The following letter was submitted to the Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald in response to an opinion piece by author Jane Caro in the Sun-Herald on 3 May. The letter was not published.
It is baffling that erstwhile advocates of public education want to jettison core principles that have governed public education for 150 years. Jane Caro’s proposal to adopt Ontario’s system of full taxpayer funding of private schools (SMH 3 May) should be comprehensively rejected because it breaches the core principles of secular, non-discriminatory and free education.
It would introduce structural contradictions in the public system: some schools would be secular and others free to propagate a religion; some would be prohibited from discrimination in hiring staff while others would be allowed to discriminate on the basis of gender, disability, sexual orientation, transgender identity and marital status.
Full taxpayer funding of private schools is no guarantee that they would not be able to charge fees. Other countries sch as Netherlands, Belgium and New Zealand which integrate Catholic schools in the public system permit a plethora of fees, capital charges and pseudo fees in the form of so-called voluntary contributions.
Catholic and Independent schools had the chance to participate in a truly needs-based funding system designed by David Gonski. They squibbed it in favour of special funding deals. Generous government funding and fees provide Catholic schools with a significant resource advantage over public schools and a very large advantage in the case of Independent schools. It is incomprehensible that they would give this up in the light of the Gonski experience.
It is equally incomprehensible that the Catholic bishops and education leaders y would give up the privilege of diverting government funding intended for regional and outer suburban disadvantaged schools to inner-city schools competing for market share with wealthy Independent schools.
The direct way to reduce social segregation in schools is to stop the massive underfunding of public schools and ensure their full funding as well as end the overfunding of private schools.
By all means take over the full funding of private schools, but then just take them over and make them fully public schools i.e. public in purpose and outcome, above all genuinely public in access without any enrolment requirements – public in ownership and control .Then they might be public in accountability. Our nineteenth century forefathers understood all this. You cant afford to be tolerant with the intolerant, and compromise the public with the private good. I know public school supporters dont like to be called sectarian when they oppose publicfunding of private religious schools, but why be afraid of mere meaningless invective?