Press Releases

Political Appointments Make for Lousy Administration Public Education Needs Committed and Experienced Public Servants.

Press Release 632

In the last 150 years Public Education has survived because its Founding Fathers in the nineteenth century identified and solved at least two of its major problems.

Problem One was financial security.
Problem Two was the administrative problem.
The only way forward is to go back and solve these problems again: withdraw State Aid to private religious schools and re-establish a committed and experienced centralised administration.

Ravenswood Captain, Sarah Haynes on Elite schools where ‘more value is placed on those who provide good publicity or financial benefits’

Press Release 631

The captain of an elite school in Sydney’s upper North shore, Sarah Haynes went off script to tell it as it is in the elite school’s bubble of ‘business-like’ operations, with an image that could be ‘unhealthy’.

The question for taxpayers is: should their millions be going to an elite school which charges parents $28,000 for an ‘unrealistic’ education in which images mean more than realities?

Parents may be stupid to spend unwisely. But should taxpayers be constantly asked to send good money after bad? When good money should be ut into good public schools, not bad elitist ones?

Elites, 'Povos' and the VCE Facebook Page

Press Release 625

The night before this year’s VCE English exam, one Xavier College student called state school students "povo f---s" on a popular VCE discussion page on Facebook. The 18-year-old said he was "eternally grateful" that his parents had sent him to a good, private school instead of a "poverty stricken s---hole in Pakenham". and
"Remember to say hi to me when I'm your boss one day."

Simon Birmingham, School Vouchers and the Public Reaction

Press Release 624

In his 2007 maiden speech SImon Birmingham trotted out the voucher privatisation rhetoric, weeping crocodile tears for ‘needy’ parents as follows:

It is time that at least one state, in at least one region, trialled the implementation of school vouchers – affording all families the opportunity of choice, the opportunity to allocate the government funding for their child to pay the fees to the school of their choice…The neediest should not be the ones to miss out on choice.

In 2012 he also expressed support for US-style charter schools (privately managed public schools).

Fees in Public Schools undermine Free Public Education

Press Release 623

Australian parents and taxpayers are entitled to, indeed they are owed, a genuinely free, secular and universal public school system!

But Principals of underfunded public schools are now desperate enough to undermine the very concept of a free public education. As governments press forward with the privatization of public education, isolated principals imitate their more fortunate private school counterparts and charge fees for essentials.