AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE OF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS

PRESS RELEASE 445

13 October 2011

GONSKI AND THE HYSTERICAL PRIVATE SCHOOL LOBBY

The hysterical rhetoric of the private school lobby in response to the Gonski commissioned research reveals their moral nakedness.

The facts and figures speak for themselves: Half a century of State Aid to sectarian schools has yielded a rapid growth, not a decline in educational inequity.

Class War?

So, the private sector lobby denigrate the research findings as

‘a shameful attempt to develop class war debate’. (SMH 5 October 2011 )

DOGS ask the simple question:

‘Who is dividing children on the basis of class, creed, culture and ability to pay?’

Ideological Agenda?

The NOUS report which looked at equity and the performance of schools suggested that private schools should not be able to access public funds if they will not take all students . The private schools denigrated the NOUS report as:

''disappointing in its pursuit of a particular ideological agenda'' and ''an obvious political agenda dressed up as equity of access' and ''Presented is a cavalcade of regurgitated school-level policy initiatives and an ideologically motivated attack on non-government schools, instead of practical, student-level strategies to turn around falling levels of achievement.'( The Age 13, October 2011)

DOGS ask the simple question

‘Who for the last fifty years has demanded that the funding policies of Australian Education should follow the peculiar ideological tenets of sectarian beliefs?’

Meanwhile, the Catholic Education system is still wheeling out the ‘Poor Fellow Us’ arguments in the Victorian local Press. Stephen Elder, CEO of the Victorian Catholic Education Office claimed that the Mill Park Catholic primary school only charged annual fees of $1500 per pupil and, unlike independent schools ‘had an ethos of accepting any Catholic child, regardless of whether their family could afford the fees.’

DOGS note that, when Catholic schools cry ‘poor.’ no mention is ever made of the enormous capital investments of the church (subsidised at public expense) Nor is mention made of Catholic school discrimination against parents, teachers and pupils based upon religious belief, sexual preference, marital status and other indicia.

Gonski appears to be confronted with the need for some form of the ‘Needs’policy’ in an attempt to remedy the gross inequities in the current Australian educational scenario.

DOGS note that unless Gonski is prepared to follow countries with high equity outcomes and withdraw public funding of the private sectarian sector, the Australian situation will only get worse. It is questionable however, whether the Gillard Government has the intestinal fortitude to ignore the hysterical screaming of the sectarian sector grown fat on ‘Greeds’ disguised as ‘Needs’ policies

She has done it with the ‘carbon tax’ hysteria. Can she do it with the private school hysteria?

As a State school graduate, Gillard should know that equitable outcomes are only produced by a public system which is publicly accessible, publicly owned and controlled and enjoys sole public funding. The truth is that simple.

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