School funding: Stop subsidising the haves and start investing in the have nots.

A quarter of Australia’s young people are not finishing school. This is the appalling legacy of the willful neglect of our most disadvantaged kids, writes Jane Caro.

In last Thursday’s The Land newspaper, in the middle of an extravagant advertorial promoting elite private schools, there’s an ad for Knox Grammar. It lists the following “key features” on offer to students:

• A seniors hall for teaching, study and socialising;
• The KSSA Library, open till late with extra support available;
• Technology rich classrooms and science labs with “operable” walls;
• Finance and legal studies classrooms, including a corporate style boardroom;
• 150-seat lecture theatre with lab bench; and,
• The Boater Café with an on-site barista.

Nice perks if you can afford them, I guess, and I’d have no objection to such schools offering glitzy nonsense like this if they were not also in receipt of public funding.

As they are, it is galling, particularly as a report released today notes that total government expenditure on private schools increased by 107 per cent between 1991 and 2000. No wonder Knox can afford “corporate style boardrooms” and an “on-site barista”.

This funding increase was twice the size the government schools experienced in the same period and far outstripped any growth in enrollments. Government schools enroll the vast majority of disadvantaged students for perfectly obvious reasons.

Think tank Mitchell Institute’s report shows the legacy of this willful neglect of our most disadvantaged kids, and it is appalling. They claim that 26 per cent of Australia’s 19-year-olds are not finishing school.

I am not arguing we should provide “on-site baristas” for kids in public schools. However, if we don’t think kids (and their teachers) attending shabby, under-resourced schools with decades-old carpets that are torn and filthy, inadequate heating or cooling, a “Covered Outdoor Learning Area” (big shade cloth) instead of any hall at all, we aren’t getting a clear message about how little we value their education in comparison to their more fortunate peers, and we’re even stupider than I thought.

A common excuse from politicians (shining exceptions being NSW’s Mike Baird and Adrian Piccoli) is that we’ve been “throwing money at schooling” for no discernible result. Indeed, things are getting worse. But that’s because we’ve been “throwing money” at the wrong kids. When you add further luxury to schools that are teaching kids who are already doing well it is no surprise you see little return on your investment.

Invest in kids who actually need more help and I guarantee you will see a return. That is what Gonski is about — funding follows real, evidence-based needs. The objection of some is that Gonski is too expensive. You know what is galling about that? It is more expensive than it needs to be because then PM Julia Gillard tied the Gonski Review’s hands by insisting no school lose a dollar. Not even Knox.

In other words, our obsession with publicly funding the very wealthiest schools that are teaching the very wealthiest kids is being used as an excuse not to properly fund the neediest.

Frankly that is disgraceful. Talk about middle class (actually, more like upper-class) welfare. As American billionaire investor Warren Buffett says: “There’s class warfare all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Tragically, however, if the rest of the world is more equitably developing its talent (and it is), all of Australia will be the loser in the end.

Jane Caro is a writer, commentator and lecturer.

This post originally appeared on ABC News.