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Public funds, private schools

By Tom Greenwell - posted Friday, 4 February 2011


School

Private funding
(fees etc.) per student

Public funding
per student

Total funding
per student

Government school

$0

$10,000

$10,000

Private School A

$0

$10,000

$10,000

Private school B

$3000

$7000

$10,000

Private School C

$7000

$3000

$10,000

Private School D

$10,000

$0

$10,000

Private School E

$15,000

$0

$15000

Beneath the huffing and puffing, Albrechtsen’s article raised criticisms of the pro-public education position that need to be seriously considered. The most powerful one is that reducing public funding as parents spend more would likely put significant strain on the public coffers. In defence of the public funding his school receives, The King's School headmaster, Timothy Hawkes, has stated ''... it needs to be remembered that monies invested in non-government schools have the happy effect of saving the government many hundreds of millions of dollars it would otherwise have to spend on educating the students at government schools.”

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The potential financial strain on government of more equitable funding arrangements is apparent in table 1. There’s no point in schools B, C & D charging fees. They might as well adopt A’s strategy of becoming wholly government funded. In one sense this is a great result. These schools would be much more accessible to large sections of the community - a win for choice and equity. The problem of course is that this scenario would place a very significant extra financial burden on government. However, this could be overcome with a more intelligently designed funding scale, as demonstrated by the rudimentary example in table 2.

Table 2

School

Private funding
(fees etc.) per student

Public funding
per student

Total funding
per student

Government school

$0

$10,000

$10,000

Private School A

$0

$10,000

$10,000

Private school B

$3000

$8000

$11,000

Private School C

$7000

$5000

$12,000

Private School D

$10,000

$3000

$13,000

Private School E

$15,000

$0

$15000

By less sharply reducing public funding as fees rise, there would still be an incentive for parents to pay fees and thus contribute to the national education spend. At the same time government would be withdrawing from funding high fee schools (like School E in table 2), enabling them to reallocate these funds to disadvantaged students and low SES schools. (Currently, the Federal Government gives extreme high-fee schools like Kings and Trinity Grammar, who charge parents in excess of $20,000 annually, an extra $3000 or $4000 per student per year) . In table 2, the positive incentive for private schools to reduce fees and to thus enrol more underprivileged students would remain (although becoming less powerful than in figure 1).

Albrechtsen poses a further objection, framed in less prudential, more moral terms. In her eyes, the government would in effect be taxing parents for spending more on their child’s education. The same argument was expressed to me in person by the former ANU economist and newly elected Labor MP, Andrew Leigh. It is illustrated in table 2 where a parent who spends nothing on education receives $10,000 of government support, while a parent who spends $15,000 on their child’s education, receives no government support. On the face of it, it seems intrinsically unfair to "tax" people on this relatively worthy kind of expenditure. Rather than reward people for working hard and sacrificing for their children, they are "punished". This line of argument often leads advocates of private education to argue for a flat government contribution to each child’s education or a voucher system, irrespective of need and parental income.

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The first response to this argument is that the scenario outlined in table 2 does not remove all rewards for private educational expenditure, although it does reduce them. It is a reasonable compromise between the demands of need and those of merit, similar to the way a progressive income tax system works.

But there is a deeper consideration. Ultimately, education is not about parents, it’s about children. Children do not choose their parents or their parents’ income level or their attitudes to education. The circumstances we are each born into are purely a matter of chance. A fair and intelligent funding system should not reward good luck in the lottery of life but seek to mitigate against bad luck. Government cannot take equal opportunity or a "level playing field" as a given when it funds schools. On the contrary, government should fund schools so they can effectively equip each and every young Australian with the opportunity to lead a rich and fulfilling life, regardless of where they start out. Only once this happens is there a chance of realising the dream of a level playing field.

This ideal was succinctly expressed in the Gonski Review’s recently released discussion paper; ''The panel believes that the focus on equity should be on ensuring that differences in educational outcomes are not the result of differences in wealth, income, power or possessions.''  Inevitably, debate will continue in relation to how this ideal can be achieved but the ideal itself, of a nation in which all our children are given the opportunity to become their best selves, is one that should unite, not divide, us.

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About the Author

Tom Greenwell teaches English, History and Global Relations at Dickson College, Canberra. He is the convenor of Funding Real Equity in Education (FREE).

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