SOS Australia – Page 5 – Fighting for Equity in Education

OECD Says Public Schools in Australia Do As Well As Private Schools

Trevor Cobbold / October 8, 2020October 8, 2020 / Public education

New results from the OECD’s 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) show that public schools across the OECD achieve better results than private schools and that school systems with larger private school sectors have lower student achievement.

After accounting for students’ and schools’ socio-economic profile, students in public schools scored higher in reading than students in private schools, on average across OECD countries (by 14 score points). At the system level, across all countries and economies, school systems with larger private sectors had lower average performance in reading, mathematics and science.

Media Release: Private School Funding Model is Inherently Flawed

Trevor Cobbold / September 28, 2020 / Funding, Media releases

An Education Policy Brief published by Save Our Schools shows that the new funding method for private schools introduced this year by the Morrison Government is inherently flawed and will result in massive over-funding of schools. National Convenor of Save Our Schools, Trevor Cobbold, said the model is littered with flaws and should be replaced by a new approach.

The Private School Funding Model is Deeply Flawed: A New Approach is Needed

Trevor Cobbold / September 27, 2020October 3, 2020 / Funding

The following is a summary of a new SOS Education Policy Brief. The full Brief can be downloaded below. This article and the Brief were revised on 2 October 2020.

Six months ago, the Morrison Government changed the method used to determine Commonwealth funding of private schools. It adopted a direct measure of the income of families called Adjusted Taxable Income (ATI) to assess their capacity to contribute to school income and thereby determine the level of Commonwealth funding for each private school. It will provide a net funding increase of $3.5 billion to private schools over the next ten years compared to the previous method of funding.

ATI is a deeply flawed measure of the financial need of schools. It will result in massive over-funding of private schools because it badly under-estimates the capacity to contribute of families and ignores other sources of income of private schools as well as their assets. As a result, the financial need of schools is over-estimated and consequently they receive more government funding than warranted.

The Bureaucratisation of Public Education in NSW

Trevor Cobbold / September 13, 2020 / Public education

The following is a summary of a new Education Research Paper on the bureaucratisation of public education in Victoria. It can be downloaded below.

Australia has long been infected by what world renowned Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg, currently professor of education at the Gonski Institute of Education in Sydney, coined as GERM (Global Education Reform Movement). It is characterised by corporate management policies, test-based accountability of schools and fostering competition between schools to drive improvement in education outcomes. One manifestation of GERM is a bloated bureaucracy to police compliance with regulations, collect and record information and monitor performance.

The NSW public education system has seen an enormous increase in bureaucracy since the turn of the century. So-called school reforms beginning in the 1990s promised less bureaucratic control but instead have intensified bureaucracy at all levels of public education systems. Both Coalition and Labor governments have adopted GERM and expanded bureaucracy in public education.

Shocking New Expose of Catholic Church’s Rorting of Taxpayer Funding

Trevor Cobbold / September 7, 2020September 7, 2020 / Funding

Documents leaked to the ABC expose shocking rorting of taxpayer funding by the NSW Catholic school system with the approval of Catholic bishops. It is the latest in a long line of exposes about misuse of government funding by Catholic systems and which successive Coalition and Labor governments have meekly acquiesced to.

The new ABC analysis shows that NSW Catholic school authorities will have diverted more than $300 million in public funding from the system’s poorer to richer primary schools by 2023 to keep fees low in wealthy suburbs to maintain market share. The leaked documents show that schools in some of the wealthiest areas collect roughly one-third to half the fees parents at those schools are able to afford while fees in much poorer areas are set at two or three times above what those parents can afford.

The Bureaucratisation of Public Education in Victoria

Trevor Cobbold / September 1, 2020September 1, 2020 / Public education

The following is a summary of a new Education Research Paper on the bureaucratisation of public education in Victoria. It can be downloaded below.

The Victorian public school system has seen an enormous increase in bureaucracy since the turn of the century. So-called school reforms beginning in the 1990s promised less bureaucratic control but instead have intensified bureaucracy at all levels of public education systems. Both Coalition and Labor governments have adopted GERM and expanded bureaucracy in public education.

The Bureaucratisation of Public Education in Australia

Trevor Cobbold / August 5, 2020August 25, 2020 / Public education

The following is a summary of a research paper on the bureaucratisation of public education in Australia. It can be downloaded below. As far as we are aware, this study is the first to use data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to analyse the impact of school accountability measures on the staffing structure of the public education system.

The paper was updated on 19 August to include an estimate of the small increase in funding for public schools that was accounted for by the increase in non-teaching staff.

Public school systems in Australia have seen an enormous increase in bureaucracy since the turn of the century. So-called school reforms beginning in the 1990s promised less bureaucratic control but instead have intensified bureaucracy at all levels of public education systems. Both Coalition and Labor governments have adopted GERM and expanded bureaucracy in public education.

The Commodification Of Education

sosaustralia / July 29, 2020July 29, 2020 / Funding

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) comes from that part of the ed reform spectrum devoted to free market approaches. But a new report from AEI really pushes the boundaries of treating education as a commodity like a house or a piece of jewelry. Really.

New Review of Evidence That Increased Education Spending Leads to Improved Outcomes

Trevor Cobbold / July 25, 2020July 26, 2020 / Equity in education, Funding

A new paper published by the US Century Foundation reviews studies of two school finance reforms in the US that proved effective at improving student outcomes, especially in low-income and previously lower-spending schools. The two reforms reviewed are new school funding formulae introduced in Massachusetts in 1993 and in California in 2013. Both reforms were based on the principle that school districts serving higher need children require not the same, but more resources per student.

Catholic School Systems Required to be More Transparent About How They Use Taxpayer Funds

Trevor Cobbold / July 10, 2020July 10, 2020 / Funding

Catholic school systems have been diverting taxpayer funding for schools in poor areas to schools in wealthy inner suburbs for years. Many official and other reports have documented this unethical and unchristian practice. It may at last be about to change.

Catholic and other private schools systems will placed under greater public scrutiny as a result of a new report by the National School Resourcing Board (NSRB). The Commonwealth Government has accepted its recommendations that private school systems disclose more information on how they distribute government funding to their schools.