor kids with poor kids; Christian kids with Christian kids…” This works against social cohesion.
The article suggests some ways forward, including:
- “All publicly funded schools should have to abide by the same standards of compliance, implementation and accountability for enrolment, behaviour and inclusion… In practice this would mean that private schools, once they had enrolled a student, would not be able to exclude that student for any reason that differs from the standard required from a public school to do the same… This would prevent children that private schools decide they don’t want from being dumped on the already underfunded nearby public school, thereby compounding their degree of difficulty.”
- A suggestion by education researchers Tom Greenwell and Chris Bonnor in their book, Waiting for Gonski, that all schools should be offered the chance of being publicly funded as long as they agree not to charge fees. They could keep their “special” character, usually religious, but would have to accept all children who wanted to attend within their area. (That’s where the reference to Canada in the title comes in – this idea is known as “the Ontario Solution”, as that’s what schools in the Canadian province have done.)
The article is an edited extract from Jane Caro’s book Rich Kid Poor Kid: the battle for public education, available from 5 May.
EducationHQ article: ‘Reverse Robin Hood’
The book is also the subject of an article in EducationHQ titled ‘Reverse Robin Hood’: Jane Caro lashes Australia’s unfair school funding model. The article by Sarah Duggan begins:
‘Perverse’ and ‘morally bereft’ is how Jane Caro describes Australia’s school funding system, which she says works to segregate children across class lines while luring desperate parents into financial ruin in pursuit of entering the exclusive private schools club.
You can read more from Tom Greenwell and Chris Bonnor on the Australian Learning Lecture website – their report Lessons from Canada: An equal school system is possible explores the Canadian education system in detail.