Decline in Public School Percentage Share of Pupil Population

Decline in Public School Percentage Share of Pupil Population

State Aid has brought about the decline of the percentage share of pupils in the public systems throughout Australia - as it was intended to do by the major beneficiary.

Below is a table, by decades of the percentage share of public education of school children. (1901-1999)

 

PUBLIC SCHOOL PERCENTAGE SHARE OF TOTAL SCHOOL ENROLMENTS IN AUSTRALIA (BY DECADES)

1901-1999

 

DECADE

PUBLIC SCHOOL % ENROLMENT

1901-1910

80.5%

1911-1920

80.7%

1921-1930

79.6%

1931-1940

79.4%

1941-1950

75.6%

1951-1960

75.9%

1961-1970

76.7%

1971-1980

78.5%

1981-1990

74.2%

1991-1999

71.0%

 

If one peruses the individual yearly figures that make up the above table, the effect of State Aid to Private Schools on public education is far more apparent. However, it should be noted that it has taken extensive inefficient and uneconomic duplication of public school facilities together with at least four billion dollars of direct grants for 2001 (the indirect grants of the State Aid iceberg are ignored to the peril of the common good)

In 1963 in the year before State Aid was introduced, public schools percentage share of pupil population was 76.2%. This rose to 78.9% in 1977. But since then the massive injection of public funding into private education has taken its toll. For the first time in the twentieth century, the percentage share of pupil population in 1984 went below 75.0%.

Public school percentage share of population has declined in every year since 1984 and for the first time since the "free, secular and compulsory" acts of the last century public education fell below 70% for the first time. In 1999 the figure had declined to 69.9%.

That is, in just over twenty years, the public education pupil share has declined 9 percentage points.