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Five private schools spent as much on new facilities in one year as 3,000 Australian public schools

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/23/five-private-schools-spent-as-much-on-new-facilities-in-one-year-as-3000-australian-public-schools

Australian Education Union report finds a $31.8bn divide in capital spending over 10 years

Five private schools spent as much on new facilities in one year as 3,000 Australian public schools

Infuriating. In this form, private education is an absolute cancer.

28 comments

Deceptichum

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Private schools are a disgrace to the country and should be banned entirely.

Access to education should not depend on the financial lottery of your family, nor should we be funding this inequality.

Zagorath

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I would not be particularly disappointed if they were banned entirely—with exceptions made for things like international schools—but I'd never advocate for that myself. I'd advocate for removing every single cent of their public funding. Currently, out of federal funding, private schools actually receive more money than public schools do*. That is absolutely unconscionable to me. Diverting huge amounts of resources away from public schools into private schools is the epitome of upper-class welfare, especially when we see stories like this one, or stories about how much money it's currently costing parents to send their kids to public school (in high uniform costs, excursion costs, textbooks, computers, school contributions, etc.).

* This is made up for by the fact that states provide more funding for public schools, although this varies quite substantially by state in some problematic ways.

hitmyspot

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They should not be banned. However, they should not receive public funding.

Deceptichum

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No, they should be banned.

Education should not be divided by the haves and have nots.

hitmyspot

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I agree. Most of the stats and studies show that public schools.in wealthier areas do equivalent to private schools. The demographics seem to be more important than the school. I don't think you should tell parents how they educate their kids, or how they spend their money.

We shouldn't try to dismantle private education. We should elevate public education so that it's seen as a waste of time. We should also not be funding private schools.

To take your analogy further, should we ban supermarkets? Children should also not go hungry. Why not make it so everyone eats the same thing, from a coop shop, with no fees. Of course not.

Deceptichum

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To take your analogy further, should we ban supermarkets? Children should also not go hungry. Why not make it so everyone eats the same thing, from a coop shop, with no fees. Of course not.

I'm down for that, beats getting price-gouged by those fuckers and we don't need shelves with 20 different versions of lemonade, 16 different self-raising flours, etc.

As long as private education exists, it will be a threat to public education and cannot be allowed.

hitmyspot

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Private education is only a threat to public education when it's not as good. There is a finite supply of funding allocated to education. Spending less on students that pay their own way by choice and more on students that need it seems a better use of resources.

With that same analogy, we would have to ban tutors, online courses, extracurricular activities etc too, I assume?

Or in my equivalent analogy, restaurants, farmers markets, independent food shops, butchers, greengrocers, cafes etc.

No, we don't need 20 choices for every product, but the reason supermarkets price gouge is a lack of competition. You're calling for less competition, completely at odds with your stated goal.

rainynight65

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But are we "spending less" on students that "pay their own way"? Private schools are getting massive amounts of taxpayer money, and can use their funds to pay better salaries (therefore drawing teachers out of the public system), build better facilities, and so on. Meanwhile they are academically selective and therefore don't act as a catchment for capacity that the public system can't handle. Public schools however have to scrounge for the essentials and can't compete when it comes to salaries and facilities. That's just not right.

hitmyspot

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Students going to private school are being subsidies by the government now. They pay less per student than the equivalent in public school, but it's still significant.

I'm saying that we shouldn't ban private school, just like we shouldn't ban hone schooling. We just shouldn't subsidise it.

Deceptichum

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Private education exists to be at odds with public education. As long as it is around, rich people will try to use it and when they are using it they will not have a reason for public education and dismiss it's importance. Not letting money be a factor in access to education at all seems the best outcome, and we have more than enough money for education if we actually wanted to use our national resources effectively instead of letting them be sold off for corporate profits.

I'm calling for no competition, access to education or food isn't a game where your goal is to get the most money out of people, it's about providing for citizens needs in life.

hitmyspot

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Private education does not exist to be at odds with public education. It sexist for either profit, push particular ideology, or give an advantage. That’s not at odds with public education.

If there is no advantage, the profit motive goes as there is no advantage. Then all we are left with is religious schools. Most people using religious schools are not religious, but expect a good education where the public school is lacking. Improve the public schools fixed the problems and helps children. Banning private schools requires more funding for wealthier kids, so reduces funding for others, worsening education. Youre hoping that pressure from wealthy people would improve education funding. A wealthy vote and a poor vote are the same. So it is no more likely to be improved, while needing more funding to stay at parity of where we are now. You’re letting your ideology cloud the reality and outcomes.

