Stop the demands of the private school lobby!

A little over a week ago, Association of Independent Schools of South Australia Executive Director Gary Le Duff was given a spectacular front page ride into the arms of readers of the Murdoch daily monopoly, the aptly named Advertiser (see, appropriately, far right).

Le Duff was demanding that the private school and Catholic Education sectors get an even bigger handout from the state Government – on top of the $100 million they already get now, and in addition to the huge handouts from the federal Government.

For the record, non-government schools…..err, can’t really call them that these days – independent schools……….no, that doesn’t fit either……ummm…publicly- subsidized- but- closed- to- the- public- schools, get funding from the state Government under the following categories (these figures are for a so-called low-fee religious school in a country town):


Per capita primary 88,449.74
Per capita secondary 68,140.12
Needs entitlement 58,095.23
Interest subsidy 9,948.64
Index of rurality 10,720.55
School card primary 75,663.03
School card secondary 58,700.44
Special needs 15,332.75
Aboriginality 1,338.79
Fee remissions[1] 16,341.23

Total 402,730.52

This same school received the bulk of its taxpayer funding from the federal Government, as follows:

Federal funding

Est. general recurrent primary 786,654.00
Est. general recurrent secondary 569,472.80

Total 1,356,126.80

Grand total 1,758,857.30

(NB - these figures do not include other grants or assistance, such as the Premier’s Reading Challenge, the federal chaplaincy project, and the funding approved for capital works in 2005. The latter amount of $206,192.00 was for the construction of four general learning areas, a music/drama room, and a music tutorial area.)

The fee remissions are slightly higher than in some comparable Category C schools: XX Christian School, with 196.5 FTEs claimed $1,556.31 (or $7.92 per student), and metro YY College with 607 FTEs claimed $24,589.66 (or $40.51 per student). This one, by contrast, claimed $16,341.23 (or $65.90 per student).

It is on top of these combined state-federal funds that Le Duff preposterously proposes that the state Government now pick upall or part of the tab for private school capital works projects.

Le Duff is obviously worried that the fallout from the sub-prime crisis in the US, together with Kevin07’s crusade against inflation (fought through the agency of interest rate rises) will drive some of the working and middle class parents who have scrimped and saved to put their children into private schools, to return to the public education sector.

The Le Duff bluff also comes as private school fees rose by around 7 per cent on last year’s levels, and as a promised tax rebate on private school fees disappeared along with its sponsor, the reactionary and anti-public sector Howard Liberal Government.

Le Duff can sense a swing back to the public school system and is worried that the reckless plans for expansion that have characterized schools in the private sector might not be able to be paid for, or would need to be paid for through additional steep rises in fees.

And to further contextualize the issue, a report commissioned by the Howard Government into the so-called “socio-economic status” (SES) funding model that it has used to increase funding to the private sector shows that at the federal level, private schools have been overpaid more than $2 billion from a funding formula already rigged in favour of the wealthiest and most exclusive schools.

The outgoing Howard Government kept the report secret, but shamefully and to no-one’s great surprise, so did the incoming Rudd education “revolutionaries”!

They refused FOI applications to release the report, which has now been leaked to the media.

This Government foolishly went to the polls late last year with the promise that it would maintain Howard’s funding of the privates, and that “no school would get less than it does now”.

The main findings of the report were:

Cost of maintaining the existing SES system would be $26.5 billion over the next four-year cycle.
-Grants to half the private schools in the country are not assessed according to the SES formula.
-Over the last 4 years $2 billion in payments to schools which had their funding maintained at higher levels than they would get if the federal funding formula was strictly applied.
-60 per cent of mainstream Catholic schools and 25 per cent of independent schools are funded above what would be their SES entitlement
-At least half will continue to receive $2.7 billion in overpayments over the next four years.
-Some will be overpaid by as much as $23 million each in the next funding cycle
-Inequity lies in the guarantee from the inception of the SES formula in2001 that no school will receive less money than it did the previous year.
-Transitional arrangements made for Catholic schools to preserve their funding entitlements at 2000 levels, even if they qualified for less, when they joined the SES funding system in 2001havecontinued at artificially inflated levels for eight years, despite their transitional nature.
-Rejection of private school lobby's argument that the extra funding helps keep a lid on the fees parents pay. Points out that fees have continued to rise significantly.
-42 per cent of Funding Maintained schools (87) increased their fees by more than 40 per cent during the period 2000 to 2004 compared to 24 per cent of SES-funded schools (164).
-Number of Funding Maintained schools with annual fees below $2500 fell by 24 per cent (48) compared to a fall of 10 per cent (67) for SES-funded schools."
-Private schools identified as receiving an already too-generous share of government funding are exploiting a loophole to claim even more money from taxpayers - by calling new schools ‘campuses’ of an over-generously funded ‘parent’ school rather than new schools

Given the above, and Le Duff would have been a poor spokesperson for the private school lobby had he not known of the above, at least in broad outline, it makes even more reprehensible his demands for “more…more…more…” from the state Government.

