“The quasi market-based nature of the Australian education system entrenches disadvantage.” The degree of socio-educational stratification among schools makes Australia an anomaly among comparable democracies. Inequity is at a level where an archaeologist delving in to the system might label it as Out-of-Place stuff!

Soon after coming to office, the Albanese Government recognised the need for a better and fairer education system and set up an independent panel to provide advice on reform. The opening quote comes from this panel’s report, Improving Outcomes for All. Even if it was no surprise to the Government, it must have been confronting to read a description of our school system so starkly at odds with Labor’s egalitarian tradition.

There are growing signs that debate about how to deal with this is becoming inevitable.

But this is one debate that governments in Australia try their hardest to avoid. Providing public funding across a hybrid system of public and non-government schools with distinctive secular and religious traditions is politically challenging and has traditionally proven to be politically divisive and, in many instances, toxic.

The integrity of the funding arrangements Labor introduced in 2013 based on the Gonski Review has been corrupted by subsequent political decisions and delays. The hoped-for funding system that would be needs-based and sector-blind has been replaced by a system which is sector-specific and which privileges individual parental choice over meeting student need.

The wisdom of the elders has been ignored. The 1973 Karmel report, Schools in Australia, provided the blueprint for the establishment of the Schools Commission by the Whitlam government. It included the prescient warning that public funding of private schools entailed the risk of diluting the strength and representativeness of the public school sector.

Since that time, this has now contributed to undermining the strength and representativeness of the entire school sector.

But Schools in Australia also had advice on how to deal with such problems in a democracy:

“The operation of democracy requires … an intelligent consideration of alternatives…and an ability to transcend personal interests for the common good.” We owe our children and future generations nothing less than this intelligent and informed consideration.

Preparing for constructive debate. For a start, we should try to avoid blaming those with opposing views and interests from our own for the blight of inequity in the school system. Take the example of charity status for high-fee, high-resource private schools. Very few of us confuse such schools with, say, The Smith Family. But the decision that donations to these schools should attract a tax return was not made by those schools. It was made by governments.

We should also be clear about where the problems lie. The Improving Outcomes for All........

© Pearls and Irritations