Both in Australia and the UK, governments are moving to clean up the damage of the privatisation era. But in Australia’s school sector, far from being over, privatisation is gathering pace.

The Commonwealth’s entry as a significant player in schools funding during the 1970s transformed the shape and composition of the school system, through promoting a net transfer of student enrolment share from public schools to independent private schools. This has been accompanied by an exchange of students from low- and middle-income families between the public and Catholic and, increasingly, other “low fee” schools.

Australia’s school system stands out in comparison with OECD countries but not in a good way. It now works to increase the concentration of disadvantaged students in disadvantaged schools at a rate second to only one other country!

There has been no serious challenge to evidence provided in the 2023 report, Improving Outcomes for All, commissioned by the Albanese government, that the extent of this ‘residualisation’ in Australian schools is leading to poorer learning outcomes, especially for students experiencing disadvantage.

In a 4-year snapshot (2018 – 2022), this report also shows almost 30 per cent of public schools with concentrations of socio-economically disadvantaged students and fewer than 10 per cent with concentrations of advantage. Conversely, independent schools have only six per cent of schools with concentrations of the socio-economically disadvantaged and almost 30 per cent with concentrations of the advantaged. As long ago as 2007, Cardinal George Pell acknowledged that Catholic schools were no longer serving their previously high proportion of poorer families. Fewer than four per cent now have concentrations of the disadvantaged and almost 12 per cent have concentrations of the advantaged.

There are many factors outside the sphere and influence of education policies that contribute to socio-economic divides between schools and that predispose some schools to being ‘strong’ in the market while others are ‘weak’. These factors include a complex mix of economic change, patterns of affluence in society generally and in specific communities, changing real estate values, trends in the birth rate and in patterns of immigration and settlement.

But........

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