Des Houghton: There’s a vendetta against private schools

Our leading church and grammar schools are being unfairly targeted for the wrongdoings of a small minority. The real blame lies elsewhere, writes Des Houghton.

Brisbane Boys' College. Picture: Hutchinson Builders

I’m getting a little tired of our schools being blamed for the sins of their students.

If pupils turn up with bad attitudes, bad manners and criminal intent, it is more likely the fault of poor parenting, not poor teaching.

So don’t blame the schools.

Right now it seems as though our leading church and grammar schools are being unfairly targeted for the wrongdoings of a small minority.

I’ll go so far to call it a vendetta against private schools.

Good old-fashioned jealousy could be a motive. Or it may be ideological. There are many who falsely believe that church schools get too much funding when in fact the opposite is true. There are other sad sacks who are simply resentful that our better schools have higher learning aspirations.

And here I am not necessarily drawing a line between state and private schools. Our leading state schools also have high aspirations and high tertiary entrance scores to prove it.

I suspect the “better” schools will always win because they are not burdened by the tyranny of low expectations.

High achievers are celebrated in good schools, not scorned.

This is so at BBC, Somerville House, Nudgee College, Brisbane State High, St Peter’s, Churchie, St Aidan’s, Allhallows’ School, St Joseph’s College Gregory Terrace, Hillbrook, the Queensland Academy for Science, Mathematics and Technology (a selective entry high school in Toowong) and of course Brisbane Grammar School and Brisbane Girls Grammar School. You may add other names. Some of these schools have high fees. But you do get what you pay for in education, like everything else.

And let us reject the falsehood that the students from our better schools are somehow the undeserving offspring of affluent elites.

Some parents of students at elite schools are wealthy, but they worked damned hard to get there. And they are still working hard.

Why? Because they place a higher value on the pursuit of education excellence. They understand ambition – and competition.

If the family has a trust fund to draw on, good for them, because someone at some time in that family worked hard to set it up. There are no shortcuts. There is no entitled aristocracy in Australia. There is no privilege based on gender or class that I can see.

General photo of Brisbane Grammar School - Picture: Richard Walker

Anglican Church Grammar School (Churchie), East Brisbane

None of this, of course, can explain some of the shocking misconduct chronicled in such lurid detail in The Courier-Mail.

Children at good and bad schools can sometimes behave badly, and teachers can sometimes behave badly. But mostly they don’t.

The reports about the rise in cyber-bullying and other anti-social behaviour is worrying.

When wrongdoing is exposed, however, we should not expect teachers to be police detectives. It is unhelpful to blame schools or teachers for the transgressions of a minority of overbearing young egotists who think the world owes them a living.

It’s time for parents to accept some responsibility for their children’s misconduct.

Veteran teacher Tracy Tully had some wise words when she spoke this week at the TAFE state conference.

If students disengage and start to fall behind and start to skip classes it could be they are being bullied, she told me.

Schools of excellence: Somerville House. Picture: Fotofox Images

But there could be another reason, she said. They were not taught positive community values at home. They were not taught self-discipline at home.

Tully says many have not been taught to have pride in themselves, their families, their school, their communities or their country. These virtues are instilled long before a student gets to school. Good schools reinforced these values, she said.

Tully, 65, questions whether there are meaningful protocols in place to investigate suspicions and allegations of child abuse, and drug abuse in schools and whether there is enough follow-up for victims of bullying and their families.

She spent 38 years in far-flung classrooms at Mornington Island, Burketown, Camooweal and Mount Isa in the north, to Charleville and Eromanga, Warwick and Oakey in the southwest.

She has also worked as a barmaid, a rodeo rider, a swimming coach and a Coastwatch patrol surveillance officer.

Why is there poor behaviour in schools?

“There are no boundaries, there are no consequences and there is no hard talk anymore,” she told me.

“I took away their mobile phones way before 2009. The department went berserk, and the parents went berserk but it stopped all the fights.”

Fights and reprisals were all planned on mobile phones, she said.

She was the happiest working out of Longreach on a PCAP, Priority Country Area Program.

“It was a brilliant program which was trashed by the Labor government and ultimately closed down,” she said.

“It was the only thing for sports, music and cultural affairs that bush kids had. And they took away the funding.”

She said the School Support Centre based in Charleville was extremely successful in supporting principals, and arranging visits to outback schools by language, music and PE teachers. But it, too, was closed.

She sees a bigger problem.

“In my journeys I have noticed that government schools all over Australia don’t value patriotism anymore,” Tully said. “Half of them won’t even fly the flag.

“I used to make all my kids, no matter how rough my schools were, sing the national anthem.

“Once you start losing the identity with your country, you’ve got nothing. It’s a free-for-all.”

Fewer male teachers meant there were fewer positive role models for boys.

A “Centrelink culture” had taken hold. The lazy and ill-disciplined knew they didn’t have to try at school because they had the dole to fall back on when they left.

Tully believes school discipline began to fall apart when headmasters began pandering to parents.

This was done at the insistence of virtue signallers in the Department of Education.

The department listened to whining parents instead of backing their principal, she said. Decisions were made by public servants in the cities who had never been in a classroom.

“They didn’t have a bloody clue,” she said.

WHERE HAS THE $800M GONE?

Overseas firms were among those who received $800m under the ill-fated Advance Queensland scheme run by Palaszczuk-Miles government.

And the Minister for Science and Innovation Andrew Powell wants to know where the money was spent.

He said the Labor government did not ask for annual reports and his efforts to find out if any jobs were created have hit a brick wall.

“I have asked the Auditor-General’s office to consider auditing the Advance Queensland program,” he said. “Since coming to office, I have been unable to satisfy my questions about the program’s effectiveness, governance, and value for money.

Minister Andrew Powell, Qld Parliament Question Time, Brisbane. Picture: Liam Kidston

“I want to know where the $800m has gone, what projects have been funded, and determine if they are delivering for Queensland.”

Advance Queensland was introduced by Labor as its flagship innovation initiative.

“Significant public funds were invested across a suite of grants, partnerships, and venture programs. Despite this, questions remain regarding the program’s effectiveness, governance, and value for money,” Powell said.

Mystery remains. It is known that a Scandinavian company received funding to develop a high-security lock for use in public housing while another was given $100,000 to develop a skateboarding app.

A lot of money was paid to universities.

It is now up to Auditor-General Rachel Vagg to find answers.

Let’s hope she is up to the task.

IRRITANT OF THE WEEK

Kevin Rudd and Donald Trump

Kevin Rudd. Our ambassador to the US has failed abysmally to arrange a face-top-face meeting between Anthoy Albanese and Donald Trump. He should be recalled and replaced by Scott Morrison.

Originally published as Des Houghton: There’s a vendetta against private schools