AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR THE
DEFENCE OF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS
PRESS RELEASE 383
EDUCATION FUNDING REVIEW
COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE OF
SUBMISSION ON THE TERMS OF
REFERENCE
27 May 2010
The Australian Council for the Defence of Government Schools
was established in the 1960s to defend public education and separation of
church and state.
As a result they oppose State Aid to church schools.
Their opposition has proved prophetic. Everything they
predicted would happen in the 1960s is now happening.
o Private sectarian interests have
expanded at the expense of the public system .
o To cries of ‘poor parish schools’
the major sectarian systems have received billions of dollars of public funds
and flourished while
o many public schools have withered
and, in some cases, been privatized.
o The various “Needs” policies
espoused by both Labor and conservative governments have been travesties of the
term. From 1973 onwards wealthy elite schools in both Catholic and Protestant
systems have demanded their cut of the cake before any money trickled down to
the poor.
o The current SES system has exposed
the view of “needs’ by religious administrators and their political allies as
“greeds”
o The existence of “ghost schools”
“ghost pupils” and “ghost teachers” ( See our Press Releases on these issues)
makes a nonsense of accountability for public money by sectarian systems of
education.
o Even the Commonwealth Auditor
General was concerned by the lack of proper checks and balances placed on
enrolment data provided by sectarian institutions.
DOGS THEREFORE CALL ON THE FUNDING REVIEW TO TAKE OVER ALL
SECTARIAN SCHOOLS WHICH ARE NOW SUBSTANTIALLY FUNDED FROM THE PUBLIC PURSE AND
TURN THEM INTO GENUINELY PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
In the Alternative:
In principle DOGS welcome the
setting up of an Education Funding Review. A proper analysis and accounting for
the billions of dollars that have been poured into sectarian and exclusive
education institutions at the expense of public education is long overdue. A
proper enquiry into the lack of accountability and transparency in the
alienation of public funds into private church corporations is also overdue.
DOGS have been requesting such
enquiries for decades. We refer the Board to the Press Releases on our website
and the Newspaper Advertisements inserted at considerable expense in the past
forty years. Our News Releases can be viewed at www.adogs.info/
However, DOGS question the ability
of the personnel chosen by Ms Gillard to look critically at the glaring
inequities in the resources as well as the public funding of the private
religious sector in
Personnel
Three out of the four people
appointed by Julia Gillard to the current enquiry have either long term or
current commitments to the private corporate and/or religious sector. Only one,
Dr. Ken Boston, has any background in
public education or commitment to its well being. DOGS refer members of the enquiry to our
Press Release 382 at www.adogs.info/pr382.htm
Terms of Reference
DOGS support many of the terms of reference,
particularly those which refer to data collection. However, even on this level
they leave much to be desired.
Taxation Expenditures
No mention is made of indirect
grants of public money to the private sectarian sector through taxation
exemptions for both schools and parents.
Recommendation:
DOGS recommend that the Review be
asked to assess the taxation expenditures on private sectarian schools incurred
through taxation exemptions on
§
Rates,
§
Land Tax
§
GST
§
Fringe Benefits Tax
§
Parent contributions and building funds etc.
Private
Contributions and Endowments
Any proper analysis of educational funding in
Recommendation
The a full analysis of the fee structures, private contributions, trust
endowments, the profits from business enterprises etc. available to both individual schools and
sectarian school systems be included in the terms of reference.
Proper comparison of Public funding the private and public sector.
Many of the terms of reference take the form of motherhood statements. As
a whole the terms of reference avoid any historical analysis of the current
problems inherent in the wasteful duplication of resources caused by private
sectarian schools setting themselves up in opposition to the public system and
being publicly funded to do so. No calculation has been made ( as it was in the
nineteenth century) of the cost to the taxpayer of the inefficient and
expensive duplication of educational facilities in this country by sectarian
interests.
Statistics provided to date by sectarian lobbyists calculate from total
direct grant figures. They leave out the incremental costs to the public system
of expensive areas of educational provision, - those avoided by the private
sector. Whereas the public system is open to all children, the private
sectarian sector can pick and choose amongst fee paying consumers.
Recommendation
That the Review calculate the cost to the taxpayer of the inefficient and
expensive duplication of educational facilities in this country by sectarian
interests and calculate the cost to the taxpayer for the provision of one first
class public system open to all children, one that is public in purpose,
outcome, access, ownership, control, accountability and provision in this
country.
What
does the final requirement in the Draft Terms of Reference mean?
DOGS note with interest the final
point in the draft terms of reference:
What if any, transitional
assistance should be made to schools making a transition to a new system?
Does this refer to schools making
a transition to a new system of reporting on the expenditure of public money?
Or does it refer to schools making a transition to a new system of schooling?
DOGS note that the only way that
proper public accountability for public money can be given by any school is if
it is a genuinely public school. The elephant in the room, the basic problem
that has no name in the morass that is educational funding and disadvantage in
In the 1960s DOGS predicted what
is now occurring.
Recommendation:
If there is any transition to a
new system, any responsible government should take over all schools that
receive public funding and demand that they are not only publicly accountable
for all public funding of any kind, but should be publicly accessible to every
child, parent, or teacher regardless of their class, creed, culture or
geographical location.
The Terms of Reference should
therefore address:
·
Failure of all forms of Needs Policies to date and
an examination of the reasons why
·
The uneconomic duplication of public school
facilities by sectarian and sectionalist facilities throughout
·
The growing areas of disadvantage in educational
provision caused by the siphoning off of public funds from public schools
·
An objective examination of the preference given to
establishment of new sectarian schools over local community, public schools
particularly in new development areas like
·
The proper costing of the provision of a first rate
public system of education accessible to all children and offensive to none and
the provision of a genuinely independent system of education - free of the
public purse free from public control and offering genuine freedom of choice.
DEFEND
PUBLIC EDUCATION AND STOP STATE AID TO PRIVATE RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS.
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