Though everyone recognises the importance of education to the nation’s future, many lack confidence in the public education system.

Employers complain of graduates without basic skills, controversy surrounds the curriculum, and parents are so dissatisfied that more than a quarter of them spend large sums of money to send their children to private schools – with polls indicating that many more would do the same if they could afford it.

There are things governments can do to ease some of these problems -but they will not address the fundamental institutional flaws at the heart of the educational malaise. Mark Harrison argues in A Private Education for Allthat public education suffers from a lack of competition and a political process that favours teachers and bureaucrats over students, parents and employers. The solution is to introduce markets to the education system.

A Private Education for All also contains a section on the financing of education in Australia, including comparisons of the funding of Independent, Catholic and Government schools.