According to the OECD, Australia now spends more public money on private schools than any other advanced economy and that was before Prime Minister Scott Morrison's extraordinary announcement yesterday that a further $4.5 billion of taxpayers' money is to be thrown at fee-charging schools.
Contrast that with another OECD report released about a year ago, which revealed that Australia — even post the Gonski funding — is the third lowest funder of public schools in the OECD with only Turkey and Colombia doing worse.
Yet our new Prime Minister suggests his latest cash-splash to the education sector that indisputably mostly educates the children of the better-off is a solution to the schools funding wars.
Then he attempts to justify it as part of the sector blind, needs-based funding scheme that once was Gonski.
How can that be? Most of the children who attend fee-charging schools are not, in fact, very needy.
Any fee at all too high for many families
And, you don't need to look at their families declared taxable income to discover that; you just need to look at the fact such schools charge fees.
Even those charging "low fees" — which are only low, after all, in comparison to the extraordinarily high fees charged by other private schools.
How will Gonski 2.0 be delivered?
Any fee at all is too high for many families — particularly (and this ought to go without saying) disadvantaged ones.
Once again, as under then PM John Howard's discredited SES funding scheme, we have two completely different ways of funding schools decided entirely by the sector — public or private — that they belong to.
How can that be touted as sector blind?
And, despite Morrison's attempts to justify the $4.5 billion as somehow needs-based, like the SES, it only applies to the children who attend private schools.
In other words, it is the educational equivalent of a hunger relief scheme for the well fed.
A Pontius Pilate response to pubic schooling
Mr Morrison turns up his nose at any suggestion that his cash-splash leaves public schools — the schools that actually educate the children of the poor — out in the cold.
He sees them as entirely the responsibility of state governments.
I believe this could be termed a Pontius Pilate response — he washes his hands of them.
The trouble is state governments are the most cash-strapped arm of government. That's why they must go cap in hand to COAG and squabble for the revenue they need to fund the services they offer like, you guessed it, public schools.
Also, the poorest states and territories — such as the NT and Tasmania — are the poorest precisely because they have populations with greater needs and less resources.
So it is at best thoughtless and at worst downright immoral to dump the responsibility for educating the most expensive to teach kids (disadvantaged kids in rural and remote areas can cost tens of thousands of dollars more to educate than middle class kids in urban areas) on the poorest governments.
It's certainly not what is usually thought of as Christian.
We have poured money into private education
No wonder the NSW Teachers Federation has calculated — even before Morrison's largesse to private schools — that 87 per cent of public schools will remain funded below the minimum (I repeat minimum) school resource standard for the foreseeable future, while 65 per cent of private schools (more now, I imagine) will be funded above it.
This is how we ended up with a Gonski reboot
So, our poorest kids will be left to languish in poorly resourced schools supported by the poorest arm of government under a supposedly needs-based scheme.
Almost as bad as the dereliction of duty towards Australia's most vulnerable children demonstrated by this government is the fact that Australia as a nation gets no discernible return on the huge investment we make in private school.
Since the introduction of Howard's SES scheme, which is the one this new funding of Morrison's most resembles, we have poured money into private education.
And best not to try and argue that it's gone to public education. How could we be the third lowest spenders on public schools in the OECD if that were so? The money that we have wasted has been wasted at the top end.
And what return have we seen after 18 years of investment?
Our results have not improved, for anyone, even the most privileged. They have flatlined or gone backwards.
Schools have not become more accessible, private schools disproportionately educate the middle class.
Fees have not gone down, indeed, they generally rise above the rate of inflation every year.
I have a suggestion for the ATO
The public education system will not take this lying down.
Those of us who fight for a more equitable education system and the rights of our most disadvantaged kids are not going to shut up.
Even our state governments are recognising the issue.
NSW Education Minister Rob Stokes has already come out all guns blazing and said his government will not sign up to a needs-based, sector-blind funding scheme that is neither of those things.
I have a suggestion for the ATO.
Any parents who can afford fees — particularly the unbelievably high fees charged at some so-called elite schools — who claim to have a low taxable income, should be audited.
After all, surely the long-suffering taxpayer deserves some kind of oversight?
Jane Caro is a board member of the advocacy group Public Education Foundation and has written two books on education: The Stupid Country: How Australia is Dismantling Public Education and What Makes a Good School.
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