The Gonski review needs to recommend one thing – spend as much as education costs

Thompson, G. (2012) The Gonski review needs to recommend one thing – spend as much as education costs. The Conversation, 20 February .

Abstract

At first glance, the Gonski review presents an opportunity to correct the funding gap between “winners” (understood as the private schools) and “losers” (understood as the public schools).

And it is timely. The funding of public schools in Australia is a disgrace.

While there is mileage to be made out of characterising private education as servicing polo-playing, trust-fund babies, some Catholic and independent schools are also not funded as well as they should be.

A nationwide problem

Richard Teese has written on The Conversation that low fee-paying Catholics schools are places which use funding to “filter their intakes and outperform government schools”.

I have to confess I worked in one of those schools until 2009 in the eastern suburbs of Perth. The school enrolled whoever it could, supported those who could not pay fees and underperformed in some measures when compared with public schools in the area. Perhaps the West Coast experience is different from the East Coast – an interesting challenge and one that Premier Barnett will be quick to hold against the “othersiders”.

Item Type:	Non-refereed Article
Murdoch Affiliation:	School of Education
Publisher:	The Conversation Media Group
Copyright:	The Author
Publishers Website:	http://theconversation.com/au
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/29977

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