Reimagining the funding of public and private schools
The funding of public (government) and private (non-government) schools has been a contentious issue in Australia for more than fifty years. This contrasts with its non-contentious nature in many other countries, including some of the world’s top performers. The issue surfaced again on 21 April 2023 with a proposal to fund all schools on the same basis, but under strict conditions.
The proposal was advanced by Tom Greenwell and Chris Bonner under the title Choice and fairness: A common framework for all Australian schools. The authors were commissioned to prepare the proposal by Koshland Education Innovation Ltd to be presented as the 2023 Australian Learning Lecture (ALL). ALL was established by philanthropist Ellen Koshland who has been a strong supporter of school education for many years. The first ALL was delivered by Professor Sir Michael Barber, former head of the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit at 10 Downing Street.
Greenwell and Bonner proposed that public and private schools be funded on the same basis providing the latter did not charge fees and accepted all-comers without entrance examinations. Schools that did not accept these conditions would receive no public funding. Readers of the proposal will be surprised on two counts. First, how the authors have progressed their thinking. For many years they have generally opposed the public funding of private schools, rejecting one of the core values in the Karmel Report of 1973 that led to the systematic and substantial federal funding of private schools. Second, the international examples cited by the authors have been well known for decades, notably New Zealand, where most private schools accepted the conditions set by the authors as far back as 1976. I recounted in Reimagining Schools and School Systems my experience in top performing Alberta, Canada where such schemes had been in place for a long time, and were broadly accepted. Indeed I could direct my property taxes to a system of choice, either public or non-public (Catholic). In addition to countries named in the proposal, one could add England, where fewer than ten percent of schools are independent, receiving no public funding, and Hong Kong, where fewer than ten percent of students attend schools owned publicly (the others attend schools owned by churches and charities).
It may be too late, politically at least, to make a change in Australia. More than 35 percent of students now attend fee-paying private schools (Catholic or Independent) (more than 40 percent in secondary schools). It may be that a very large majority would choose the private sector if they could pay the fees, which are relatively low in some independent schools. It is likely that the debates of the 1960s and 1970s will resurface should a new public debate transpire. I give detailed attention to these matters in Reimagining Schools and School Systems.
