Talking Point: Rich and poor school divide gives the lie to equal society myth

GREG BARNS: Compare northern suburbs schools to those in Sandy Bay and ask if it’s fair

Why should teachers at a state school in the northern suburbs have to put their hands in their own pockets while private schools have state-art-of-the-art facilities.

ANOTHER school year commences this week. The gap between rich private schools and poor state schools in Tasmania, and it’s worse in other states, remains in place. Teachers, whom we entrust with educating and helping our children grow as citizens, are paid relatively little compared with politicians.

The funding of wealthy private schools by taxpayers is not only an egregious example of the poor subsidising the rich but it is governments using taxpayer dollars to fund wealthy businesses.

To put this in the local context, do we really think it is fair that a state school in the northern suburbs of Hobart should have so few resources that teachers have to put their hands in their own pockets while across the river wealthy private schools in Sandy Bay indulge their charges with state-of-the-art buildings and facilities?

It does not have to be like this. Australia is unique in its culture of government greasing the palms of the non-Catholic private school sector. In Canada, US, New Zealand and many other nations this is simply not the case.

NEWS: NON-GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS GIVEN FUNDING LEG-UP

The rise of the inequitable private school and state school divide has occurred because of politics. The aspirational voter likes to drive their child to a private school in a four-wheel-drive, and they vote. When former Labor leader Mark Latham threatened to cut some funding from establishments like Melbourne Grammar and Sydney’s Kings School, there was a vicious campaign run against the ALP in the 2004 federal election.

Dr Ian Hansen, a retired education academic who conducted the first Australian study into private schools back in the 1960s, wrote powerfully in November about how the dystopian world of primary and secondary education in Australia. In the 1960s non-Catholic private schools prided themselves on not taking government money. But, wrote Dr Hansen in The Age on November 17, by “the 1970s there were subtle shifts in the ways these schools saw themselves. Enrolments and then tuition fees increased. Previously there had been an unwritten understanding among themselves that these schools should never advertise; now they began to. Their new self-confidence moved into self-satisfaction.

“The greedy and bustling 1980s caused the schools to slip from an educational model of performing into a business model. Headmasters and headmistresses became principals, CEOs. Money was spent on refurbishing front gates and sporting facilities — anything that would sell an image,” he wrote.

The point is that we have now reached the stage where Dr Hansen knows of “a school auditorium that ranks in luxury and acoustics with [Melbourne’s] Hamer Hall.” “That’s not fair,” he says when another school he knows “still has urinals open to the sky”.

The MySchool data confirms his point. Last year the ABC News team analysed that data from 2013-2017. It looked at the funding of 8500 schools. What they found was sickening. In that four-year period “four non-government schools spent $100 million each on capital works, while in the same period 1300 public schools had been waiting up to 15 years for urgent repairs to their buildings.” And “half of the $22 billion spent on capital projects in Australian schools between 2013 and 2017 was spent in just 10 per cent of schools” which are the richest in the nation. “They also reaped 28 per cent (or $2.4 billion) of the $8.6 billion in capital spending funded by government”, the ABC found.

Go and take a look for yourself. Wander around Hobart’s non-Catholic private schools, look at their facilities, and then check out northern suburbs and some eastern shore state schools. The difference to the naked eye is staggering. And it is made unconscionable by virtue of the fact that governments and political parties never say no to greedy private schools and their lobby groups.

Don’t believe that myth of Australia as an egalitarian society where everyone is given a fair go. It was always nonsense and never more so than in the case of education.

But while governments can’t say no to non-Catholic private schools when it comes to feeding the inequity of the education system, teachers generally have to plead for modest pay rises. Teachers are these days not just educators of the mind, they are expected to be counsellors, social workers and moral guides. They work hard generally in an environment where they have to deal with pesky parents who think their role is to be their child’s advocate in the classroom. The very best teachers are those who commit themselves to working in a low-income and socially challenging environment. Why are they not paid more for doing what they do?

Why do we pay politicians in Tasmania at least $140,000 a year while the average salary for a teacher is just over $70,000? No prizes for guessing which group contributes more to a better world.

Hobart barrister Greg Barns is a human rights lawyer who has advised state and federal Liberal governments.