10 June 2009

Government caves on disability funding of private schools?

| johnboy
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Back at the end of April I was astonished that Steve Doszpot was pushing for the Government to take over the provision of disabilities in private schools.

I went so far as to label it the most pointless whinge in history and this morning it appears I was wrong.

I still maintain that for the long term health of our nation the quality of the public system should be the sole focus of Government.

But yesterday evening Steve was cock a hoop that the non-government school sector had decided it wanted the pots of money even at the expense of their independence.

This morning Andrew Barr is running up the white flag to some extent, promising to share the outcomes of the review and pointing out how much money’s being spent already on upgrading the private facilities.

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About who’s choice? Not the children involved. Parents who believe public and private education are the same thing – in terms of funding entitlement – are just plain wrong.

Public education, like public health or public transport or public libraries, are national treasures. Private education, like private transport, or private health, or your private library are just that; private benefits. Others are kept out if they can’t pay, or simply don’t ‘fit’, and nothing about that worries you.

One must remember that parents of kids at private schools also pay taxes which in turn go to public schools. In fact, it is a system that works very well in Australia.

Educating a child in a bublic school costs aroud $14,000 a year. The average ‘working Australian’ family pays no more than that in all forms of taxes (after Family Tax Benifit A, B, C, D, E……., childcare support assistance, baby bonuses, deductable education expenses, health care rerbates and so on), but gets public education, public health, social security, defence forces, police forces, courts, roads, and on and on, hell, we even get the ABC. So after paying a net bugger-all on your household income of, you want the taxpayer to hand over $14,000 a year per kid so you can exercise your right to choose.

Get one thing straight; you don’t pay your way at all, let alone meeting education costs, you get the vast majority private education costs met already, and you choose private education because you think it gives your kids a leg up. That’s enough.

I want every kid to get a leg up – through a great, free public education system.

Hells_Bells749:42 am 12 Jun 09

The major problem is the amount they say it costs a student of public or private to be schooled. I can’t recall off-hand what they said it was per head, but it wasn’t pretty and didn’t reflect truly what these children get for the money that has to come from somewhere. The two tiers of Govt. get to shoulder it almost 100% whether a parent pays the voluntary contibutions or not in the public system and in the Catholic sector it is shouldered less by the Govt. (and I know that one of the tiers in Canberra is grossly neglected and the other grossly over-compensated in funding) and in the Private system much less again. Parents shoulder what they can and that helps the system. When they say that a child’s education is free for human rights sake, they lie, it costs us all plenty.

It may’ve been easier if there were never a price put on children’s heads to begin with, shame on everyone for not allowing ALL the kids of Australia to shine.

Same goes for disabilities. They say it takes X amount of dollars and changes needed to school extra needs kids, where is I say, it takes a bit of grunt and hands on over a week or two to make the place accessable and some support both from parents and carers and the Govt. that these kids get on their own accord anyhow (people get quite good at working out their own limitations and how to get around their disabilities and if they don’t have a clue then it was probably always better they went to a very special needs school in the first place.

(* I sent my three Catholic girls to catholic schools and my son is happy in a public school as he is not baptised in any faith and I felt he would fit in great at Miles Franklin a very fine school close to home and if any of my kids were special needs I would want to chose and would wonder why the Govt. wanted 100% of all disabled kids in their care? OHHHHH they can charge the tax-payers like wounded bulls and the private sector aren’t having a bar of the giant rip-off system or certainly are not encouraged to) (although my girls had their issues with learning difficulties that the Govt didn’t want to know about cause we were in the Catholic system at the time, but we battled and the teachers just tried harder and alas the girls got on great and I never begrudged not getting any help, it was the school that was trying on my behalf because they were requesting a part-time aid be with my youngest for a while after the bit they gave the special needs kids wasn’t really enough, I thought it fair to not ask the school and other parents to burden the cost of my kid’s extra needs anyhow, I pay for the basic education and nothing more but asking me to come up with yet again more money would’ve failed and at the end of the day I was just thankful she was in a great Catholic school that were onto her like a hawk in Kindy and stayed on her until she learnt, cause I saw too many of those kids get through the public system fine only to come out more confused than ever)

It’s all about choice and believe me, there is no rich versus poor in the Catholic system, everyone’s doing it tough, and seems to me there is more money left in the pocket if you use the public system anyhow.

Oh goody, Ayn Rand joined the discussion.

Re what is private about private schools – Yes in our modern society where the state has at least a finger (well I hope it’s a finger) in every pie, the terms public and private are somewhat gray. I guess they would say that the distinction is in who does the administrating rather than who does the paying.

Of course I think it’s all a big scam designed to abrogate the very concept of private property (everybody needs their conspiracy theory).

So, I haven’t had a debate about voucher systems in a while. Who here hates the idea of a voucher system and why?

2604 said :

Jim Jones said :

How can you call a school ‘private’ when it’s getting a significant proportion of its funding from the government?

You might as well ask why universities receive billions in federal taxpayer funding when the majority of taxpayers will never set foot in one. Surely if you’re going to advocate zero taxpayer subsidy for private schools – which after all take pressure off the public system – the same “user pays 100%” rule should apply to tertiary education, as well?

…well I’m convinced. User pays for tertiary education!

On topic – good on Steve for taking this initiative, good on Andrew for taking Steve’s point on board and good on JB for his admission! Nice work, guys.

Sorry, that was Jim Jones’ point. Sorry Jim.

2604 said :

Jim Jones said :

How can you call a school ‘private’ when it’s getting a significant proportion of its funding from the government?

You might as well ask why universities receive billions in federal taxpayer funding when the majority of taxpayers will never set foot in one. Surely if you’re going to advocate zero taxpayer subsidy for private schools – which after all take pressure off the public system – the same “user pays 100%” rule should apply to tertiary education, as well?

That’s called “public education” 2604. If you decline to send your kids to fine schools like Telopea and Narrabundah College, with full taxpayer support, why on earth should I subsidise your choice to place them elsewhere? It’s not that I (the taxpayer) gets any say in what happens in those schools, I just pay. In the case of regular catholic schools taxpayers pick up around 70% of the cost – which goes to PB’s point; what’s private about them?

Jim Jones said :

How can you call a school ‘private’ when it’s getting a significant proportion of its funding from the government?

You might as well ask why universities receive billions in federal taxpayer funding when the majority of taxpayers will never set foot in one. Surely if you’re going to advocate zero taxpayer subsidy for private schools – which after all take pressure off the public system – the same “user pays 100%” rule should apply to tertiary education, as well?

if he’s wearing the traditional guernsey, then he might inflict a few grievous harms to student bodies, mightn’t he?

Pommy bastard11:11 am 10 Jun 09

Now that was good for a chuckle.

astrojax said :

surely the government caves in, not ;caves’..?

Astrojax, I think ‘caves’ as a contraction of the idiomatic ‘caves in’ is well established (I recall it being rather novel in the early 1990s when I was at high school). But this perplexes me:

…for the Government to take over the provision of disabilities in private schools

Surely disabled students can provide their own disabilities? This phraseology brings to mind Andrew Barr walking into private schools with a machete and chopping off the legs of otherwise able-bodied students, to “provide disabilities”. And while that may be amusing in a Chaseresque kind of way, I think Andrew is a little too conservative for such drastic measures.

Pommy bastard9:52 am 10 Jun 09

Jim Jones said :

How can you call a school ‘private’ when it’s getting a significant proportion of its funding from the government?

+1

One law for the rich, another for the rest of us.

How can you call a school ‘private’ when it’s getting a significant proportion of its funding from the government?

surely the government caves in, not ;caves’..?

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