So, I’ve noticed that there’s been plenty of debate, for whatever reason, about the government funding of private schools. Admittedly, most of this ‘debate’ has taken place on twitter, which means that it’s limited in its efficacy or meaning, but I still find it surprising that we are talking about this old chestnut – I thought this had been settled almost half a century ago.
Let’s run through the arguments one more time: some people (although I notice The Greens, who used to be strong supporters of this idea have recently started to distance themselves from this) argue that, if you are going to make use of private school systems (it’s a weakness of their argument that they don’t differentiate between low fee paying and high fee paying schools), then you have made a choice to do so, and therefore you – and those schools – should not be entitled to any form of government funding.
So far, so good, right? Well, sort of. The actual truth of the matter is that I can see where they are coming from – the fact that the Labor party has supported private funding has always troubled me – but that’s where the answer to that solution lies – it’s a fact that this isn’t really an argument about public or private schools – it’s not really an argument about policy at all – although perhaps it should be.
Ultimately, it’s an argument about practicality. If government funding was removed from private schools, huge numbers of students would no longer attend those institutions. The private system – with the exception of a few very elite schools – would collapse. Fair enough, says your average supporter of this line of thinking. Except for this point: where would all those ex-private school students go? They’d rock up on the doorstep of their nearest public school, and the public system would struggle to deal with all those extra students. More than likely, the public system would teeter on the brink of collapse as well!
Why am I so confident about this? Well, it’s happened before – in the 1960s in Goulburn. See here. Since that time, the number of students in schools have increased – more than 1/5 of all Australian students are taught in Catholic schools – so the effect would more than likely be even more catastrophic.
Until the reality of this situation is addressed, there’s little point talking about what should be done. I’m conflicted, as I said before – I can see both sides of the argument. What is more frustrating is the fact that different sectors, once again, are arguing with each other, rather than arguing to improve education.