More Regulation of Private Schools
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
You have given plenty of space (last week) to the Victorian Independent Education Union (VIEU), arguing for more regulation of independent schools. Give me a little space to defend schools like ours against this awful prospect.
The glaring question the VIEU has not answered is: why would anybody in their right mind want to give greater control over the best performing sector to the least performing sector?
Accountability is a favourite term these days. But you have to ask: accountability to whom? Independent schools are answerable directly to their client families, who may drop them at a moment’s notice if they are not happy with the service. Our discriminatory funding system forces lower-income families into state-run schools, who thereby have many captive customers. Not much accountability there!
The VIEU is arguing for an arrangement which delivers more power to the unions and their central bureaucracy mates, but delivers less to the student. They want the less accountable system to control the more accountable schools.
There is a false presupposition in the question: what should government expect in return for funding private schools? We don’t owe anything to the characters that are attempting to take over our schools. It is not their money. It is the taxpayers’ money. If students are the top priority, the government should be delighted that we are using less funding while achieving more.
The ugliest argument used by the union-bureaucracy clique against honest competition in schooling is what they call “planned provision”. This euphemism means that an independent school should not be allowed to exist if there are already enough schools in the area to cater for the student numbers.
This is like saying we have enough churches already, so Baptists will have to go to the Anglican church. Never mind what the parents’ values are, never mind what they think of the existing service delivery, big brother decrees that one size fits all. What kind of politics do you call that?
Philip O'Carroll