Fed: Back to the bad old days of state aid debate: unions

AAP General News (Australia)
08-22-2000
Fed: Back to the bad old days of state aid debate: unions

By Debra Way

CANBERRA, Aug 22 AAP - The federal government's school funding policies were threatening
to reignite the bitter and divisive state aid debate of the 1950s, a Senate inquiry was
told today.

Those fears were raised as the opposition released figures showing the richest 62 schools
in Australia would get $50 million a year extra through changes to school funding laws.

Opposition education spokesman Michael Lee said on average the government's changes
would double the funding for the top category of rich schools, which includes Geelong
Grammar in Victoria and Sydney's Cranbrook and The King's schools.

Independent Education Union deputy general secretary Patrick Lee and Australian Education
Union president Denis Fitzgerald told the Senate committee community tension over school
funding was on the rise.

Mr (Patrick) Lee said he had grown up in an era when the debate over state aid for
non-government schools meant it was common for Catholic and public school students to
trade insults.

"And no-one should underestimate just how bitter that was," he said.

"I do not want to see us going back to that and I feel we are going back to it."

The debate over whether the commonwealth should help fund non-government schools was
a key factor in the 1950s Labor Party split and was not fully resolved until the early
1970s.

Today's committee was inquiring into a government bill which provides more than $18
billion for federal schools funding for 2001 to 2004.

It includes a new funding model for private schools based on the wealth of the communities
in which the schools lie.

Education Minister David Kemp has said the bill aims to make school funding more transparent
and give parents more choice in where they send their children to school.

But Mr Fitzgerald said the funding model would give more money to private schools.

"We can only assume that when more money goes to a particular sector or subset of the
student population that less ... will be going to children in the government system,"

he said.

"It sadly smacks of a political settlement and sadly it looks like the subsidisation
of privilege."

The National Catholic Education Office told the committee the new funding formula was
too narrow and needed modification.

But the Australian Parents Council, representing parents of non-government school children,
gave the bill the thumbs-up.

"As far as the non-government school sector is concerned, the bill provides a more
transparent, needs-based mechanism for the future of non-government school students,"

APC president Leo Dunne said.

"The legislation also recognises the right of all parents to choose the school they
believe best suits their children's eduction, that parents are the primary educators of
their children, and the entitlement of all children to share in government funds for schooling."

AAP daw/jnb/de

KEYWORD: SCHOOLS NIGHTLEAD

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