Press Releases

The End of Public Education: The Corporate Reform Agenda to Privatise Education: David Hursh

Press Release 650

Supporters of public education in Australia are not alone in their concern that mega-rich oligarchs and religious establishments are engaged in an all-out assault on one of our most basic democratic institutions. The problem has been recently analysed by David W. Hursh in a recently published book.

David Hursh’s new book ‘The End of Public Education: The Corporate Reform Agenda to Privatize Education, Routledge, 2016, 123 pp., $49.95.

is a devastating, spot-on, detailed, documented survey of the crescendoing assault on public education, teachers and teacher unions.

Victorian Catholic Education Commission : A Self-Regulated System Favouring High SES Schools in Funding Allocations

Press Release 649

s noted in Press Release 647, at http://www.adogs.info/press/state-auditor-general-finally-blows-whistle-... a new report by the Victorian Auditor-General shows that Catholic education authorities and other private schools are failing to properly account for the use of taxpayer funding. It found that there is little evidence that private schools are using their government funding for their intended purpose. Nor is there evidence that they are achieving intended outcomes.

Nationally, Catholic schools receive at least $2 billion from taxpayers in direct grants alone. In 2013, 72% of the gross income of Catholic schools was provided by the Commonwealth and state governments in direct grants alone. In Victoria it was 71%.

If there is not even basic accountability for this level of public funding, and, if, as the Auditor General has found, the Catholic authorities are diverting public moneys given to disadvantaged pupils to wealthy schools, something is wrong with the State of Victoria – and Australia at large. We are dealing with high levels of lack of transparency and possible corruption. Yet the Chief Administrator, of the Victorian Catholic Education Commission, Stephen Elder, believes that the church can get away with it if he bad-mouths the Auditor General and his office.

UK Chancellor Osborne turning all English Schools into Academies: Australia should reject this Privatisation Game.

Press Release 648

Australian politicians, lacking a sense of Australian history and identity, have an unfortunate habit of mimicking developments in the UK or the USA.

The Federal Coalition’s flirtation with the idea of English-style academies is no exception. This ‘experiment’ means the wholesale decentralisation and privatisation of the public education system as we know it and it must be resisted at all costs.

State Auditor-General Finally Blows the Whistle on Public Funding of Private Schools

Press Release 647

For fifty years DOGS have been pointing to the State within the State which is paid billions of dollars of public money to indoctrinate children and build up wealth in real estate and investments – with no strings attached.
In 2008 the Commonwealth Auditor General complained that there was minimal, if any accountability for Commonwealth money. DOGS noted that the Commonwealth Department checked on private religious schools’ expenditure of public money once e very 50 years! http://www.adogs.info/images/pr256.htm

By 2016, at the State level a Victorian auditor-general who was experienced in Canadaian procedures indicated that things were not as they should be! He was looking carefully at the lack of accountability from the Catholic Education Office, Victoria. Stephen Elder, their CEO was not, and is still not happy. That auditor-general was forced to resign. Yet, thankfully, the new, acting Auditor General has not stepped back from blowing the whistle regarding State grants to private religious schools.

In a scathing report, acting Auditor-General Dr Peter Frost said the education department had "weak" funding agreements with the schools, no performance measurement or targets, and that the schools were unable to prove funds were spent as they were intended.

Paper presented to Political Group 7 March 2016

Press Release 646

Contemporary Australia is a very strange place when it comes to education funding, and the idea PUBLIC FUNDING FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS ONLY is actually normal for the majority of the rest of the civilized world.

In fact to many people from overseas who look as Australia schooling system we are just plain weird.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia : a Disaster for Separation of Religion and the State

Press Release 644

DOGS agree with Americans United for Separation of Church and State that whatever his personality, Justice Scalia’s legacy is that of a dangerous, radical conservative in matters of Church and State. Although, with his legal ‘originalism’ he claimed to be interested in the intentions of the original Founders of the American Constitution, he twisted the original concept of separation of church and state to fit the conservative views of his Catholic forebears.

Trevor Cobbold provides Facts and Figures: State Aid to Private Schools is Disastrous Public Policy

Press Release 643

Trevor Cobbold of Save Our Schools continues, valiantly, to expose the funding follies with public funding of private education. But The answer to the gross inequities which have developed BECAUSE of State Aid to private schools in the last half century is not to give Labor leaders a way out of their DLP , Catholic and Christian lobby vote. It is to tackle the problem at its source and demand PUBLIC FUNDING FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS ONLY

78% Want Religion out of Government : Section 116 of the Australian Constitution should be applied as it was Originally Intended

Press Release 641

Public Education is and should be the responsibility of a democratically elected Government. Yet billions of dollars of public money are alienated from the public estate, namely public education, into privatised, religious institutions.

DOGS have always argued that State Aid to private religious schools contravenes Section 116 of the Australian Constitution because it entangled government with religion, and religion has no place in the government of a nation.

It now appears that 78% of Australian citizens are of the same opinion. The following information has been made available by the Rationalist Association of NSW.