Social Mobility
Saturday, January 01, 2000
A powerful "socialist left" lobby resides within the state school system hierarchy, and has successfully sold many people on the notion that all education funding should go to their schools - because that's where the less advantaged children are.
Yes, private school children are more advantaged. But what they don't tell you is that the so-called socialists are the biggest enforcers of the two-tier system. They fight tooth-and-nail to keep lower-income families within their empire. They are supposed to be aiming for a classless society, but their craving for the education dollar ensures that private schools have been left by default with those who can and will pay fees. Inevitably, private schools have had superior outcomes, and thus our social classes tend to be preserved.
The new federal budget proposal ("Chalk and fees", Bulletin, April 20), to pay non-state schools more for taking poorer families (but still less than state schools get), will open new doors of social mobility to those born less advantaged.
And it will have the desirable side effect of exposing all schools more squarely to parental choice, which is the only effective means of improving the quality of schooling in this country.
Philip O'Carroll