Crow

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They should be banned. You want rich kids going to school with poor kids.

hitmyspot

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Rick kids going to school with poor kids does not fix education. Already public schools in wealthier areas score equivalent to private schools with the same demographics. Banning private schools will mean more kids get a worse education. Instead we should focus on improving public schools where they are lacking. The problem is going to get worse as teachers are priced out of home ownership in cities.

Id prefer university to be free for all rather than wasting money paying for more public schools education of those who can afford to pay for it, and wish to.

Jeknilah

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You first. You ever try going to a poor school district? There's a reason why public school districts have ratings. Easy to say, but nobody even slightly well off wants to go where testing scores and the rest of the school metrics are worse in every way.

rainynight65

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In Finland, 99% of education on all levels (primary through university) is public. Private schools only exist to serve very special needs, and are not allowed to charge exorbitant fees.

Finland has got some of the best academic outcomes in the world. It goes to show what you can do when you invest in public education instead of starving it of the necessities.

hitmyspot

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Yes, and this is why in the UK, house values are related to those scores. So it leads to even more disparity and keeps richer and poorer kids apart as all the poorer kids are pushed out of the better, wealthier schools over time by nature of housing.costs.

Nath

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Private schools also receive the bulk of their revenue from private contributions and fees.

(Plus another $8k one-off fee to apply/enrol a child)

The article is glossing over the fact that the crazy amount of money this school has is coming from parents.

$32,000 to $47,000 per year per kid pays for a lot. Assuming these fees were frozen for the next 13 years (which they obviously won't be), it'd cost a parent $525,284 per kid to send them to this school. Plus all the other costs like uniforms, books, excursions etc.

Some people can afford this.

Deceptichum

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Sounds like a good reason to tax wealthy families more, let all children’s education benefit from that wealth.

rainynight65

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That's the other thing about these schools - the school fees themselves basically just buy you the privilege to send your kid there. But then you still get ripped thousands more for pretty much everything else. And it's not like their uniforms will be cheap. You pay extra for any sporting activity, you pay extra for electronic devices, it's just a money grab from beginning to end.

And at the end of the day, the only thing you can say with certainty is that your education was expensive. But was it worth it? Was it better than a public school?

metaStatic

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the education is the same, legally, it's the social connections you're paying for.

zero_gravitas

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Was it better than a public school?

Well, if you want to go by HSC results (and many people would consider that the yardstick) then there's many private schools among the top schools, although there's also lots of government selective schools, including the very top 4.

See: https://bettereducation.com.au/results/hsc.aspx

The highest-ranked private schools are probably academically selective in some way too, though, so I wouldn't think we can attribute the results to just the teaching there. And even if they don't, kids of wealthy parents have an academic advantage throughout their education because of factors tied to their parents' wealth (aside from being able to afford private education).

I'd imagine, though, at least some of the vast amounts of cash these schools have must go towards attractive wages for good teachers and more of them (smaller class sizes), and both of those things make a difference.

notgold

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so there are government selective schools that get higher funding than regular public schools. That seems fair /s

zero_gravitas

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I actually have no idea if government selective schools get more funding.

HollowNaught

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I was sent to a private school for years 7-11

I hated it and I completely agree

ChaoticNeutralCzech

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I get the point but it's not a great statistic to cite. Most schools don't expand every year so they can have spent $0 on new facilities in 2023.

Cypher

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So you think of those 3,000 schools none were doing expansions or renovations?

You think the budgets for those projects don’t run over years?

Or that when they do require those works that they will receive anywhere near the same level of funding?

ChaoticNeutralCzech

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I said “I get the point”. This means that I know about the disparity but that's just a bad way to illustrate it. You could say that when you first got a dollar from your parents, you became richer than 500 million people because at least that many are in debt right now. Or that the richest 1% bought more houses this year than 20 million Australians because most people buy 0 houses in any given year. I would find it more useful to pick a statistic that cannot be zero, such as annual budget.

Lintson

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Most people commenting here don't have kids. Private schools are so prolofic because the majority of public schools are so defunded and sad looking that there is a native demand for schools with... non-below average facilities which families are willing to pay for.

This country doesn't spend enough on education and instead is letting its citizens fund the education sector out of their own pockets. It's kinda criminal.

So instead of blanket banning private schools we should be funding public ones to the level that makes most private schools redundant.

Peddlephile

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I've worked on both private and public school projects. The budget disparity is depressing.

$30mil for a creative arts precinct including new full sized theatre that can be publically rented out vs $5mil to upgrade the entire school to meet the growing population of the area and everything had to be done on the cheap, and even then things had to be even cheaper still.

Private schools should absolutely not get any funding. Give more to public schools so that education is available to everyone regardless of status.