AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR THE
DEFENCE OF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS
PRESS RELEASE 351
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE
POOR
PARISH SCHOOL MYTH?
19 January 2010
The cry of ‘poor parish schools’ which
opened the gate to a trickle of taxpayer funding of religious schools in the 1960s
and then a flood when the Labor party got to power ( on the anti-Vietnam, not
the DLP vote) in 1973, is rarely heard in the twenty first century.
Instead, we now hear how the Catholic
sector has boosted its share of HSC honours (The Sydney Morning Herald, Weekend Edition January 16-17, 2010). And
how have they done this?
An SMH
analysis of official government figures for the past five years discovered that
the number of HAC students in the Catholic diocesan system who achieved more
than 90 per cent in each of their subjects had almost doubled.
The meaning of the figures was
questioned. The President of the Secondary Principles Council, Jim McAlpine,
gave two significant reasons:
1. The
top all-rounders list was a limited measure that did not capture all students
who achieved a ranking of 99 or above since it did not take into account
students who specialised in the sciences or the humanities – and so did not
score above 90 per cent in every subject.
2. There
is now a greater opportunity for Catholic schools to select students from
higher SES socio-economic status profiles.
This
second reason is the clue to what has happened to the ‘poor parish school
myth’. The preferential public and private funding of the corporate religious
sector over the past forty years and most particularly in the last decade has
tended to divide Australian society along both social class and religious fault
lines. Graduates from the Catholic and other religious systems are
over-represented in the political, legal and corporate elites of this country.
The
billions of dollars upon which the private sector has come to depend have
tended to relegate the public sector to a social ‘waste-basket’ system while
providing a haven for the wealthy and aspirational classes. This has been done
under the “Needs’ rhetoric. The Howard/Rudd SES ‘needs’ model has long since
become a sick joke. In order to keep the unholy Protestant/Catholic alliance
intact, the original Karmel ‘Needs’ model of 1973, was abandoned before it got
off the ground.
DOGS
predicted that this would happen in 1964 when the first trickle of State Aid
commenced. That trickle has now become a flood worth billions of taxpayer
dollars. If those billions were channelled back into our public system we would
have a first rate education system. Instead, we have an educational, social and
political mess.
The proof
of the pudding is now in the eating. The policy of propping up and favouring
the private religious sector to the cry of “Needs’ has not only led to the
uneconomic duplication of the public system. The parasitic denominational
system is undermining the host, and creating unhealthy divisions within our
society. The religious schools have never been about the education of all
children – including the poor and disadvantaged. They have always been about
education for the first class ticket to heaven and the good job.
The ‘poor
parish school myth’ should be exposed for what it always was – an excuse for
preferential treatment of the wealthy and aspirational classes of
DEFEND PUBLIC EDUCATION AND STOP STATE AID TO PRIVATE RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS.
Listen to the DOGS program
3CR, 855 on the A.M. dial
12 Noon Saturdays