The Report of the Inquiry into the Independent Public Schools initiative - The Failure of the “Independent Public School “
o be Fair and Equal, Public Education requires a Centralised Administration.
In the nineteenth century, public education only succeeded in all colonial States of Australia because the administrators of the various systems of education realised that
they could only educate ALL the children and
protect and train ALL the teachers and
offer a career structure to teachers, headmasters and inspectors and finally,
have an accountable, efficient and effective administraton and
be the only recipients of public moneys.
if they CENTRALISED their administration.
Freeman Butts recognised this when he visited Australia in the 1950s and compared our superior system to that in America and England.
On the other side of the coin, the wealthy, and promotors of privatisation - the religious education systems - not only demanded privileged access to the public Treasury. They continually criticised ‘centralisation’. They have systematically undermined, and in some cases, taken over the centralised bureaucracies. Victoria has suffered badly from the ‘devolution’ fad. But the latest attempt to privatise public education is the idea of a fully devolved system, with ‘Independent’ public schools. But the Western Australian ‘experiment’ has failed the ‘student outcomes’ test.