Equal school funding please

Here’s my idea for equitable school funding, and it’s not the usual wrangling over public-private school government funding in Australia, but rather intra-public school funding. I do not claim to be an academic or learned expert on this subject, but having gone through almost 10 years in the Victorian education system, I think that I’ve a pretty good idea on what needs improving in this area.

Almost weekly there is some sort of private-school-funding-bashing article in one of the tabloid newspapers, detailing how millions of dollars of government funding are going to this and that private school whilst some poor deprived primary school somewhere in Broadmeadows lies derelict and falling to pieces and what a huge shame this is for the government. But there has never been (with perhaps 2 exceptions) any sort of analysis of public school funding within the system rather than between the public and private systems. This is a situation that must be turned around.

In Victoria, there are what are called ‘Elite Secondary Schools’, which are essentially elitist public schools who try their hardest to be like private ones. These are generally (in no particular order):

• Melbourne High School
• Balwyn High School
• MacRobertson High School
• McKinnon Secondary College
• Bendigo Senior Secondary College

These are schools who receive priority in Victorian government funding and development programs and as a result, have the best facilities among public schools in Victoria, rivalling those of some private schools.

The problem with this? The fact that these schools receive tens of millions of dollars in public funding for building programs, “innovative” projects, etc, whilst schools like, say, Sunshine Secondary College, lie rotting with its facilities literally falling apart.

The reasons for this? Quite simple; the four schools listed above are essentially the top performing public schools in the state (along with University High School), with Melbourne High and MacRob often gaining the best performing results in the state, beating the private schools. When funding becomes available, it is channelled to these schools to become what is becoming official terminology within the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD); “model schools”.

What this exactly means is yet to be determined, but what it does mean for these schools is almost limitless funding for any “innovative project” or “curriculum & learning <insert PC term here>”, whilst other schools that need this funding lie rotting away, crumbling monuments to equitable state education.

Take Balwyn High School for instance. An elite public school almost surrounded by equally elite private schools (Fintona Girls’ School, Camberwell Boys’ Grammar, Carey Grammar, etc.), that obtains high VCE results and retention rates, in the midst of the leafy Eastern Suburbs of Melbourne. It received, for a single three-story building, $11.7 million in government funding, with another couple of million coming from the “school community”. The school already enjoys many clean, new and well-kept facilities, with the building project hardly being able to be considered ‘essential’.

The irony in this is, whilst it seems to cost the equivalent of buying about 20 mid-priced, decently sized, two-story houses to build a single building, many other secondary schools, who do not fit into this “model schools” category, lie derelict and forgotten.

What we need now is a drastic shake up of government funding. Give funding to schools based on the number of staff and students; not on how many “innovative” programs the school operates; not on how much sucking up the administration can do; and certainly not what the socio-economic status of the students, parents, teachers or immediate area is. If we do so, we create elitism, even within our public education system. If it does come to that, the decaying classrooms of Sunshine Secondary College and all of the other forgotten state education facilities, will become timeless monuments to the days of equality and the right to a decent education.