This is a government in headlong flight from any reform that could be construed by anyone, anywhere as the slightest bit threatening.
Its extension of current school funding arrangements until 2014 yesterday is a craven act of policy cowardice.
From 2009-12 the Federal Government is spending nearly $64b on school funding. Funding for non-government schools is driven by the famous Socioeconomic Status formula introduced by the Howard Government in 2001 – except, funding was fiddled so that if private schools lost out under the formula, they had their funding maintained anyway. In one of the many consequences of Mark Latham’s disastrous leadership that continue to haunt us, Labor vowed in 2007 to keep the system in place in its first term. Julia Gillard set up a review of funding, under Sydney Grammar alumnus David Gonski, in May.
Yesterday’s decision locks a confused and hopelessly wasteful funding model in place for a further year to appease private schools.
It isn’t just that the SES formula and its funding carve-out for losers delivers a vast windfall for certain elite private schools – Trinity Grammar in Sydney, $30m over the quadrennium; the King’s School, $19m, PLC $16.5m. Given the size of the funding pool, that form of upper-class welfare is almost a trivial aside. The point of the formula that on the face of it appeared intended to ensure funding went to schools in low-income areas was that the Howard Government wanted to encourage parents out of the public education system by funding the expansion of low-fee non-Government schools, particularly in outer-suburban electorates.
It was partly a direct electoral bribe, and also part of a larger attempt at social engineering, to convert “Howard’s battlers” into clones of their eastern suburbs neighbours – private schools, private health insurance, wealth management strategies, shareholdings – that would, so the thinking went, inculcate permanent habits of voting Liberal.
It was all marketed under the philosophy of “choice”, but it was choice at the taxpayers’ expense.
As an electoral strategy it may or may not have worked but as a formula for efficient use of taxpayers’ money to achieve optimal educational outcomes, it left much to be desired. And it sat on top of an already-flawed state funding model reliant on top-down control and bureaucracy.
Now Labor, despite the Gonski Review being scheduled to conclude early next year, has locked the system in place until 2014, because independent schools and the Coalition kept insisting the mere act of having an independent review of how to improve the effectiveness of school funding was some sort of act of class war.
The days of Labor waging class war are long gone. So, it seems, are the days of it being a party of reform.
‘Fiscal Conservatism’ re-defined.
I’m moaning loudly and suggesting the closest to red you can get in this election is green but come the day and a choice between the right and the far right, what’s a bloke to do? One thing is for sure, I sure as hell won’t be publically admitting it, supporting Labor has become embarrassing!
The Howard dogma has become a belief system ! I worked out that for John Howard, the world was divided into three groups of people who were: Real People, Battlers (who were candidates to be Real People) and The Rest (who had no hope of ever being Real People). If a big enough proportion of the population become Real People then the government can relax in the knowledge that it is safe to exploit The Rest (a righteous belief because, after all, what function has The Rest to play other than to serve the needs of Real People ? ).
Sadly, I suspect that the French Revolution does not feature prominently in today’s history curriculum !
I suspect the polls over the last week or so will dictate a softly softly approach from Labor. Risks are out of the question. Incidentally it is all very well for Abbott to be throwing money all over the place and making promises. On his past form he will never keep most of them and should he win, his big out will be, oh ah ah ah ah ah the deficit is um um um um bigger than we thought. Only money available for our friends in business and those earning over k100
My kids stressed out about the NAPLAN tests and I argued with teachers that the Myschool site was all for the greater good. It was meant to be leading to better distribution of resources to schools where it was needed most. Total crap now I realise.
It will be a very shabby victory whoever wins the election.
Bernard, got it in one… Subsidise people into private health insurance and private schools so you’ve got them on-side, (I mean, they see it as reward for all their hard work, not a government subsidy) and public facilities and public interest can go hang.
1996 slogan IIRC “For all of us”. What a joke!!! He was the most divisive and cynical prime minister in this nation’s history.
Ultimate Liberal outcome – those who are stuck with public schools and health (which head towards being resources of last resort like public housing) are increasingly stuck out of the mainstream become a desperate socially disconnected class, more prone to violence and crime, and so become suitable targets for Lora Norder campaigns. America here we come!