Indeed the whole issue of the inequitable SES funding model, and of the rorting it has allowed, requires nothing less than a new version of the Whitlam-era Schools Commission, that is, a national enquiry into the scandalous running down of public education and the corrupt promotion of a tax-payer funded private alternative.

Such a commission should have the power to make Rudd’s superficial “Education Revolution” a genuinely transformative sweep of the whole field of public and private schooling, one that ensures that a free, secular and compulsory system of the highest quality is available to all, that schools catering to the particular needs of minority ethnic or religious communities are funded by the government, and regulated and registered for curriculum and learning accountability, but that parents who seek to place their offspring in exclusive elite schools for reasons of simple snobbery do so entirely at their own cost.

We don’t set up alternative systems of roads for the exclusive use of the drivers of luxury imported cars, and should the same ever come into existence, we would be outraged if a single cent of public money was expended on them.

The same principle should be brought to education.

[1] This is designed to help schools to offset some of the loss of income arising from remissions given for economic hardship and as sibling concessions in a school year. In addition, income loss arising from written off unpaid fees/bad debts associated with the difficult economic circumstances of some families may also be claimed. School Card students are removed from this criterion, so the remissions only apply to non-School Card holders.

Stand and Deliver! Publicly Funded Private Schools to Share Facilities

Public Schools around the country should immediately begin to make contact with their local private schools and begin to make an assessment of the private school facilities that must be made available to public school students.

Ten years of the Howard Coalition Government and its outrageously private school biased funding formula has clearly generated an embarrassment of riches for private schools. Well, at least it seems the newly elected Rudd Labor Government and Minister Julia Gillard are embarrassed and are attempting redress the gluttonous private schools’ plunder.

Announced on Sunday 20 January, the Federal Government's $62.5 million Local Schools Working Together Program aims to encourage the creation of first-class shared facilities between government and non-government schools.

Undoubtedly the first class facilities already exist in private schools and the funds allocated by the Federal Government could be well spent in the transport of public school students to access the private school facilities.

The powerful private school lobby group South Australian Association of Independent Schools Executive Director Gary LeDuff stated in the Sunday Mail that "In principle I support the idea, but we would need to work through the complexities of the source of funds. In the independent schools sector, on average 85 per cent of funds for capital works comes from the parents. No state government funding is available for capital works.”

“How do you then share that sort of facility when the rest of the community may not be contributing a fair amount of the costs?"

While LeDuff omits that the funding formula established by the former Federal Government and maintained by the Rudd Government has been siphoning more public funding into private schools than they know what to do with, he goes onto hint at a backlash from private schools required to engage in the programme.

As for fairness, “the rest of the community” – the two thirds of Australian families who send their children to public schools have already contributed a “fair amount of the cost” through taxes paid to federal and state governments. The “rest of the community” have also paid the cost because students in public schools have gone without while private school facilities have flourished. Hard to put a dollar value on that!

This Rudd Labor Government initiative is useful in the short term to begin to address the inequities of funding but the Government is fully aware of the growing tide of public antagonism toward a funding formula that is exacerbating a growing cultural and educational divide between the haves and have nots.

The Rudd Government should immediately invest a small fraction of the budget surplus - a sum of $2.9 billion annually – into public schools across the nation to ensure all schools meet the MCEETYA determined National Resource Standard. Then it should develop an equitable and fair mechanism for the allocation of funds to public and private schools.

Now that would be a fiscally responsible, interest rate neutral, nation building education revolution.

In the meanwhile call your local private school and carry out your own audit. Oh and tell the kids to pack their bathers!

School funding stopped being cricket long ago

We reprint today two articles from the Sydney Morning Herald on the scandalous over-funding of private schools, a situation that the new Federal Labor Government has pledged to maintain for at least another four years.


