||So doesnt those stats actually suggest that with 1/3 of kids in private schoosl, then they actually are taking the burden off public schools? ||
you'd think that was obvious, wouldnt you!
Not necessarily - in practice, the cost-effectiveness argument doesn't wash, given that Federal Govt education funding policies have so heavily favoured privately-schooled students over the past 15-odd years...
Thanks to Buzz, we already know that only about 1/3 (not 2/3, Longy!) of Aussie school students are in the private sector, now let us look at some of the Howardian Era stats...
http://www.aeufederal.org.au/Publications/2009/JMcMorrowpaper2009.pdfUpdating the evidence: the Rudd Government’s intentions for schools
Jim McMorrow
December 2008
About the author:
Dr Jim McMorrow is an Honorary Adjunct Associate Professor, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, and a former senior policy adviser and public servant at Commonwealth and State levels.
This paper augments the analysis of funding trends and projections in Dr McMorrow’s previous report, Reviewing the evidence: Issues in Commonwealth funding of government and nongovernment schools in the Howard and Rudd years, Australian Education Union, August 2008.
This paper examines the Rudd Government’s funding decisions for schools since the May 2008 Budget and the analysis in my earlier report Reviewing the evidence: Issues in Commonwealth funding of government and non-government schools in the Howard and Rudd years (August, 2008).
It does so by examining the funding allocations for schools made through the two significant events that have occurred since the Budget: the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) and, more significantly, the package of additional funding agreed with the States and Territories through the Council of Australia
Governments (COAG)1.
These decisions provide a clearer picture of the Rudd Government’s funding intentions for schools, at least for the next five years.
First, some context. Reviewing the evidence examined the funding record of the
Howard Government, which by 2007-08 provided $1.4 billion more in real terms, or 68%, for government schools than it allocated at the outset of its administration in 1995-96.
Over the same period, the Howard Government funded non-government schools in real terms by more than $3.8 billion, or 137%, than in 1995-96.
These decisions underpinned the slide in the proportion of total Commonwealth schools funding allocated to government schools from 43.1% in 1995-96 to 34.9% in 2007-082.
Just over one-third of the funding increase for non-government schools was due to enrolment growth of some 200,000 additional students in that sector by 2006. The remaining increases arose from ‘policy’ decisions such as the introduction of the Socio-Economic Status (SES) funding scheme in 2001, at least three separate arrangements for providing funding increases for Catholic systems over the period and, finally, the indexation of Commonwealth grants for schools by a measure of Average Government Schools Recurrent Cost (AGSRC)3.
The Howard Government’s policy decisions for schools lacked integrity and were deeply flawed: they provided the biggest increases in funding for independent schools with the highest resources; they lacked an explicit rationale for determining funding needs; and around 60% of non-government schools have had to be funded outside the SES criteria, under ‘funding maintained’ and ‘funding guaranteed’ arrangements4.
...
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More Public Money for Private Education (Read 24838 times)
