Labor is being coy about support for private schools

IN POLITICS, timing is everything. In the lead-up to the 2007 federal election, Kevin Rudd and his education spokesman Stephen Smith endorsed the Howard government’s non-government school funding model and promised, if elected, that no Catholic or independent school would be financially worse off.

But now, with a federal election due before the end of the year and the Rudd Government ahead in the polls, Education Minister Julia Gillard refuses to repeat the promise and to guarantee proper funding to non-government schools.

Twice in the past six months, on being asked whether non-government schools would be financially better or worse off as a result of the imminent review of the current funding model due to expire in 2012, Gillard has refused to answer.

On the most recent occasion, at a press conference at Gumdale State School last month – after being asked twice whether Catholic and independent schools would suffer financially as a result of this year’s review – she evaded the question.

Her refusal to say whether Catholic and independent school will be better or worse off as a result of the proposed review is understandable. In the lead-up to the 2007 federal election, the ALP, to win, had to appear conservative and attract the votes of non-government school parents.

This is no longer the case. Ahead in the polls, Labor no longer feels the need to assure non-government schools and parents that their interests will be protected.

While nowhere near as blunt as former Labor leader Mark Latham’s hit list of “wealthy private schools”, there is mounting evidence Gillard and traditional ALP supporters such as the Australian Education Union are keen to undermine the success and independence of non-government schools and to restrict their growth.

One way to weaken non-government schools – even though their enrolments increased in the 10 years to 2008 by 21.9 per cent, compared to a rise in government school enrolments of only 1.1per cent – is to reduce funding.

Gillard describes the present socio-economic status funding model as “one of the most complex, opaque and confusing in the developed world”. The teachers union regularly attacks it as inequitable and unfair.

Ignored is the fact, based on a Productivity Commission 2007-08 figures, that whereas total government funding to state school students is $12,639 a head, non-government schools receive only $6606 a student. So every student who attends a non-government school saves the taxpayer about $6000.

It’s also the case that – whereas government school funding has increased between 2003-04 and 2007-08 by 1.6 per cent in real terms each year – non-government school funding has decreased by 0.1 per cent a year.

In addition to cutting funding, another strategy employed by ALP governments, state and federal, is to compromise the autonomy of non-government schools and to deny them the flexibility and freedom to best meet the needs and aspirations of their communities.

The Rudd Government’s Education Revolution involves a highly centralised and bureaucratic approach in areas like the national curriculum, testing, teacher registration, literacy and numeracy.

All roads lead to Canberra and, as compliance is tied to funding, non-government schools have to conform.

As well as losing control over curriculum, non-government schools are also being forced to implement the ALP’s left-of-centre social agenda related to diversity and difference and overcoming what the government defines as disadvantage.

The blueprint for Australian education for the next four to five years – the ALP-inspired Melbourne Declaration – states that all schools must provide an education, “that is free from discrimination based on gender, language, sexual orientation, pregnancy, culture, ethnicity, religion, health or disability, socioeconomic background or geographic location”.

Based on events in Britain, where most of the ALP’s Education Revolution has been copied, the danger is that faith-based schools, in particular, will no longer be able to discriminate in terms of who they employ and who they enrol.

A more extreme way of controlling Catholic and independent schools – advocated by Bronwyn Pyke when she was by Victoria’s education minister and by non-government school critics such as Jack Keating, a Melbourne University researcher – is to integrate non-government schools into the state system.

Instead of maintaining Australia’s current tripartite school system, in which Catholic, independent and government schools compete and have their own unique identity and mission, under an integrated system, non-government schools would be controlled by government.

It’s ironic that – at the time state and federal education ministers are calling for higher standards and stronger performance – Gillard refuses to guarantee proper funding to Catholic and independent schools, the very schools, even after adjusting for student background, that achieve the best results.

Source: Courier Mail