Author: Gerard Noonan
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald (11,Wed 09 Jan 2008)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Australians like to consider themselves as belonging to one of the more egalitarian countries. Perhaps that's why this week's challenge to the sense of fairness on the cricket paddock has caused such ructions. What, Australians being boorish, pushy and sneaky? Come off the grass.

It's not only in the pampered professional cricketing circus arena where Australia simply doesn't get it. A far more fundamental, but important, example of how Australia has got it wrong - really wrong - has to do with the education of the nation's children and the way some get just about everything while many others get very little.

In October 2005, when he was a humble (of sorts) frontbencher in the Labor Opposition, Kevin Rudd gave a speech of unusual clarity, erudition and prescience to an eclectic audience at the University of NSW on the role of morals in the life of a politician. They had no reason then to believe they were listening to a bloke who would be leading the country in a little over two years. Certainly not one who has it in his sway to shape and remake a society, however conservative he might appear.

What Rudd said was interesting not simply because few leading Australian pollies dare stray into the potential graveyard of moral philosophy. He made a passionate case that the real role of religion (in his case a blend of liberal Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism) in secular politics was to challenge inequality wherever it emerged. This was especially so for the creation ofpublic policy that affected the less powerful in society.

As the Herald education editor, Anna Patty, has revealed today, Australia's educational funding model is under renewed scrutiny, and justifiably so. It is so flawed that even a hand-picked committee of federal government bureaucrats has produced a report that says that the system stinks. It recognises that the so-called Socio-Economic Status (SES) system of calculating a school's federal funding eligibility delivers up billions of dollars in a most unfair and discriminatory way.

The report, produced behind closed doors over the past 18 months, with only selected political hangers-on and lobbyists from the independent school sector getting a look-in, is not public. The Herald has been trying to obtain it, including through freedom of information laws for months, to no avail. Until now, that is. While Patty has only had a glimpse of this secret report's entire findings - access gained through the back door - its conclusions are stark.

At its simplest, the report recognises what every serious policy expert of good will and common sense in the education sector has known for nearly a decade. An education funding formula that rewards six out of every 10 private schools with far more than the formula says they should be paid is deeply flawed. These statistics include the vast Catholic network in which 20 per cent of all Australian children are educated. These are not just peanuts in overpayments. They are multimillion-dollar overpayments to schools, even by the lax standards of the SES formula, which the previous government had to adjust twice to accommodate the embarrassing largesse.

Rudd and his Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, must know this. The more honest senior players from the Catholic, Anglican and other private school groups acknowledge privately that it is unfair, even to grumpy curmudgeons like me. But to win the recent election Labor stamped out any possibility of a re-run of a feared "politics of envy" challenge by the Coalition, which had artfully used such a ploy in destroying the entirely reasonable, if culturally unacceptable, challenge to the status quo in 2004 by the former Labor leader Mark Latham.

Rudd and Gillard insisted they would keep the previous government's funding formula in place for the next four-year period, even though they had argued against it when it was imposed in 1999. That means that the system will, if Rudd's social conscience does not kick in, remain in place until at least 2012.

Few in this country seem to realise just how far out of whack Australia's school funding system is among the developed world.

The OECD places Australia in a category of its own in the way public funding is directed towards private school interests, which can then charge fees. Many industrialised countries provide funding through taxation to private and religious schools that meet national curriculum standards - some even provide 100 per cent of all costs - but the funding is cut off or severely curtailed if fees are charged by a school.

The policies are aimed at providing choice of educational type without distorting how much is directed from the public purse to well-endowed schools.

Here is one instance where those in power with a professed strong sense of social justice need to re-examine an election commitment - probably given in good faith - which has a big distorting impact on the development and legitimate aspirations of the nation's youth.

School funding flaws hidden

Author: Anna Patty Education Editor
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald (1,Wed 09 Jan 2008)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A SECRET federal report into funding for private schools has found that many are receiving more than their fair share of taxpayers' money.

The Herald understands the federal Education Department's review of private school funding has identified entrenched inequity in the Commonwealth system. The report, which was completed last year but kept under wraps by the Howard government before the November election, recommends transitional arrangements to wean some schools off inflated levels of funding.

The Rudd Government - which made an election promise to maintain the existing system that delivers more than $6 billion in subsidies to private schools each year - is now faced with the department's own criticism of the funding system, which measures each school's entitlement according to the wealth of families who attend.

