The aspirational middle class in NSW have taken immediate steps to ease the financial burden imposed on them by the economic meltdown — they have removed their children from private schools and shifted them into public education.
It’s a way of keeping the Porsche on the road while the kids join the rough and tumble of state schools.
Today’s Daily Telegraph reports that in the past five years 439 private schools lost a significant number of students to the public system and the number will rise more sharply this year.
But just as the return to public transport placed huge strains on the NSW budget, so the move back to public education will test the priorities of the cash-strapped Department of Education.
Shadow Education Minister Adrian Piccoli pointed out today that long-suffering teachers and students in NSW have been forced to tolerate poorly maintained and crumbling buildings, threadbare carpets and leaky roofs.
And recent documents obtained by the Coalition under Freedom of Information reveal that there are a staggering 4,157 demountable classrooms across the state.
Originally built as emergency accommodation, many demountables have become a semi-permanent part of the state education infrastructure. They are hot, airless, over-crowded and dilapidated and no place to conduct the successful education of young minds.
In spite of almost annual announcements by recent premiers and education ministers that demountable education will be ended, the pace of eradication has been painfully slow and there is no end in sight.
Perhaps Education Minister Verity Firth and her Director-General Michael Coutts-Trotter, husband of federal minister Tanya Plibersek, should move some of the hundreds of departmental bureaucrats, paper-shufflers, duck-shovers and desk jockeys into demountables so they can learn to appreciate how many students are spending their school years.
Holding the next Cabinet meeting in a demountable classroom might also focus some attention on the problem.
I agree with TS whole-heartedly; having graduated from a poor public school only a few years back – where the majority of my senior classes took place in demountables – I can assuredly say that I would have much rathered any extra cash be spent on decent teachers and day-to-day facilities and materials. Air conditioning is lovely, but not much consolation when all the good teachers are elsewhere.
Almost all baby boomers spent a good part of their school life in demountables (aka portables). Didn’t seem to kill too many of us! As the productivity commission found, the key determinant in educational outcomes is teacher quality, not carpets, air conditioning or (shock horror) class sizes…. Suggest we knuckle down, reward quality teachers better, far better (which would mean measuring them) and cut the nonsense.
The Porsche and a private school education are both possible – just increase the subsidies that both the state and federal government currently give private schools and this will enable the holding down of their fees and allow advantaged parents real choice. More middle class welfare is all that’s needed. Stuff the public good I say!
You don’t need FOI applications to know about the prolifertation of demountables – it’s been going on for decades, and any parent (or former student) who’s BEEN to a school knows it.
One of the most important responsibilities of government – the education of our children – continues to be underfunded and compromised because politicians are primarily concerned about saving money, which they think makes them more likely to be re-elected.
Coutts-Trotter is of course, purely a financial hatchet-man, with no understanding of education administration.
Some demountables (aka portables) I have been in lately while visiting my grand children’s school have been quite comfortable. Some of the class rooms are better equipped than rooms in the main sxhool which is very old but well maintained. They are nothing like the demountables (aka portables) of old which were unlined, noisy and subject to the prevailing weather.
There are as many positives as negatives when it comes to demountables (aka portables)
Maybe the economic conditions are forcing children back to the publice system. Maybe many parents are discovering that private system does not deliver and the public system is not as bad as it is made out.