PM's adviser challenges non-commercial ethos

JULIA Gillard's communications chief, John McTernan, supports the idea of for-profit organisations running free public schools.

JULIA Gillard's communications chief, John McTernan, supports the idea of for-profit organisations running free public schools as a way of expanding choice for parents in education.

In opinion pieces published in the British press over the past 18 months, Mr McTernan, who joined the Prime Minister's staff after advising the Blair government, questions the orthodoxy that universal public education can be provided only by government.

"What's the problem with making a profit?" he says in The Daily Telegraph. "After all, school buildings are built, and supplies delivered, for profit. No profound distortion of the underlying ethos of free, universal state education has ensued."

Mr McTernan says greater independence has been handed to a variety of government service providers over the past 20 years but "one shibboleth remains unchallenged. They have never challenged the fundamental role of the state as a provider of services. The state accepts that it can't make cars; why does it believe that it should continue to manufacture health and education?" he says.

Mr McTernan expressed similar views in an article in The Scotsman following the election of the Scottish National Party government last year, urging a rethink of the orthodoxy that certain services must be delivered almost exclusively by the public sector.

The vast majority of Australian schools are not-for-profit, with their non-commercial nature a prerequisite for government funding. While some for-profit schools exist, they primarily cater for overseas students and charge fees.

The federal government is working through its response to the independent review of school funding, chaired by businessman David Gonski, which proposes a new model for funding schools that will require an injection of at least a further $5 billion a year.

When asked if for-profit privately run public schools were among the options being considered by the Gillard government as part of new funding arrangements, a spokeswoman for Ms Gillard said: "No".

Governments already contract public services to the private sector in areas such as prisons, immigration detention centres and some public hospitals but extending this model to schools has not entered the funding debate.

The JD Story Professor of Public Administration at Queensland University, Ken Wiltshire, said the model was common in the US and had potential for Australia.

"It can transform poor areas and underprivileged areas . . . it's worth a try in areas where schools are underperforming at present, and possibly in indigenous communities," he said.

But Angelo Gavrielatos, federal president of the Australian Education Union, representing teachers in government schools, said the hallmark of a civil society was public education as a public good.

"Shifting education to a for-profit operation undermines that essence," he said.