Private schools take more than their fair share of federal schools funding

An interesting story, if a bit unfocussed. For my 2 cents worth, I once worked for a year as an outreach worker for a sexaul assault centre in Melbourne. I and a co-worker did group-work with young men in high schools who had been identified as ‘at risk’ or who had actually been involved in violence or sexual violence.

This led to some memorable moments, like when one kid peaked out and left a session. I went after him and in the ensuing conversation he admitted he was there because he had stabbed another student the week before.

My point being is that this happens everywhere but the difference in schools is striking. I went to one private school to run a course and not only did they have an indoor heated 25 m pool on campus, but they had their own luxury coach for school trips. Not a bus, a luxury coach. Not a local hire bus for the day, but a luxury coach that was the property of the school. In contrast, at a state high school I went to the library was housed in temporary demountable blocks.

Yet, by some rort of the Commonwealth funding system, private schools can get more government funding than state schools, despite charging fees in the thousands of dollars, having generous (tax deductible) donations from former students, and having literally millions of dollars in slush funds for ‘improvements’. I believe there was a story in The Mercury about these slush funds last year or so.

These schools for the wealthy usually have a small number of scholarships available for the ‘average family’, and whenever there are questions raised about their privileged funding position, they pull these families out to show that they are ‘acessible and open to all’.

There is ongoing data collection that shows, for example, Melbourne Uni’s undergraduate student population is composed of around, if memory serves, 92% private school leavers. I believe Monash Uni has a higher private school undergraduate student population.

One of the most common comments I heard, while wandering through the enrollment crowds at these (and RMIT’s) places was the social placement question of, ‘What school did you go to?’

I knew a school leaver from Footscray who got a place at Melbourne Uni, she left in second semester first year because of her Greek/Australian family originated accent and the fact that she made the mistake of wearing her moccas to uni on a few occasions. This completely isolated her from the overwhelming majority of ex-private school undergraduates. She ended up at Victoria University which, unsuprisingly, is based in the Western suburbs…

In Melbourne, there is one state school called University High which is actually across the road from Melbuni. It is a feeder school for the Uni and when I lived in Parkville a woman approached me asking to rent something, even a closet, so she could legitimately claim an address in the demographic catchment of the school. She could not afford private school fees and wanted her child to get the chance to go to Melbuni and the state school, University High, seemed the best chance.

At UTas, it can seem that the entire year 12 of Fahan, Hutchins, etc., move across to the uni. It would be interesting to find the statistics on private school versus state school students take-up by the university. It would also be interesting to find out what sort of ‘social death’ that students from these private schools who do not go on to university may experience.

The other thing that interested me about this story were the final quotes where apparently students were saying, “What’s your Money buying you ?” Is this a reference to the parents?

It is a bit like how private school kids in Victoria were shown to be calling their parents the ‘Rents’. As shown by the imfamous Corey and his party. Parents are the ‘Rents’ who provide the house and lifestyle for the children; fully paid for mobile phones, personal credit cards or Myer cards, cars bought for them on their 18th birthday and so on. Or in the case of one multi-millionaire, a 5.4 million dollar yacht for his 15 year-old daughter. These children will, of course, go on from their exclusive private schools to university.

Private schools take more than their fair share of federal schools funding, are over-represented at our universities and deny 99% of Australia’s kids access to uni and adequately resourced high schools.

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John Sumby