MySchool

And this (below) rocks in from a new research paper based on the MySchool results.

I now see what Julia was up to.

It basically shows that despite having twice as much money per student that private schools do not get better academic results than government or Catholic schools.

This can mean one of two things:

1. The private schools are crap at what they do, or

2. All that extra money is being spent on non academic things, which is the argument the private schools are (sensibly) running with.

If education results asymptote as they appear to do, then my guess is that Labor will argue for a ceiling figure, above which no government funding is afforded.

Many private schools would not get any funding. The budget would be relieved.

But it does beg the question, how far could funding be dropped in public schools without affecting academic results?

I am pretty sure that in my time results were at least as good as today but that relative funding levels were much lower.

Mike says “Arguably the country is getting much better value for money under both catholic and private school systems”. That is, the same results with less public money.

Mike is surprised that the government hasn’t forced people into private schooling like they have with private health care insurance. This is probably the coalition’s long term agenda.

The issue of course is that there are those that simply can’t afford even the basic schooling costs, whatever they are.

And also, the two sides of politics see the two sides of schooling as their breeding grounds for members and voters, to be preserved at all costs.

A view that is increasingly out of date as voters take to swinging between our two dysfunctional centrist political blocs.