AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE OF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS
PRESS RELEASE 564#
PRIVATE SCHOOL CON JOB
EXPOSED BY ACADEMIC RESEARCH
August 15 2014
Australian citizens and taxpayers are having the educational rights of their children to a free, secular and universal education in a public education system undermined and destroyed by a combination of religious and market ideologues.
Our public system, the inheritance of both our children and our democracy, is the victim of false advertising. Idealogues,con artists and spin doctors are controlling the future of our public systems.
Private religious schools have the right to exist so long as they are part of a real free market economy – ie. they pay for themselves.
But they do not have the right to
- duplicate public school facilities at the cost of billions of taxpayer dollars.
- continually hoodwink parents with false claims, ever more fabulous infrastructure — at public expense—and false advertising.
- refuse to educate all the nation’s children.
- Be sectarian, expensive, and uneconomic.
- They are parasitic – and inefficient. They cannot do a better job of educating the nation’s children, than the public system.
A comparative study on NAPLAN results has been conducted by researchers at the University of Wollongong and presented at a recent conference of the Australian Institute of Family Studies. The lead author is Ian Moran and the title of the paper is Catholic and Independent School Effects: An Examination of Australian Primary Schools. Their conclusions?....the estimates of several techniques generally indicated no significant difference in academic performance between school sectors once accounting for student background characteristics.
This means that almost one third of Australian parents are the victims of a Private school Con job. The long term social and educational welfare of their children, that of the nation, not to mention their bank balance, is at risk. The researchers concluded: Given the absence of Private school effects observed in this study, to the extent that funding for private schools is predicated on the belief that they improve academic outcomes, allocation of public resources to the Private schooling sector is questionable on efficiency grounds.
IF MR HOCKEY GENUINELY WISHED TO BALANCE THE BUDGET HE WOULD FUND PUBLIC EDUCATION AND STOP STATE AID
For further information see:
http://www.saveourschools.com.au/choice-and-competition/public-schools-do-as-well-as-catholic-and-independent-schools
Public Schools Do As Well as Catholic and Independent Schools
Saturday August 9, 2014
An analysis of the NAPLAN results of nearly 5000 children has found that Public primary school students achieve at the same levels as Catholic and independent school students. The research compared grade 3 and grade 5 NAPLAN results in reading, writing, spelling, grammar and numeracy.
There was very little difference in the raw scores on the NAPLAN tests between Catholic and Public schools while Independent school students had significantly higher NAPLAN results than their Public school counterparts. However, after controlling for student background characteristics, the analysis showed no performance advantage from enrolment in Catholic or Independent primary schools. It concluded:
....the estimates of several techniques generally indicated no significant difference in academic performance between school sectors once accounting for student background characteristics.
Overall, there was a small disadvantage in attending Catholic schools compared to Public schools. However, the differences were not statistically significant.
The significant advantage in raw scores for Independent schools was substantially reduced after taking account of student background. The analysis found no statistically significant difference between performance in Independent and Public schools. The estimates ranged from a small advantage in some areas in some Year levels to a small disadvantage in others.
The study used two different statistical techniques to analyse the comparative performance of Catholic, Independent and Public primary schools using a sample of 2076 Year 3 students and 2748 Year 5 students. The sample was drawn from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) which follows two cohorts of children through their development. The LSAC surveys provide detailed information on the background of participants. The NAPLAN results of LSAC participants for reading, writing, spelling, grammar and numeracy were linked at the individual level.
The study also drew implications for education policy from its findings. It noted that Australia’s combination of a high level of government support and autonomy within the private school sector provide a test case for theories that competitive school systems will deliver better results. However, it concluded that the higher degree of autonomy with which the Catholic and Independent school systems operate, and the competitive forces to which they are exposed, has not produced results to support these theories.
Given the absence of Private school effects observed in this study, to the extent that funding for private schools is predicated on the belief that they improve academic outcomes, allocation of public resources to the Private schooling sector is questionable on efficiency grounds.
The study was done by researchers at the University of Wollongong and presented at a recent conference of the Australian Institute of Family Studies. The lead author is Ian Moran and the title of the paper is Catholic and Independent School Effects: An Examination of Australian Primary Schools.
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