AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE OF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS

PRESS RELEASE 450

GILLARD AND GONSKI HOISTED ON THEIR OWN

FACTS AND FIGURES

Gillard and her Gonski Committee is on Trial; Is it or is it not interested in

Improving ‘Equity of Outcomes”?

Gonski’s commissioned research and MySchool figures reveal widespread discrimination against children in our public education systems

But

Private school lobbyists:

with vested interests in glaring inequities are screaming out against factual findings of research papers commissioned by the Committee. They claim they are ‘ a conspiracy by Australia’s cultural-left establishment to dud private schools.’

The Business community:

cannot tolerate a growing lack of basic skills in their future workforce, but our politicians and their spin doctors may not yet be ready to call the bluff of the parasitic private sector as lack of resources and levels of educational performance affect the vast majority of Australian children.

The MySchool website

has also taken the lid off the garbage tin containing evidence of gross inequities in Australian education. The ever widening gap between the privileged and the disadvantaged has emerged for all to see. This is not only a question of human rights. It is a terrible waste to the economy affecting productivity, welfare payments, and crime. ( See SMH , Society the Loser in Education Gap at http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/society-the-loser-in-education-gap-20111111-1nb66.html ) The data being mined from the site confirms that Australia has a two-speed education economy: children from disadvantaged families can be three or four years behind their peers at schools in more salubrious suburbs.

But As Chris Bonnor notes in his article A Game Changer’ at http://www.educationreview.com.au/pages/section/article.php?s=Opinion&idArticle=22419 :

‘Facts are negotiable; beliefs are rock solid. It’s always worked in the past, why not now?’

He could perhaps go further and note that

‘Facts are negotiable and beliefs worth billions when religion is entangled with the State.’

He could also note that:

It was not always so in Australian history.

There was more than half a century in Australian history, namely 1900- 1964 when religion was not entangled with the state and those in search of the first class ticket to heaven and the good job had to pay for it. Our public education systems led the world and visiting educationists like Freeman Butts marveled at the level of equality we had achieved. Since Freeman Butts visited Australia in the 1950s however, the gap between the rich and poor, private and public, has widened. This was inevitable once the parasitic sectarian system was subsidized. But nobody wants to face the facts.

Meanwhile, public education supporters like Bonnor and Cobbold are valiantly pushing ahead with the facts.

In a speech delivered to the State Council of the State School Teachers’ Union of Western Australia in Perth on 19 November 2011, he reminds the Gonski Committee of its focus on improving equity in education outcomes and notes:

If it fails to deliver this, it will look like the vested interests of privilege have prevailed again in regards to school funding. After all, three of the six members of the committee represent private school interests and a fourth is on record as advocating markets in education with more choice and competition.

..Is Gonski himself prepared to recommend that the $4.5 million in taxpayer funding for his old school Sydney Grammar – and of which he was chairman before being appointed to head the Review- be diverted to low income government and private schools?

In the 1960s taxpayers were told the country could not afford to fund the 15-20 % of children in ‘poor parish Catholic schools’. The government should have taken them over at that stage and given us a public system comparable to those in the Scandanavian countries. That was the beginning of State Aid and the mushrooming of the sectarian system in Australia. Now The parasite is bringing down the host. We are confronted with two thirds of Australian children being short-changed by a government and Gonski Committee that is in danger of placing ideology before facts.

LISTEN TO

THE DOGS RADIO PROGRAM

3CR

855 ON THE AM DIAL

12.00 NOON SATURDAYS