Australian Atheists Forum

Generally I think sending children to private schools is terrible because it might turn them into racists, misogynists, bigots or elitists. It could expose them to the risk of sexual abuse. Generally it is also the place where they will be exposed to religious dogma which will be erroneous and perhaps traumatising.

Ross Gittins has some further ideas about this. I wonder about the stats for Labor MPs and the education choices they have made for their children. It would also be interesting to see if there is a correlation with MPs owning investment properties.

https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-eco ... 5f7l8.html

stylofone wrote: ↑Mon Feb 26, 2024 8:02 am Generally I think sending children to private schools is terrible because it might turn them into racists, misogynists, bigots or elitists. It could expose them to the risk of sexual abuse. Generally it is also the place where they will be exposed to religious dogma which will be erroneous and perhaps traumatising.

Ross Gittins has some further ideas about this. I wonder about the stats for Labor MPs and the education choices they have made for their children. It would also be interesting to see if there is a correlation with MPs owning investment properties.

https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-eco ... 5f7l8.html

This, and a number of other apparent conundrums, could be resolved by refining the criteria for "what is a Labor government?".

It is a real difficult one for parents. You are in a kind of no win situation as you know that public schools are desperately (intentionally?) underfunded by the government, which harms you child's chances, but private education is horrendously expensive (and yeah has it's own issues).

The other interesting/sad thing is if your child has special/additional needs, in which case you need to go in the underfunded public system as private schools don't want them, as they select their students for maximum profit. Obviously that is what education should be about, not about our countries future, not about those individuals future really, but profit.. sigh..

But it gets worse as public is like that too, i.e. we have more than just public/private two tiers, there are tiers of public schools playing games too.

We are trying to find a good school for our autistic 12 year old for high school next year and we cannot go with our decently performing closest public high school as they are well known to railroad high needs kids out. So it is not just that higher needs kids are forced into public schools but they are forced into lower performing and/or smaller public schools as many public schools are also being run like businesses and they will force out kids that they feel will harm their average scores and/or take more resources.

This is besides the fact he has additional funding coming with him (full time in-class aid).. That fact however will make us a shoe in for the smaller out of area school as a child that comes with additional aid funding means they have an extra resource that can help other students in his class that failed to "win" the funding fight (but need the additional help too).

joele wrote: ↑Mon Feb 26, 2024 3:29 pm It is a real difficult one for parents. You are in a kind of no win situation as you know that public schools are desperately (intentionally?) underfunded by the government, which harms you child's chances, but private education is horrendously expensive (and yeah has it's own issues).

The other interesting/sad thing is if your child has special/additional needs, in which case you need to go in the underfunded public system as private schools don't want them, as they select their students for maximum profit. Obviously that is what education should be about, not about our countries future, not about those individuals future really, but profit.. sigh..

But it gets worse as public is like that too, i.e. we have more than just public/private two tiers, there are tiers of public schools playing games too.

We are trying to find a good school for our autistic 12 year old for high school next year and we cannot go with our decently performing closest public high school as they are well known to railroad high needs kids out. So it is not just that higher needs kids are forced into public schools but they are forced into lower performing and/or smaller public schools as many public schools are also being run like businesses and they will force out kids that they feel will harm their average scores and/or take more resources.

Yes, I experienced this phenomenon. It's amazing when people whose job it is to help children with disabilities/special needs will very carefully and precisely identify the child with the greatest needs and do everything they can to eject them. The refusal of private schools to even consider special education is another one of the evils of this system, it's like a perfect apartheid system where the "other" doesn't even exist, so completely are they ostracised. This results in a greater burden on the public system which can't adopt such practices, not to the same extent, anyway.

Bet there's no Robodebt-style clawback of the overfunding.

Three of Sydney’s wealthiest private schools received double the federal funding they were entitled to last year under the official resource standard, new data shows, despite the introduction of reforms to tackle overfunding.

Under the school funding agreement, struck in 2019, the commonwealth is meant to contribute 80% of the schooling resource standard for private schools, while state and territory governments are responsible for the remaining 20%. The split is reversed for public schools.

Figures outlined in a Senate estimates briefing released under freedom of information legislation show four in 10 (1,150) private schools were overfunded by the commonwealth in excess of the agreed 80% level last year, to the tune of $2.5bn.

Northern Beaches Christian school, St Augustine’s College and MLC school, all in Sydney, were funded at 171%, 160% and 158% of the SRS respectively, about double the 80% they should have received from the commonwealth. That equated to about $13.6m of overfunding in a single year.

In total, almost 40 schools received more than $2m more than budgeted in their commonwealth share of funding, including prestigious institutions Loreto Kirribilli and Normanhurst, the Council of Newington College and St Aloysius’ College, also in Kirribilli.

Penleigh and Essendon Grammar school and Haileybury in Melbourne and St Augustine’s College in Sydney all received more than $5m in overfunding.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... -last-year