The report found that many schools are being overpaid as part of the Howard government's "no losers" policy which ensured no school would receive less money than it had in the past.

That was despite a review in 2004 that found the socio-economic status (SES) of some schools had improved, entitling them to less money.

About 60 per cent of independent and Catholic schools have had their funding maintained at artificially inflated levels and are exceptions to the rule of the funding formula.

The Australian Anglican Schools Network said new schools were not able to access the same levels of funding as older schools that have had their funding frozen at historic levels.

The network's president, Peta Smith, has said a review of inequities in the Commonwealth funding model was long overdue because some schools had government funding maintained at levels that new schools in the same area could not access.

In her confidential submission to the Commonwealth inquiry into the SES funding scheme, she said the system of funding schools at artificial levels was unsustainable.

"Funding maintenance is not sustainable in the long term as it ignores the logic of needs-based funding being assessed on the SES score that is at the core of the SES model," the submission, obtained under freedom of information laws, says.

However, Ms Smith said there were some schools that needed to have their funding maintained.

Christian Schools Australia has been arguing for a greater share of funding for its low-fee schools and hopes to strike a similar deal to that achieved by the Catholic school system, which will receive $12 billion in funding in the present four-year funding agreement, which runs to the end of this year.

The Greens NSW MP John Kaye said the department's review was bad news for the Rudd Government.

"In order to take the heat off the education issue in last year's federal election, they committed Labor to the SES funding model without worrying about its deep flaws," Dr Kaye said. "Now they will have to work their way out of trouble, probably by burying the report and papering over the massive cracks in private school subsidies."

Dr Kaye said it was outrageous the federal government review was conducted behind closed doors and that the final report had been buried.

"More than $6.2 billion is distributed each year to private schools under current arrangements and this is tipped to rise to more than $7.5 billion by the end of the next funding period," he said.

"With such large sums of money and such massive impacts on public education, the Government has an obligation to publish the results of the review."

Let them sell cake!!

Is this what it will come to - a lamington stall - to make up the funding shortfall for public education if the Howard government is re-elected after November 24?



See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf5J-XB3BVA

More teachers and laptops needed - the education revolution must tackle the capitalist press!

One of the contributing factors to the growing psychological complexity of teaching in Australia is the continual denigration of, and hostility towards, teachers in the mass media.

These is particularly true of the print media, and of the Murdoch press above all others.

The Murdoch flagship, The Australian, is the worst of the lot.

Consider its editorial response to Rudd’s promise to provide each student in Years 9-12 with their own computer. The editorial was headed “MORE TEACHERS NEEDED, NOT MORE LAPTOPS – The education revolution must tackle union power” (16/11/07).

Let’s deal with its treatment of Rudd’s policy first.

The editorial states “Labor’s plan ignores the fact that OECD figures show that all Australian students already have access to computers at school.”

As any teacher or student would know, “having access” to a school computer doesn’t mean much when there is continual competition to book a class into a computer lab. It doesn’t mean much when computers are old and slow.

And “access” doesn’t equal equity across school systems: elite Scotch College in Adelaide requires each student to have a laptop, private Westminster School does well to have 500-plus computers for its 1100 students, but highly regarded Glenunga International High, a state school, has only 250 for 1250 students. Rudd’s promise of high-speed broadband and a computer for each Year 9-12 student will solve the problem of competition for access and ensure equity across school systems. In state schools in particular, it will free funds to target other resource requirements.

The editorial also states: “We question also whether parents may not ultimately be more persuaded by Mr Howard’s pledge to fix the core curriculum and get the basics right than Mr Rudd’s promise to promote computer use as a time when a pressing issue is to get children to switch the computer off and take some real exercise.”

To advance a populist argument that kids need to get off computers and get some exercise denies the OECD finding that “School students who are established computer users tend to perform better in key school subjects…” (OECD, “Are students ready for a technology-rich world’, 2006). I doubt that ACHPER, as the peak body promoting healthy exercise, would target the use of computers in classrooms in its advocacy for increased levels of fitness.

And really, this sentence should read “We hope that parents will be more persuaded…” because the intention clearly is to mould public opinion into support for the Howard Government.

But note the insidious teacher-bashing behind the claim that the core curriculum needs “fixing” and that the basics of education are “wrong”. This is where the sub-title about tackling “union power” comes into its own.

