A Guardian Australia series published this week has borne disturbing news about Australia’s ongoing education inequality crisis.
Government funding to private schools has increased almost twice as much as funding to the, uh, public school system that educates the overwhelming majority of Australia’s children.
From 2012 to 2021, “per student funding to independent and Catholic schools rose by 34% and 31% respectively, while funding to public schools increased by just 17%”.
Private institutions, by definition, do not serve the public good. This whopping misdirection of shared resources away from shared outcomes is corrosive to the nation’s longterm educational interest – as well as morally disgusting.
How were things allowed to get so bad? One suspects cashed-up private school lobbyists with handy lists of swing voter parents in marginal seats might be part of the reason.
Another part is the habit of nervous, aspirational parents to yank their kids from the local co-ed whenever the material differences between the two systems are spoken of too loudly. This depletes the public system of advocates with the resources andsociopolitical position to campaign for equalisation.
Structural unfairness is entrenched and expanding, yet if this is spoken of in the media the problem gets worse. And if it doesn’t get spoken of in the media … the problem still gets worse.
But there is good news! Now that record numbers of overworked, underpaid public school teachers are being driven out of the profession from exhaustion, we can finally have an honest conversation – because it can’t get worse than this.
Fair play to Australia’s private school administrations. They’ve grown fat on the marketing insight that Australians might believe in fairness, but in fact there is a strange, class-based “foMCmo” – fear of my child missing out – that can make even the most yoga-loving leftist parent glance at an article about tough times at Resilience High and ship little Zyrcon and Bethesda off to St Posho’s faster than you can say “spiritual wellness centre and helipad”.
That’s what taxpayers are funding at these “least in need” institutions, given the fees they collect and investment portfolios they assemble are enough to pay the teachers and mow the lawns. Rowing tanks, wellness centres, archery fields and other huge investments in non-educational faff exist so St Posho’s can provide an offering distinct from their competitors like Santa Priviliga down the road. “Ooh, Bethesda, an intimate otter sanctuary! Would you prefer that or the school with the harpist enclave made of gold?”
Are kids really being sent to these schools for the “pastoral care” on offer? These secretive, sometimes unaccountable institutions often gain more notoriety for having cultures of bullying and coercive behaviour, sometimes even from the students. Nothing says “character of the school” quite like a 4Corners investigation, amirite?
So the lure must be the facilities, otherwise it could only be classism. And how could it possibly be classism when everyone wants to remind you that there are poor and working-class kids at the Elite College for Academically Average Boys, too, just, you know, in safely contained amounts, as opposed to their truly terrifying proportion in the broader community. (Shh, no one mention entry is policed by capacity to pay.)
Not one Australian student – not one – is left educationally more enriched by any of this. Not by classism, or school-tie ra-ra, or because some private school mocked up their classrooms like perfect replicas of Stanford’s (yes, not even joking).
Kids remain kids, in every churning combination of good, bad, adept and clumsy at all manner of tasks, wherever you put them. Study after study reconfirms that, private or public, a student’s educational performance remains based on what it has always been based on: an educationally encouraging, economically secure, stable home environment. Spoiler alert: if private schools could imbue pupils with talents they did not otherwise possess, the whole concept of “scholarships” would not exist.
You do not need a space port or horse museum at your school to get a great education. You do need enough physical staff to push the words, numbers, set squares, paintbrushes, and Kraftwerk albums (bless you forever, Ms Andrews) at the kids and say: “Go on, have a crack at this.”
In Australia’s public schools, this most basic resource is now under threat. Rather than invest in a public system that achieves more with less, our governments have – alone in the world – spent years redirecting funds away from public school teachers into the inconceivable private frippery of sad Hogwarts cosplay. Who is surprised that Australian educational performance has been in decline for twenty years?
Public school teachers become public school teachers because they don’t want to police anyone out of an education. My own zealous loyalty to the public system lies in a gratitude that when my dad was in and out of work, my family broke, my homelife chaotic, my teachers clung to me and refused to let me drown.
We don’t have to let anyone drown. We don’t have to waste a single Australian brain. We can afford to restore public school funding and retain our teachers – because we can’t afford to not.
Van Badham is a Guardian Australia columnist
