Opinion: Stop public cash for private schools

FEDERAL Education Minister Simon Birmingham thinks some private schools are over-funded. He’s wrong. They all are.

• Warning of school funding gap blow-out
• Waste needs to stop on political front
• Education system needs a lesson

FEDERAL Education Minister Simon Birmingham thinks some private schools are over-funded. He’s wrong. They all are.

Latest figures show Australian taxpayers spend $12 billion a year propping up the businesses we call private schools. That is more than we spend on unemployment benefits and sickness allowance combined. And that’s just for recurrent expenses.

We also hurl another billion in their direction so they can build facilities that taxpayers don’t own and are not permitted to use. Since most of these businesses are also tax exempt, those numbers are just the tip of our generosity.

In their defence, they point out it costs government $4456 a year less to educate a student in a privately-run school. What they don’t say is that more than half of that “saving’’ is for depreciation of the school assets owned by the government. The school doesn’t see a cent of it in its operating budget. Not one teacher is paid with it. Not one book is bought with it.

Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham says some private schools receive too much funding.

Removing the notional depreciation expense, in 2014 it cost the taxpayer just 18 per cent less to have the child educated “privately’’. And that gap is closing. In 2009 it was 28 per cent. At that rate of progress, the gap should cease to exist in the next five or six years.

And it is government-run schools doing the heavy lifting. They teach seven times as many students classified by the ABS as living “very remotely’’ and four times as many classed as being “remote’’. They also educate 3.3 times as many children with a disability.

And unlike government-run schools, privately-run schools are largely exempt from discrimination laws. They are permitted to pick and choose who they will or will not be bothered trying to educate. In NSW, for example, they can refuse to teach (or employ) people on the basis of marital status, sex, disability, transgender or homosexuality. Queensland is less discriminatory. Here schools can only pick and choose on the basis of not liking someone’s religion.

But the real question is why is the taxpayer contributing anything at all? The taxpayer provides a fully funded secular system open to all. If people choose to opt-out, why does the taxpayer owe them a thing? If I choose not to take the bus to work, I don’t get to ask the government to buy me a car.

Australia’s international ranking is now 14th out of 32 OECD countries, with analysis showing private schools are letting us down the most.

Meanwhile our results in benchmark tests continue to slide. Our international rankings have been dropping like a stone. We are now 14th out of 32 OECD countries. Worse, analysis shows it is the private schools which are letting us down the most.

There is no reasonable justification for the extraordinary public subsidy of private choices in Australian education. It doesn’t save money, it doesn’t improve results, it divides our education system along class lines and it entrenches legally justified discrimination.

So, Minister, let’s put them all on that “hit-list’’ and use that $12 billion a year to fix our education system.

David Gillespie is a lawyer and author of Free Schools: How to Get a Great Education For Your Kids Without Spending a Fortune