← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Faust
Thread ID: 3251 | Posts: 8 | Started: 2002-10-27
2002-10-27 22:57 | User Profile
Australia: public schools losing students flight into private education
Australia: Some Sydney suburbs have just three in 10 students at a public school as the city leads the flight into private education. The growth is most noticeable in Anglican, Christian Community and Islamic schools. Catholic schools have also joined the stampede.
Sydney suburbs lead the class revolt
By Linda Doherty, Education Writer October 28 2002
Some Sydney suburbs have just three in 10 students at a public school as the city leads the flight into private education at a rate far quicker than the rest of the state.
An analysis of census data from 1996 and 2001 shows rapid growth in non-public secondary schools in the eastern suburbs, inner west, outer west, north-west, northern beaches and on the North Shore.
In that period the proportional rise in some Sydney electorates has been more than 10 percentage points, with the drift to private schools now evident in working-class Labor seats such as Canterbury, Bankstown and Blacktown. Those three electorates are among 30 Sydney seats where at least 40 per cent of students now attend a non-government secondary school.
The Minister for Education, John Watkins, said preliminary 2002 enrolment figures indicated the Government was starting to "arrest the drift". He pointed to the reorganisation of schools in Balmain and Glebe, where the Education Department says enrolments rose 0.4 per cent between 2001 and this year.
This slight increase is in the Port Jackson electorate, where 52 per cent of high school students are private. In the Premier's electorate of Maroubra that figure is 58 per cent and in Vaucluse 84 per cent, the highest proportion.
The growth is most noticeable in Anglican, Christian Community and Islamic schools, where annual fees are as low as $2000. Catholic schools have also joined the stampede to expand to city's fringe, where there are high population growth and cheaper land.
Mr Watkins said: "My intention is to slow the drift, stop it and turn it around."
The general secretary of the Independent Education Union, Dick Shearman, said the trend was a political dilemma for a state government championing public education, because many Sydney parents had already switched their children to non-government schools.
"It has become much more normal for people to think of your Catholic and Anglican schools as part of the broad provision of public education," he said. "Our view is the public/private debate is dead. We think Sydney thinks it's dead."
The union today will publish the secondary school figures, compiled from Census data by the Catholic Education Commission and the Association of Independent Schools.
Across NSW, enrolments in non-government schools rose from 28.7 per cent of students in 1996 to 31.3 per cent in 2001.
Public primary school enrolments have masked the large increases in Sydney high schools.
The proportion of secondary private school students is at least double the state average in the electorates of Bligh, Coogee, Vaucluse, Davidson, Drummoyne, Lane Cove, Ku-ring-gai and North Shore. One in two students in Manly, Maroubra, Pittwater, Port Jackson, Strathfield, The Hills and Willoughby also go to non-government schools.
The executive director of the Catholic Education Commission, Brian Croke, said there were rises in private school enrolments in poorer areas like Mount Druitt.
url: [url=http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/27/1035683306062.html]http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/27/...5683306062.html[/url]
2002-10-28 00:50 | User Profile
Nice find, Faust. Excellent news. I hope the trend is replicated in the United States.
2002-10-28 06:07 | User Profile
Originally posted by PaleoconAvatar@Oct 28 2002, 00:50 Nice find, Faust. Excellent news. I hope the trend is replicated in the United States.
If I'm not mistaken, "private" schools in Australia receive substantial government support. aka voucher systems or something. You won't see ythe Australian system, with tuitions as low as $2000 (probably Australian, which means LT $1300 US) and 30% enrollment without that.
2002-10-28 06:30 | User Profile
Originally posted by Frederick William I@Oct 28 2002, 02:07 > Originally posted by PaleoconAvatar@Oct 28 2002, 00:50 Nice find, Faust. Excellent news. I hope the trend is replicated in the United States.**
If I'm not mistaken, "private" schools in Australia receive substantial government support. aka voucher systems or something. You won't see ythe Australian system, with tuitions as low as $2000 (probably Australian, which means LT $1300 US) and 30% enrollment without that.**
I guess there had to be a catch. Too good to be true--I was wondering why there'd be a sudden burst of "private" spirit in Australia.
2005-04-01 13:38 | User Profile
Hi,
I am from Australia. I was just wondering why you think it would be good for australian's to have a "private" spirit?
2005-04-01 14:22 | User Profile
[QUOTE=violinwizz]Hi,
I am from Australia. I was just wondering why you think it would be good for australian's to have a "private" spirit?[/QUOTE] Because otherwise you'll end up a stagnating, authoritarian hellhole, governed by an elite of jet-setting bureaucrats and corporate chief executives, offering up shallow, decadent pop culture to an increasingly violent and alienated underclass, and importing Third World scum to keep the Ponzi scheme afloat.
2005-04-02 07:50 | User Profile
i see your point. On the other hand, if more people sent their children to private schools, the kids left in the public schools would be even more disadvantaged. Do you not think it's better to give all the kids a chance to break out of the class they have been born into. Consequently, you would be alienating the "underclass" even more than they already are.
2005-04-02 12:19 | User Profile
[QUOTE=violinwizz]i see your point. On the other hand, if more people sent their children to private schools, the kids left in the public schools would be even more disadvantaged. Do you not think it's better to give all the kids a chance to break out of the class they have been born into. Consequently, you would be alienating the "underclass" even more than they already are.[/QUOTE]Bright, ambitious people have succeed throughout history regardless of education. All public education does is produce "education inflation." To use but one example: a college degree used to be a cachet for the children of the wealthy. So the egalitarians decided everyone should have a college degree thru student loans and grant programs. The result is that the elite remove themselves to increasingly rarified schools and all those State U. degrees are relatively worthless.
Another fallacy behind public education is that it assumes everyone can or wants to be educated. Or more accurately, stuck at a desk for six hours a day, herded around in lines according to the ringing of electric bells, and droned at by female education majors who represent the bottom third of college graduates.