Opinion - Weekend Australian - MySchool

MySchool fuels politics of envy

DESPITE the much heralded nature of the new MySchool 2.0 website (goodness knows what the .0 is for), Schools Minister Peter Garrett has been unable to explain how publishing financial data on the MySchool website enhances learning, teacher quality, boosts literacy and numeracy or indeed, is in any way an “education reform”.

Instead he attempts to justify the addition because it “increases transparency” and “fuels debate”. But what debate is he referring to exactly? If it is the 140-year-old debate over whether non-government schools should be in part publicly funded, how does that sit with Labor's assurances to the non-government schools sector over the past two federal elections that they have nothing to fear from a Labor government?

Or is it a coincidence that since the MySchool website was relaunched, and then relaunched after its initial failure in November last year, the usual suspects of the Left have used the site to support a new attack on public funding of non-government schools?

This debate was given real impetus in 2004 when Mark Latham and Julia Gillard devised the notorious “private school hit list”, designed to rip public funding from an undisclosed number of non-government schools.

Labor lost in 2004 in part because of the fear of higher school fees, but now the government is being more subtle in its approach. With the publication of financial data, the MySchool website has lost its educational purpose of allowing parents to examine how their children are fairing, or to aid them in choosing the right school for their children. Instead the MySchool website has become a weapon aiding those who have a vested interest in reigniting the politics of envy and ultimately to justify cuts to public funding of the non-government school sector from 2013.

Evidence of this can be seen in the hypocrisy of the Australian Education Union which has fought tooth and nail against the publication of league tables and regularly makes statements when it considers national testing data published on MySchool is misused. By contrast, when financial data of non-government schools is splashed on page one, the AEU has used the opportunity to go on the offensive against the non-government sector.

Singing from the same song sheet as the Greens and education union, Garrett announced before the relaunch of MySchool that additional financial information will be added to the website, including the assets, trusts and foundations held by non-government schools. Once again he offered no explanation as to how this will improve learning or be beneficial for students.

Increasingly it seems the Labor Party has ceded education policy to the Greens, but the Coalition will never waver in our support for public funding of non-government schools and continue to make the argument that no school sector needs to be cut for the benefit of another. In Australia every child is entitled to an education paid for by the taxpayer and provided by the state. If parents cannot afford this expense it is free, and generally of a very high standard.

Everyone pays taxes, including parents who send their children to non-government schools so it is only fair that children at non-government schools should receive some support from the government for their education. Because government support to non-government schools is substantially less than that paid to government schools, parents who make the choice to send their child to a non-government school are saving the taxpayer a huge amount of money. If every child in independent and Catholic schools switched to a government school, the taxpayer would need to find about an additional $30 billion in recurrent funding over the forward estimates.

But financial arguments aside, Australia needs a rich and diverse education sector that caters to the needs of everyone.

Parents should be able to choose a non-secular education for their children in keeping with their personal religious beliefs and philosophical views. There needs to be affordable options for parents who want a religious education for their children and government support helps to keep school fees lower.

With 34 per cent of all primary and secondary students attending non-government schools, rising to almost 50 per cent in the final years of school, almost 2.5 million parents should be very concerned about cuts to public funding which would result in a dramatic jump in school fees.

Government schools receive their capital funding from state governments, although many schools also seek and receive support from fundraising and bequests. However saddled as they are with cumbersome bureaucracy and centralised control, it is more difficult for government schools to build up an independent income stream.

The funding of government schools is only constrained by the value placed upon investment of each of the state and territory governments who decide on the education budget while non-government schools will always be reliant on school fees and the generosity of the school community.

Rather than reigniting the politics of envy through the MySchool website, Garrett should start a program allowing government schools to hire a development director whose job it is to grow and manage independent funding sources at government schools. That should be just a start.

The West Australian government's Independent Public School model provides a template for the Australian government to follow. It is a model of government school independence and self management that is working and bearing fruit. If a Coalition government is invested in Canberra we will use the financial muscle of the Australian government to bring about real reform in school education: autonomy for school principals and communities that creates lasting change.

Rather than responding to the ideological morass of the anti-private school lobby, the federal government should invest its time and money expanding the freedom of the government school sector to make decisions for themselves: hire their own teaching staff, choose extra-curricula activity that suits their school community and build the infrastructure they want and need.