Private school fee rises are as intrinsic to an Australian summer as the screech of cicadas. And instead of relaxing in the holiday heat, I find myself plagued with questions about whether or how to respond to the former. Do these fee rises even matter?

Should I be pleased to see that prohibitive fees in these schools enable them to provide at least some principals and teachers with the level of remuneration that should apply to the teaching force across our entire system? Why not leave it at this and go back to reading my novel?

I try to convince myself that there may be a good case for doing just this. For a start, this year’s news of fee hikes in the ‘top’ private schools (reported in the SMH on January 9 and 11) is much the same as for the past twenty years or more. Year after year, their fees rise. Whether there has been high or low inflation, increases or decreases in their public funding, the fee rises are inexorable. On a more serious note, headlines about prodigal fee rises, plunge pools and Scottish-castle-like libraries draw public attention away from the entire school system and the toxic features of its operation. The recent expert panel report to the Commonwealth to inform a better and fairer education system spelled out that “the quasi marketbased nature of the Australian education system entrenches disadvantage”.

From a personal perspective and in my private life, I can’t seem to avoid being grumpy about an increase in salaries to principals and teachers whose choice is to work in schools that are not doing their fair share of the heavy lifting of our school system. And this mood darkens as I read the pronouncements from private school authorities and lobbyists that their fees have to rise in response to an agreement reached last year that will make beginning and top-of-scale teachers in NSW the nation’s best paid teachers in public schools and deliver increases to all others. These are teachers in the schools that are doing far more than their fair share of the heavy lifting.

Hoping to avoid having to spend any more time thinking about this issue so that I can get back to some light reading, I try again to convince myself that there may be some good reasons to ignore news about fee rises in private schools. I recall past conversations with teachers from high-fee independent schools which suggested that their working lives were not always a bed of roses. During formal consultations earlier in my working life as a member of Commonwealth consultative and advisory bodies, I heard their........

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