Category: Public education

The Dutch education system provides fertile ground for comparing the results of public and private schools. The Netherlands has the largest private school sector of any country in the world with 72% of secondary school students attending government funded private schools. If private schools produce higher education outcomes than public schools as the advocates of the privatisation of education claim, then The Netherlands is the country where this should be happening. But, apparently this is not the case. Continue reading “More Evidence that Private Schools Do No Better than Public Schools”

Advocates of the privatisation of public education want a user-pay system in government schools. They reject the basic principle of free, universal provision. Their strategy is to get an initial breach of the principle of free education with means-tested fees for the well-off.

This was proposed recently in an article by Gerard Henderson in the Sydney Morning Herald. If implemented, it would establish a beachhead to make more and more families pay fees in government schools. It would make education subject to capacity to pay and restrict access to education. It would lead to greater privilege, inequity and social segregation in education. It could ultimately reduce the quality of education in public schools.

Continue reading “Public Education Should be Free, Even for the Well-Off”

Save Our Schools USA has organised a march on Washington DC on 30 July and a national call for action against market-based policies which are destroying public education. The following is a statement by the organising committee. Continue reading “Save Our Schools March On Washington DC”

The Davis Guggenheim directed documentary Waiting for “Superman” is currently on preview in Australia and is due to be released in early March. The film has generated enormous controversy about the picture it presents of public education in the United States. It tells the story of five children who enter a lottery to gain entry to a charter school. Charter schools in the US are privately operated schools funded by government. They are seen as a source of competition to improve public education in the US.

The following is a summary of a review of the film published in the New York Review of Books by Diane Ravitch, Professor of Education at New York University, former US Assistant Secretary of Education under George Bush Snr and author of the best-selling The Death and Life of the Great American School System. Continue reading “The Myths of Waiting for “Superman””