The editorial states: “A big obstacle (to lifting the quality of teaching staff) is the socialist collective bent of the teacher unions, which remain hostile to any system that links teacher pay to performance outcomes or even different skills sets.”

And it is the lack of performance pay that is keeping the young away from teaching: “…university students considering a career are reluctant to choose teaching because it has a rigid pay system, based on tenure rather than performance.”

However, as careers counselors know, the lack of a performance pay system is not what is keeping students from becoming teachers. Poor pay compared to comparable professions certainly is. The stress of teaching (workload, class size, behaviour management) certainly is. The lack of respect for teachers compounded by continually negative media reportage certainly is. Or at least, this is what senior students have repeatedly told me for many years. None have cited the lack of a performance pay system. Nor has one been adopted in Finland where “the profession of teacher is now the most popular among upper-secondary students, even more popular than careers in IT, medicine or business” (Phi Delta Kappan Oct 2007 p. 109). Finns are very protective of the high status of teachers and provide small classes and decent conditions. They don’t stand for their teachers being continually disrespected in the media.

The editorial closes with a call to “Anyone who is going to fix Australia’s education problem (to) be brave enough to stand up to the teachers’ unions…”

Regardless of which party wins office after November 24, we will need to remain strong and united, defending the very high standards of education in Australia (confirmed in the OECD’s 2006: Education at a Glance), and challenging the continuing denigration of our profession by media hacks tied to the Business Council of Australia and its cronies.

Bishop announces soup kitchens for elite private colleges

(Scotch College, Adelaide, above - one of the beneficiaries of Education Minister Bishop's soup kitchen initiative. The college exists to train young entrants to the ruling class, not the workforce, hence this proud proclamation on its website: "While a number of Australian schools have abandoned the Three R's for general studies aimed at "occupational competency", Scotch College has added two more R's: Responsibility and Relevance." Puke!!!)

The Federal Coalition Education Minister Julie Bishop today announced funding for the establishment of soup kitchens at the entrances to some of Australia’s wealthiest private schools.

The move comes days after the Prime Minister, John Howard, announced tax rebates for school fees.

In announcing the soup kitchens, which had their origins in the Great Depression of the 1930s, Ms Bishop said that “welfare for the rich” was a core value of the Coalition Government.

“Maintaining the privileges of the wealthy is an essential component of developing aspiration in the poor,” she said.

“We showed, with the Prime Minister’s tax rebate scheme for school fees that we are determined to help elite private schools survive.”

Ms Bishop said she was disappointed that many in the community were unaware that a number of elite privates were struggling to retain enrolments.

“We have been pumping money into them in an effort to compensate for the lack of students,” she revealed.

Annesley College, with the biggest enrolment decline during the years of the Howard Government, a drop of 38 per cent, has seen its Federal funding increase by 61 per cent in constant dollar terms. In nominal dollar terms (i.e. without adjusting the 1996 figures for inflation) the increase in funding was exactly 100 per cent!

Scotch College, with the second-largest enrolment decline of 14 per cent has had its Federal funding increased by 146 per cent (see below), whilst Prince Alfred College, which lost 8 per cent of its students over the eleven year period, had its funding from the public purse increased by 237 per cent!

“Obviously, the wealthy need our compassion and support,” said the Minister.

“Soup kitchens at the entrances of Scotch, St Peters, Annesley and other elite privates will also be available to parents as they drop their children off at school.”

“No-one driving a child to college in a Beemer or a Merc should be doing so on an empty stomach,” she said.

The impact of the Howard years on Public Education

by Correna Haythorpe

Since the Howard Government was elected to office in 1996, it has reduced federal funding for public education from 42% of the total school’s education budget to 35% despite the fact that 70% of students are educated in public schools. If this trend continues, federal funding will be down to 31% by 2010.

In a recent Australia Rising address, John Howard made his views very clear about public education when he responded to a question about school vouchers. He expressed opposition to a wholesale voucher approach to education funding because that “undermined the fundamental value and strength of public education as the safety net and guarantor of a reasonable quality education in this country.” Note the word “reasonable” which sets a low bench mark for Howard Government policies on public education.

There has been a massive shifting of funds from public education to private schooling and this comes with the government rhetoric of “choice”, otherwise known as shifting the cost of education to parents by convincing the populace that public education is failing our students. It reflects the Howard/Bishop view that quality education should be located in the private system, with the public school providing a “safety net” for the poor and the dysfunctional – those whom private schools would not accept.

