AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR THE
DEFENCE OF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS
PRESS RELEASE 381
12 MAY 2010
MR RUDD AND JULIA GILLARD:
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE NEEDS RHETORIC?
As the Lib-Labs and the Australian media hypes up the issues
and rhetoric infotainment for the 2010 federal election, it is interesting to
note the educational issue that has quietly dropped off the agenda: the phony
baloney “Needs” policy of previous ALP and Howard governments.
DOGS suggest that this is largely
because there is no more mileage in a cry of ‘Needy” schools for a Catholic and
Independent (read Dependent) sector when these schools are so overburdened with
public largesse and the public sector goes begging.
The recent media diversion into
the BER (Building the Education Revolution) has emphasised the problems
inherent in private/public partnerships, the contracting out of public
buildings to private contractors in search of a quick profit. It has been used
to once again knock the public education sector and its administration. The
answer to these problems is not private/private partnerships –using public
money for private profit – but public/public partnerships as we had with a
public works department before the privatisation revolution of the 1980’s and
1990’s- the Hawke-Keating-Kennett years.
But this diversion has not
completely masked the outrageous inequality inherent in current funding of
education throughout
These are the basic truths that
few people in
However, Noel Pearson, a spokesman
for one of the most disadvantaged groups in Australian society, our indigenous
people has scratched the surface. In an article entitled Education Reform Lies Buried under the Morass, in The Weekend Australian May 8-9 he writes:
The federal
Labor government does not want to alienate the legions of aspirational families
who have drifted to the private system. It does not want to open itself up to
the kind of accusation recently made by Tony Abbott: “You can’t trust these
people. They don’t like private education. They will, after the election, if they’re
re-elected, as sure as night follows day, they will try to cut private schools
funding.”
This means
there is no willingness to discriminate between public and private schools when
it comes to federal government investment. And the problem is that needs-based
funding automatically invokes the public-private dichotomy, even though there
are needy private schools as well.
So the BER
sought to spread the largesse across public and private schools regardless of
need.
A program
that was large enough to provide a revolutionary change in the circumstances of
the neediest schools ended up having more limited effect across the full range
of schools.
Schools
requiring new facilities have surely benefited from the program, but schools
also have ended up with facilities without any strong rationale.
Frankly, the
most privileged schools have ended up with a windfall they didn’t need and
should not have received.
While
controversy rages on the first two dimensions of the BER policy – its role in
economic stimulus and its administration- there is near silence on this third
dimension. The federal opposition has no interest in championing an educational
investment policy based on need, and the Rudd government does not want to
expose itself to the electoral accusation it is the party of public schools. …
Pearson who is currently director
of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership, retreats to his own
version of a ‘Needs’ policy, but his conclusion is worth noting:
Australians
whose fate is to end up in our neediest schools is an interest shared by
everybody. Why make the defense of privileged schools the singular priority?
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