Funds, funds everywhere…except where they’re needed!
I am sick of the funding arrangements for schools in Australia. The Federal funding of schools should be on a needs basis. Whether they are a Government, Catholic or Independent school, money should be given to where it is needed most. Whilst the Government has a responsibility to provide every citizen with an education, they should not be subsidising the most affluent schools in Australia.
I recently caught part of the ABC’s Q&A program on 12th June. I could not believe it when I heard Joel Fitzgibbon, in response to a viewer question say “But surely you’d agree there’s no harm in the Government investing the equivalent of what they don’t spend sending a kid to a public school on a private school…” Actually Joel, I do think that there is harm in doing this! You end up with a system where your capacity to pay determines your standard of education. Parents don’t send their kids to a private school because they want to save the taxpayers money, they do it because they believe that their child will get a better education. It’s not as though the parents are receiving this money to offset the cost of fees to these schools. The money is going (in a lot of cases) to build new facilities, yet the fees still increase.
To a certain degree, I understand why the Government agreed to continue the current schools funding arrangement until it expires in a couple of years- it gives schools certainty about their funding and enables planning to take place. What it has done, however, is increase the divide between public and private schools and solidify the drift away from public schools. Unfortunately, when the time comes to negotiate the next round of funding, I believe that the Government, to a large extent, will continue funding schools that don’t need it.