In the run up to the 2007 federal election, the Howard Government has engaged with the insincerity of pork barrelling. In education, there has been an injection of $489 million of additional public funds into private schools which are located in marginally held electorates. The 2007/8 federal budget delivered a $1.7 billion increase to private schools over the next five years, a total of $7.5 billion. Public schools received a $300 million increase taking their total to $3.4 billion. This same budget also ignored preschools and TAFE.

Further analysis of the funding issue must focus on corporate sponsorship and tied funding. Federal Education Minister, Julie Bishop, has stated that schools should explore corporate sponsorship because it is beyond the capacity of governments to give them the resources they deserve.

She also argues that “increasing links between business and schools would enhance student learning, their employability and skills”. Under a corporate sponsorship arrangement, the question can be asked about how schools would maintain their independence in curriculum delivery and professional matters. In what capacity would business be involved in the daily management of the school, the students and staff? How long before we see a “MacDonald’s syllabus” in the Vocational Education sector? Corporate sponsorship is just another strategy employed by the federal government in their refusal to face their responsibility and duty to appropriately fund public education.

In recent years, public schools have faced the issue of tied funding used to enforce implementation of Federal government imperatives. Grants for flagpoles in schools came with the proviso that a Liberal or National Party politician must “unveil” the flagpole. The A-E grade directive that all schools must produce a report that had a common grade was tied to the threat to withdraw federal education funding for each state. This federal attempt to undermine the professional judgement of educators to assess their students, placed enormous pressure on teachers to engage in a grading process, which was seen by many to be psychologically damaging to students.

From 2009 the Federal Government(if re-elected) will use tied funding to require state education authorities to introduce “initiatives” such as performance-based pay for teachers, reporting against national benchmarks with school and state comparisons (otherwise known as league tables) and greater principal autonomy in hiring and firing of staff. State ministers are likely to accept this funding blackmail in order to have the $$$$ for education. Effectively, this will be a move away from hard won employee rights and entitlements, wage security and the concept of equal pay for equal work. It also has the potential to create a staffing crisis in socio economically disadvantaged schools as performance pay will be based on meeting benchmarks set by the federal government and not about delivering a curriculum that enables each student to achieve optimal learning outcomes.

Tied funding has been used recently in the TAFE sector to blackmail state governments into offering all employees Australian Workplace Agreements or face the loss of federal funding. Combine this with a serious national skills shortage, chronic under funding of TAFE, the duplication of services via the Australian Technical Colleges (which are yet to produce graduates despite millions of dollars of public funding) and you have more than 300,000 people being turned away from TAFE since 1998.

The inability of the Howard Government to engage in genuine consultation and partnership with Aboriginal communities about the educational well being of Indigenous students is a national disgrace. It is estimated that in the Northern Territory alone, there are as many as 5 000 Indigenous students who miss out on access to basic secondary education and many thousands of Indigenous children who miss out on preschool and early childhood education programs. The Howard government has shown its lack of commitment to the appropriate resourcing and implementation of long – term strategies needed to provide quality schooling and to address the educational disadvantage faced by Aboriginal communities. Instead the federal government has opted for a quick fix based on political opportunism in the face of an election it looks likely to lose.

For migrant and refugee students (non English speaking background) John Howard expects “[new Australians] to master the common language of English” yet his government is responsible for the scandalous under-funding of essential English language programs for NESB migrant and refugee students. For the provision of required English language services, it is estimated that the current federal funding shortfall is $85 million per annum.

The 2007 Benchmarks - Work and Family Policies in Election 2007 state “A high quality early childhood education and care system is a public good and so requires significant public investment”. As previously mentioned, the Howard government continues to ignore the early childhood sector by refusing to accept responsibility for funding and supporting quality early childhood learning. Research shows that by the time children begin the compulsory years of schooling many of the factors contributing to future inequality are evident. Disparities in access to early childhood learning and the corporate takeover of childcare facilities by profit driven companies further exacerbate those inequalities.

In the past 11 years, the Howard government has continually undermined the professional and public face of the teaching workforce. The recent attacks on history teachers - "a fragmented stew of themes and issues.... dominated by Marxist, feminist or green interpretations of history"; and women - "ageing female primary school teachers are contributing to the nation's obesity epidemic" contribute to the undermining of public schools and educators, values, cultural tolerance and understanding.

