Deceit By Omission
The Australian Monday, January 05, 2004
It is a strange statistic with which to open your lead story: "Private School Funding Exceeds University Funding" (Australian, 2 Jan 2004). It's about as useful as saying fuji apples exceeded in-grown toenails.
There is a much more enlightening statistical comparison which the public never hears, namely, how many tax dollars go on each state school student place, how many on each non-state place, and how many on each place in the 50 category 1 (expensive) private schools. Print those 3 figures and readers will suddenly realise that most press releases on school funding are sensationalistic propaganda designed to mislead.
A perfect example of deceit by omission is the citing of the few million dollars annually granted to large category 1 private secondary schools. How can the public react intelligently to these figures if you don't also tell them the amounts spent (around triple) on similar-sized state schools?
Taxpayer's money for schooling is not distributed according to need. Even millionaires who use state schools get full funding. While any low-income family using non-state schools gets only partial funding. The funding system we have today has more to do with business protection for powerful lobbies than it has to do with equalising children's opportunities or a parent's right to choose.
Philip O'Carroll