Give Students Equal Funding
The Age Sunday, January 06, 2002
An awful injustice is built into our schooling system. Naturally capable state school students in most suburbs do not get a fair chance to gain entry to university courses.
Further resources would be nice for schools and students, but it never has and never will solve the problem of unequal opportunity.
The long-established fact is that non-state students do much better in learning outcomes, regardless of spending. So let schools compete. Let parents shop around for a school for their children, and still get the same funding. Education would quickly become a much better leveller.
To prove that we're not pandering to the rich here, we could simply say that any below-average-income family will receive the same funding whatever school they select, state or other.
Open competition between schools is the obvious solution and the only solution. The state system would not collapse. It would become leaner and better, and break free of the stifling central control that at present has the effect of squashing children's prospects.
Philip O'Carroll