The Howard Government education policies have damaged public schools, educators, students, families and the community. However, educators and school communities will continue to fight for a vibrant, strong system where all students can be part of a quality, secular and equitably resourced public education.

We owe it to the children of Australia- our future- to ensure that this happens.

Principal Association slanders public education and teachers

What are the principal associations up to?

This morning's front pager in the Advertiser is a real wake-up call as to what we can expect if the principal associations-backed ticket of AEU Presidential candidate Jan Webber is successful in the forthcoming AEU elections.

Essentially, the principals have gone on strike, refusing to advertise Round One vacancies in the 2008 placement process.

This is the round in which teachers in the Priority Placement Pool are matched first against vacancies.

The impression given by the Primary Principals Association, and splashed as a sub-heading across the Advertiser, is that this results in schools being forced to accept substandard staff.

This is an outrageous slander of the public education system and a despicable attack on teachers by a crew that wants to run the union!

It is worth restating the composition of the Priority Placement Pool from the current Enterprise Agreement:

2.2.1 The Priority Placement Pool would be centrally managed and contain:

2.2.1.1 Teachers with an approved Work Cover claim who need to be placed would be given a priority.
2.2.1.2 Permanent teachers who have an approved priority compassionate placement request….
2.2.1.3 Teachers who still hold a guaranteed right of return to the metropolitan area from the country….
2.2.1.4 Country teachers seeking transfers to metropolitan locations who are eligible…
2.2.1.5 Teachers who are eligible to transfer and are in at least their 4th year of continuous service in an Index of Educational Disadvantage Category 1 school
2.2.1.6 Teachers who are eligible to transfer and are in at least their 5th year of continuous service in an Index of Educational Disadvantage Category 2 school
2.2.1.7 Teachers who have been placed as involuntary PATS for a period of at least 4 years.

These seven categories of teachers together comprise a group of 350, only a few of whom are involved in underperformance issues.

But all teachers and all schools in the public system are now in doubt in relation to their quality because of this contemptuous action of the Primary Principals Association.

Principals who advertised some 700 vacancies for Round One in 2007 are deliberately withholding vacancies this year. Only 230 vacancies have been advertised, fewer than the number of teachers in the PPP.

Let us be clear about what the principal associations want.

Principal associations want to jettison the rights of permanent teachers to a placement.
They are happy to leave teachers forever in remote and difficult schools.

They made this clear in the latest edition of SAPPA News, where Glyn O'Brien, SAPPA President writes: “Currently there is an emphasis still on placement of permanent staff at the expense of true local selection.”

She adds, “SAPPA will continue to expect merit selection.”

This view was also expressed by secondary principals last year in a paper produced by their association's Human Resources sub-committee.

It is a view that means the abolition of the rights of permanent teachers and the opportunity for transfer dependent on the whim of a principal!

We know there is an entrenched culture of bullying both within DECS itself, and out in the schools.

This same group of principals, who aspire to lead the Australian Education Union in SA, are set to further entrench the capacity of principals to bully and intimidate staff by their opposition to the current selection process.

And they have no scruples in fostering a public perception of a “Second Class” public education system, to quote today's main Advertiser heading, in order to get their way.

Andrew Gohl - Speech to Governors Leadership Foundation

The following is the text of a speech by Andrew Gohl, President of the SA Branch of the Australian Education Union, at the Governors Leadership Foundation on Tuesday September 4, 2007.

It is indeed a pleasure to be talking to the future leaders of South Australia. I could talk about the allegation of Maoists in control of the History/English/Geography curriculum or outcomes based learning, phonics, literacy, numeracy or I could talk to you about A-E grades for 6 year olds, the skills shortage; even performance pay for teachers would be an interesting topic.

However, I want to talk to you about public education and public education funding and choice. The Australian Education Union is an unashamed supporter of public education. Oftentimes the AEU is the lone voice of support and advocacy for Public Education. I have no need to defend the excellence in public schools and I don’t need to cite the untold successes of students from public schools.

However, the AEU wants Governments, State and federal, to fund public education in vastly greater proportions than they do currently. The AEU believes that access to quality public education system is a right of all students regardless of their socioeconomic status, where they live, their religion or country of origin.

The government mantra for education has been ‘choice’. That parents should be able to choose what school their child attends. It’s hard to argue with this. Choice is the right of an individual in a democratic society. Choice is exercising the power of a consumer in a market driven society. Choice is good.

