One of the most important elements of any healthy society is public education, specifically free, widely available and good quality education. We currently have quite good educational standards Australia, however there are some worrying signs that our governmental education system is being slowly corroded by greed.

“The primary obligation, in relation to education, for governments to provide and maintain government schools that are of the highest standard are open, without fees or religious tests to all children” (Schools Commission Act 1973, Section 13 (4))

The above statement is perfectly reasonable, understandable and just. In 1988 the Schools Commission was rearranged to become the Schools Council, and the above statement remained. In 1999 the Howard government abolished the Schools Council, and in an action indicative of a governmental viewpoint, this statement was deemed no longer applicable and was lost in the void of legal redundancy.

The Howard government, since 1999, has fundamentally altered the government’s input into education. Private schooling is being quietly and consistently aided to the detriment of public education. Labor’s “New Schools Policy”, which regulated the establishment of non-public schools by considering their impact on existing education establishments, and controlling funding accordingly, was abolished, allowing any number of
private schools to establish themselves with no consideration of maximum or minimum enrolment requirements.

Private education is increasingly leeching money that the public education system needs. In 1999 an enrolment system called the EBA was established. The EBA will take approximately $1700 of funding per student from public to private schools when the proportion of privately education students passes a relatively low threshold. Predictions for private schooling enrolments to increase fivefold in near future would indicate that this will cause a substantial monetary loss to the public education system, even should enrolment increase.

Commonwealth funding of schools is based primarily upon “Need”, aiming to produce a single target standard for all education. This was initially applicable to both public and private schools, and in 2000 the goal was almost reached. It was then that the condition of public schools being the government’s primary obligation was abolished. This resulted in the funding being directed more at the private school system than the public schools.

Funding to private schools was initially based on the conception that they were running at lower resource levels than public schools. This is no longer applicable, yet their government funding is actually increasing. The government no longer takes into account a school’s income from private sources when deciding on a funding level, and there is no longer any consideration of decanting funding according to staffing and equipment needs.

The private school system is getting an unfair share of governmental funding. If you examine the amount of funding per student, adding government and private funding, private schools are considerably better off. Taking into account all factors such as student intake and location, there is a frighteningly high proportion of private schools actually receiving more government money than public schools.

As a student in the public education system, I have had first-hand experience of schools in need of funding. I can see the potential that governmentally run Australian schools have to educate and nurture generations of Australians. Sadly, I can also see the potential of the system dying slowly of funding starvation, giving way to prohibitively expensive private schools holding the monopoly on the educational future of this country.

Public schools play a vital role in producing our workers of the future, and providing equal opportunities to people of all backgrounds. Though the issue of private vs public education funding is often overlooked, I believe that education is one of the most important issues the Howard government needs to reconsider.

(all figures were found on the Australian Education Union website,
http://www.aeufederal.org.au )

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