AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE OF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS
PRESS RELEASE 534#
28 November 2013
PYNE AND THE PRIVATE SCHOOL INTEREST
Gonski did two good things.
1. Gonski uncovered the ongoing failure of any Needs policies invented by Australian Governments by exposing the over-weening greed of the private sector.
2. Gonski mobilised the public school sector throughout Australia to live in hope – of crumbs or even bread from the Federal Treasury table. Thanks to Angelo Gavrielatos and the AEU, this led to a politicisation of the public sector. Public school parents, teachers, and administrators are now disinclined to die in despair.
The current fiasco with Christopher Pyne’s failure to honour a pre-election promise has exposed the willingness of private school interests to ensure an ever growing size of their share of the education cake. While principals and parents in public schools are being held to ransom by Minister Pyne, the private sector are getting ready for another dip in the public purse. After all, they have to now compete with each other for market share of pupils of wealthy parents. More technology wings, playing fields and swimming pools, not to mention ski trips and rowing sheds are ‘ needed’ . Poor private schools.
The NSW Secondary Principals Council president and Merrylands High School principal, Lila Mularczyk, described the threat of a Gonski backflip as a blow to fairness in education funding. But the executive director of the Association of Independent Schools of NSW, Geoff Newcombe, said a review was welcome. For him, Minister Pyne is quite correct in saying the current model for independent schools is unworkable; volatile; not transparent and far too complex for schools to be able to predict their future funding levels. They want certainty, and they want more – and more – and more. Madness!
The only really fair, sensible way forward for Australian education
is
public funding to public education only .
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