Labor’s education policy ditches Howard’s transparent and fair funding formula in favour of rewarding Labor state governments and teachers’ unions at the same time playing the politics of envy and the art of the sectional special deal.
For decades now the teachers’ unions have been waging a campaign against Federal Government funding of private schools. I remember my friend Mary Kelly, then President of the QTU, whingeing about it back in 1986 or thereabouts. They were probably complaining when Menzies first implemented the idea in 1963.
For the last couple of years the intensity of their campaign has risen, with National Highways and airways littered with the detritus. The campaign has intensified, partly as a result of the federal government’s decision to put the funding of private schools on a transparent basis.
For years private schools have been funded on the basis of more or less self-reported need. This was obviously open to manipulation. A couple of years ago the federal government changed this, calculating need on the basis of the income profiles of families sending their children to private schools. Without using the actual tax returns of families they estimated incomes on the basis of the socio-demographic of the areas from which they drew students. (This can be done fairly precisely on the basis of the 200 or so houses making up a census collector district).
As a result of this something was crystallised. Many of the people sending their children to the wealthier private schools were actually poorer than many of those sending their children to the needier private schools, and judged on this basis some of the pooer schools were over-paid and the richer schools under-paid.
Let me put this in a more personal perspective. Both my sisters and I went to primary school at St Joseph’s at Kangaroo Point, by any definition one of the needier schools, certainly compared to East Brisbane State where we started our education. In secondary school I went to Villanova, a second tier catholic school, and they went to Sommerville House, an elite protestant school. The family income was modest and didn’t vary much in the time we were all at school, except that my parents were on the aged pension when my younger sister matriculated. However, my parents effectively received significantly more assistance towards my schooling than they did towards my sisters’, even though their need was at least the same for all of us, and arguably greater when my younger sister was finishing.
Was this a reasonable thing? Were we just an anomaly? Well, the government’s SES tables which rank schools for the socio-economic status of students actually suggest that in terms of income there is not really much separating those who send their kids to Sommerville House or Villanova.
But what happens when you adjust for that impartial assessment is that Villanova potentially loses money, and Sommerville House gains it. The Federal Government is too canny to do that, so they increased all funding, but it increased a little more for some of the schools that have historically been underpaid. This creates the impression that rich private schools are being advantaged to the detriment of poor schools, and it is that perception that Labor is playing on.
That’s not the only politics in the announcement. It is allegedly a $2.4 billion package, but $520 million is already being spent in the sector. It is to be taken from some of the richer schools and given to the poorer ones. It is not apparent who will be the winners here, but $378 million will go to Catholic schools who have done a special deal with the Opposition called a “Community Charter”.
Details of the charter aren’t up on the website, but it has the smell of sectarianism about it, and the special wheels and deals that used to go into private school funding policies. The big growth in private schools has been in Anglican, other protestant denomination and Muslim schools. They appear to have been left out in the cold here
Catholic schools aren’t the only ones that get a special deal. The word “historic” has made a come back in the Labor lexicon. Once upon a time, in the Hawke and Keating years, everything Labor did was “historic”. Now it’s back, this time as a description of the deal that Latham has done with the states on this one. Some deal. Not only have the states reaped record receipts from the GST, which are meant to pay for education, amongst other things, but now Latham Labor is effectively topping them up another $1.9 billion. Someone’s numerate here, and it’s not the feds.
There are strings attached however. Not only will the states have to implement reporting procedures (something which Brendan Nelson already appears to have achieved for a fraction the cost of this package), but they will have to “teach Australian values”. What exactly will those be?
Despite the charges of those on the left, when Howard talked about parents sending their children to private schools because they wanted them to be taught values he wasn’t talking about a particular set of values, but he was talking about values specific to those parents that they didn’t think could be taught in the state school system.
Latham’s policy is taking funds from the value pluralists, the Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and non-denominational schools and giving it back to the state to administer. One can only wonder what sort of anodyne platitudes these funds will go to promote.
Still, this is smart politics. The blue collar vote that Hanson won and Howard won back has strong DLP elements. Menzies pitched to them with the original federal funding of private schools, because DLP equalled Catholic, and it was Catholic schools who were the benficiaries of his initial policy. That the Catholic systemic schools were prepared to cut a deal this election indicates that they are prepared to back Labor. Just like the last election, at one level this election is about what happens to the vote that for a short period of time went to One Nation.
With this policy Latham gets a wedge in there, rewards the teachers’ unions, and gives a little more to state governments. Still, I’ll be interested to see whether it is really a vote shifter. If the government could get their rhetoric right on this one they could show the policy up for the pacification of special interest groups and pitch to envy that it is.