Actually, choice for many in our society is a myth. Choice is the luxury of those who can afford it. The more one earns the greater choice one has. I hasten to add that greater choice does not necessarily translate to the best decisions. Just ask Paris.

So, choice in education. The Federal Government and State Government support it. Opposition at State and federal levels support it. Who wouldn’t? The question most significant is how does the federal and state governments' funding of public schools compared to private schools impact upon choice and fundamentally who has a choice, who has no choice and what does it mean for children who have no choice. Social justice, equity and equal opportunity are terms out of fashion it sometimes seems, but are central to the deliberations of the AEU and others fair minded in our community. For that which creates injustice and social inequity also breeds resentment, hostility, and anger or disengagement and apathy and self abuse.

A 2003 analysis of Federal Budget paper 1 indicates that Public schools received 12% ($2262m) of Federal Government funding, while private schools received 40% ($4373m). State and Territory Governments contributed 88% ($16588m) to public schools, while private schools received 17% ($1859m). Some additional 43% of private school funding was from private sources.

In percentage terms public schools receive 63% and private schools 37% of all school funding. Public schools look to be doing pretty well.

But factor in the national student enrolment data sourced from the ABS. In February 2004 the number of students attending government schools is 53% of the total number of students in the nation and so the amount per student in the public sector is $8361 compared to $10275 per student in the private sector.

The last time federally public and private schools received an equal share of funding was 1982. To the period 1993 funding to the public sector remained pretty stable at around 45% of total federal government funding. In the period 1996 – 2007 the public education share of federal government funding has declined from 43% to 34%.

The Federal Government asserts that this is because there are more students now enrolled in private schools, but in 1996 for every $1 spent on public school students the federal government spent $4.40 on private school students. By 2005 that amount increased to $5.63 for every $1 spent on public school students.

And these figures will improve for private schools. The very formula by which the federal government funds private schools is based upon the average cost of educating a student in the public sector. Public schools can be found right across rural and isolated Australia. The costs of country education are higher. Public education has by the far the greatest number of students with special needs. Education costs for special needs students are greater. All this goes to the average cost per student in the public sector which is allocated on a per student basis to private schools.

Almost all social justice payments to public schools raise the per capita cost and flow on to private schools.

Private schools, generally speaking aren’t as frequent in the country, and can be selective in the students accepted into the school. The net result is lower costs for a more homogeneous group of privately educated students. Those funds left over contribute to more facilities.

And if you doubt these figures take a drive past your local public and compare it with your local private. New buildings and facilities equals new funding. That’s a simple equation.

Well, so what? Back to the rhetoric of choice. While the costs of private education, especially the huge growth in low fee religious schools have decreased making private education more accessible to middle Austrlia it is clear that for many, many Australians the only choice is Public Education. This includes parents who indeed have a choice and choose public.

There is an obligation on state and federal governments to ensure that public education for those with no choice is not some residualised system but a well funded, vibrant challenging public education system that outwardly and inwardly demonstrates excellence and quality teaching with rejuvenated building, facilities and resources - the external features upon which many parents make their choice.

A recent announcement by the Federal treasurer indicated that Australia managed a budget surplus of some $17b! That is $17b budget surplus per annum!

A 2003 report commissioned by MCEETYA (Ministers Council for Education Employment Training and Youth Affairs) indicated that in order for the 95% of public schools in the nation to reach the national benchmark described in the Adelaide Declaration of Schooling was $2.6b per annum. Clearly the funds are available, but the political will is lacking.

You know, Keating and Costello duel over which treasurer put Australia in a stronger financial position. I assert that in fact it has been the provision of a universally free, secular and compulsory public education since federation which has enabled the majority of Australians to meet their educational aspirations which in turn has contributed to Australia’s social and economic prosperity. Public education has been a foundation stone of a civil Australian society and the pathway for millions to participate fruitfully in building a nation. Public education has provided opportunities for all students regardless of religion or race or creed to learn together be successful and value each other’ s potential and respect each other’s limitations.

A residualised public education system amidst well funded private schools cloistered by religion or ideology I believe presents a threat to the long term social stability of Australian society. Good leaders recognise threats and neutralize them. I hope that in my brief time today I have been able to convey to you the threat to public education and its important role in Australian society and I urge you, leaders all, to support public education and lend your voice from time to time for a fairer funding deal from state and in particular federal governments.