Of the eight ideas proposed in the latest TARGET30 report, the idea to charge high income parents a fee to attend state schools has attracted the most criticism.
The people who opposed this idea are mostly those who ‘give a Gonski’ and support massive additional public spending on schools. Yet both of these proposals require parents to pay more for public education. The former asks parents who can afford it to make a direct contribution to their own child’s school, which offers them some say in how it is spent, while the latter requires parents to pay more tax, which just gets absorbed into the ‘system’.
A rough calculation of ‘Gonski’ funding is that it would need increased taxation equivalent to $277 every year for every man, woman and child – $1,108 for a family of four. This is the average sum; high income families would perhaps pay twice as much. The extra tax burden would increase in perpetuity, because we all know that government funding for schools can only ever go up. Compare this with the suggestion of $1,000 a year, only for the time families have children in school, and you have to wonder what the fuss is about.
The most common argument against the idea is that since parents of state school students already pay taxes, they shouldn’t be expected to pay school fees as well. When the tax-paying parents of students in non-government schools, who receive a fraction of the government funding available in state schools, make the same argument it is roundly rejected by public education advocates.
Likewise, the claim that abolishing funding for non-government schools would save taxpayers’ money is easily refuted. It would have the opposite effect. If government funding to non-government schools were abolished, and just half of the students in non-government schools moved into the state school sector, the additional yearly cost to taxpayers would be in the order of $4.6 billion.
The key point of the report however, was that government funding for schools has been rising consistently for decades, with no improvement in student outcomes. Funding is projected to double (in today’s money) by 2025. The report argues that before more funding is committed to schools, the way we spend the current budget must be reviewed.
Finding savings in education budgets is not just about the bottom line, it’s also about putting our resources where they can do the most good.
Jennifer Buckingham is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies, and author of School Funding on a Budget.
Home > Commentary > Opinion > Finding savings in education
Finding savings in education
The people who opposed this idea are mostly those who ‘give a Gonski’ and support massive additional public spending on schools. Yet both of these proposals require parents to pay more for public education. The former asks parents who can afford it to make a direct contribution to their own child’s school, which offers them some say in how it is spent, while the latter requires parents to pay more tax, which just gets absorbed into the ‘system’.
A rough calculation of ‘Gonski’ funding is that it would need increased taxation equivalent to $277 every year for every man, woman and child – $1,108 for a family of four. This is the average sum; high income families would perhaps pay twice as much. The extra tax burden would increase in perpetuity, because we all know that government funding for schools can only ever go up. Compare this with the suggestion of $1,000 a year, only for the time families have children in school, and you have to wonder what the fuss is about.
The most common argument against the idea is that since parents of state school students already pay taxes, they shouldn’t be expected to pay school fees as well. When the tax-paying parents of students in non-government schools, who receive a fraction of the government funding available in state schools, make the same argument it is roundly rejected by public education advocates.
Likewise, the claim that abolishing funding for non-government schools would save taxpayers’ money is easily refuted. It would have the opposite effect. If government funding to non-government schools were abolished, and just half of the students in non-government schools moved into the state school sector, the additional yearly cost to taxpayers would be in the order of $4.6 billion.
The key point of the report however, was that government funding for schools has been rising consistently for decades, with no improvement in student outcomes. Funding is projected to double (in today’s money) by 2025. The report argues that before more funding is committed to schools, the way we spend the current budget must be reviewed.
Finding savings in education budgets is not just about the bottom line, it’s also about putting our resources where they can do the most good.
Jennifer Buckingham is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies, and author of School Funding on a Budget.
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