Opinion & Commentary
Schools Need to be Truly 'Public'
Discussions about the future of education in Australia tend to be constricted by a narrow view of the options. They revolve around the assumption that a public-private dichotomy in schooling is inescapable. Complaints ad nauseum about the lack of funding to public schools are followed by fruitless arguments about whether private schools should be publicly funded and by how much. It’s getting rather tired and there’s no end in sight.
Let’s think outside the square for a moment. Suppose we could start with carte blanche. Imagine there are no schools. What should we do? One thing is certain, nobody in their right mind would set up the top heavy, inefficient and self-serving system we’ve ended up with.
Allow yourself to consider the possibilities. (We will, at this time, leave aside the possibility that it might be decided that education is a private good and should be user-pays, because there are limits to one’s imagination.) Let’s say then that Australians have decided that basic education is a human right and should be available to everyone, regardless of means.
Therefore, it will be publicly funded. To pay for this, a special, tagged tax is introduced to cover the costs of compulsory schooling. We estimate that it costs, for example, $5000 a year to educate a child. Each child is therefore allocated an annual education bursary of this amount.
Groups of like-minded parents and community members get together and set up schools. Other people decide to set up schools as businesses. A small number of people decide to use their child’s bursary to educate them at home. There are no limits to the way that education can be provided.
'Let's think outside the square for a moment'
There are schools that concentrate on academic results and preparation for tertiary entrance exams. There are schools that are more concerned with technical training and skills. There are performance arts schools, religious schools and schools which cater for children with special needs. Parents can spend their child’s education bursary wherever they choose. A few schools might decide to charge additional fees, and some parents might supplement the bursary if they can and choose to.
A small government department is established to administer funding and to provide some professional support to the education providers. This department might also be responsible for developing and administering standard tests, but they do not manage the schools nor do they have any authority over them.
What do we have? Publicly funded schools which operate autonomously, according to the wishes of the parents and communities which support them. That is to say, they are truly public schools—they are driven by the needs and wants of the people who pay for them.
Does this sound familiar? Probably not, because it’s a scenario we are presented with very rarely. We talk about the changes that would help in the short-term: community schools, limited school voucher programs like those run in the US, and low-fee independent schools. These certainly have their merits. Research has shown that providing parents with the means to send children to the school of their choice has significant academic benefits for children.
The only choice available to Australian families is, in many cases, to make large financial sacrifices in order to send their children to private schools. Private schools consistently outperform public schools in terms of academic achievement.
'There are no limits to the way that education can be provided'
This might be due to better quality of schooling in private schools or to the characteristics of the families of private schools students. The most likely explanation involves a combination of both. Whatever the reason, there has been a steady drift out of the public sector. The toll for public schools is two-fold: the loss of funding, as well as the loss of many of the middle-class families who are most interested in education. But the near future may reveal that the true rival of public schooling is not the private sector as we know it, but distance education from schools in other countries, or the media corporation that offers impressive academic results in teaching the basics. It may be that so many people vacate the public system that it collapses entirely.
The only way to bring about sustained improvement in schooling and to provide real equity in education is to put it back into the hands of the people who pay for it and make education public in the true sense of the word. As usual, the devil is in the details. The very idea of a whole new way of schooling may seem radical and unrealistic to many, but it’s also possible. The schooling debate has been bogged down by the constraints of the existing paradigm for too long. If we can imagine a better way to educate our children we’re at least part of the way there.
About the Author:
Jennifer Buckingham is a Policy Analyst with the Taking Children Seriously research programme at The Centre for Independent Studies.
