AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE OF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS

PRESS RELEASE 349

Prejudiced Middle – Class Parents Pay more For What ?

10 January 2010

Julia Gillard appears determined to slavishly follow the market ideology of the UK and USA, in spite of the fact that this very same ideology is the basis of their economic downfall. She, and insecure middle-class Australian parents scrimping and saving to place their children in Australian private schools should, as mere ‘consumers’ of a ‘commodity’ consider whether they are getting their moneys worth or merely trying to ‘keep up with the Joneses”.

The Sydney Morning Herald December 26-27 noted that private school fees have once again been raised from between 4% and 7%, and parents must be thankful for small mercies. This is less than the 11% for the previous year.

Heath Gilmore, in an article entitled ‘New Light on Where Money Goes” lists some of the funding figures for a number of wealthy schools as follows. What is of interest is that, although the State and federal total funding figures are given, funding from fees is only given for one student. Nor is there any indication of endowments and indirect public funding through taxation exemptions. Nevertheless, the direct public funding figures are worth contemplating.

PRIVATE	INDIVIDUAL	FEES		PUBLIC	FUNDING	TOTAL
School	Fees 2010 $	Fees 2009 $	% Increase	State $	Federal $	State +Federal
Ascham	26,200	24,600	6.5%	896,337	1,634,443	2,530,779
Kambala	26,172	24,458	7.0%	914,957	1,515,966	2,430,923
Sceggs	25,878	24,413	6%	974,816	1,592,123	2,566,939
Kings	24,730	23,442	5.5%	1,403,791	4,285,447	5,689,238
Newington	23,454	22,170	5.8%	1,451,392	4,085,932	5,689,238
PLC	22,580	21,350	5.8%	1,533,300	3,728,358	5,261,658
Barker	22,152	20,996	5.5	2,614,351	3,532,395	6,146,746
Reddam House	21,730	20,215	7.5%	1,036,031	1,158,741	2,194,771
Kincoppal	20,900	19,600	6.6%	1,188,659	1,510,485	2,699,145
Roseville College	20,190	19,410	4.0%	1,260,428	1,678,385	2,938,812
St Ignatius Riverview	19,380	18,525	4.6%	2,381,301	3,501,020	5,882,321
Loreto	16,749	15,648	7%	1,627,291	3,105,240	4,732,531
St Lukes Grammar	16,095	15,184	6%	1,214,852	2,243,252	3,458,104
Scots Albury	15,233	14,850	2.6%	991,315	3,173,343	4,164,659
Danebank	15,075	14,400	4.7	1,263,655	3,352,524	4,616,179
The Armidale School	14,865	13,890	7%	958,234	2,595,123	3,553,357
TOTAL				21,710,709	42,692,776	64,403,485

The Sydney Morning Herald reporter noted that ‘traditionally parents have been the passive recipients of an education for their children despite the amount of money they pay in fees. They have certainly been the unhappy recipients of debt collectors and loss of houses when they can no longer pay these fees.

However, under new federal funding requirements we are told that private and public schools will be forced to open their books and reveal funding figures next year. Yet Julia Gillard is not yet prepared to place funding resources available to individual schools alongside publication of the league tables she is forcing upon Australian public as well as private schools. Is this because she cannot or will not? Or is it because the major religious bureaucracies are refusing to co-operate?

Nevertheless, one cannot help feeling sorry for insecure middle class parents patronising the above list of wealthy schools. What are they really paying for? And, more to the point, what are taxpayers really paying for? That figure of $64,403,485 while only the tip of the iceberg of full taxpayer subsidisation would make a very big difference to disadvantaged schools in the public sector.

Julia Gillard and her policy advisers, while slavishly following the United Kingdom and New York precedents should dig further and find out what is really happening to insecure middle class parents in the United Kingdom.

Under the heading ‘Schools chief attacks 'prejudiced' middle-class parents’ The Guardian guardian.co.uk, Friday 1 January 2010 reported Prof David Woods the chief adviser for London schools as saying: ‘London’s state secondary schools are doing very well, despite what you hear from the chattering classes'.

He attacked middle-class parents who refuse to send their children to the local secondary school because of "innate and uninformed" prejudices. He also accused parents who attend "dinner parties in Islington" of writing off excellent comprehensives on their doorsteps, and challenged them to go and spend a day in a local school. He also condemned parents who automatically send their children from a state primary to a grammar or private secondary school, rather than to a comprehensive.

"Some parents, while perfectly prepared to buy into state primary education, have an innate prejudice against their local state secondary school," said Woods, who has worked with education ministers since 1998 to shape government policy on underperforming comprehensives.

"Despite what you hear from the chattering classes – by which I mean the dinner parties of Islington – London's state secondary schools are doing very well. Almost a quarter have been judged outstanding. There are parents who, given a very good state school on their doorstep, would not send their children there because they have an innate prejudice against it. Why don't they go in and spend a day there? Parents have a perfect right to make their own decisions, but I think sometimes it is done on the basis of prejudice."

There has been a dramatic improvement in the proportion of comprehensive pupils obtaining five good GCSE grades and the number of comprehensives labeled as "failing" dropped from about half in 1997 to one in 10 now.

Woods, who is in charge of the government's National Challenge, a £400m-plus drive to eradicate failing secondary schools across England, said parents' prejudices are based on assumptions about the kind of young people who attend comprehensives and an expectation that standards there are low. He said: "We have significantly raised standards in London's comprehensives over the last decade, but obviously the independent sector is still quite strong.”

Michael Pyke, of the Campaign for State Education said: "Popular prejudice against comprehensives is a result of the hierarchical nature of our education system. We live in a society where sending your children to a private school confers status on parents."

Not unsurprisingly, Woods's comments have angered some parents, teachers and academics who claim that it is partly the government's fault that some parents are choosing selective and private schools over comprehensives. David James, professor of education at the University of the West of England, said ministers had promoted the idea of a market, where parents could choose between an academy, a comprehensive, a grammar or a private, faith or foundation school.

But one parent with her head screwed on - Fiona Millar - a state school campaigner whose three children went to comprehensives near to where she lives in Camden, north London, said some parents now experienced "epic levels of anxiety about school choice". "The children of aspirant, supportive and graduate parents can easily flourish in their local state school if it is good enough. But it can be hard to persuade parents of that."

Jason Moro, deputy head of North London Collegiate girls' school, said the "not insignificant" number of "liberal, left-wing" parents sending their daughters to his school, where fees are £3,975 a term, showed no sign of decreasing. "Woods is wrong to talk about an innate prejudice among these parents," he said. "Parents are more sophisticated than that. They are savvy and informed consumers." So there we have it, parents as well as their children are merely consumers, the plaything of a free market in freefall.

It is a pity that readers have to go to a newspaper in the United Kingdom to find a strong administrative supporter of the public system who also works in that system. It is also a pity that readers have to go to the UK to find a newspaper prepared to call insecure middle parents patronising private rather than public schools ‘prejudiced’ against a public school system that is accessible to all children.

DEFEND PUBLIC EDUCATION AND STOP STATE AID TO PRIVATE RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS.

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