Seismic Event?
The visit of the Deputy Prime Minister to the MC Newth Auditorium last week was a fascinating event. Ms Gillard gave a carefully worded but excellent address in which she affirmed the crucial role of independent schools and described a new way of thinking about education policy which sets aside the usual bitterness and division.
St Andrew’s hosted the Annual General Meeting of the Association of Independent Schools of NSW, which consists of governors, principals and bursars of non-government independent schools from all over the state. It was a big occasion for the School and I am grateful to the staff and students for their support. I also thank parents and students from Year 12 for your forbearance for the changed arrangements for your parent/teacher interviews that coincided with the AGM.
There was standing room only in the Auditorium as officials from independent schools gathered to hear the Deputy PM speak. For the past decade or more, education policy in Australia at both state and federal level has been largely occupied by debates over the distribution of public funding and the steady rise in the percentage of students in non-government schools throughout the land. No one talked much about teaching and learning. We all remember the “hit list” of so called “wealthy” private schools that was once the formal policy of the party now in government. Those were unhappy days in the political debate because envy, rancour and bitterness were at the centre of the discussions. Private effort from parents was denigrated as elitism. Sadly, the unkind sentiments of these points of argument even affected the ways in which students in the government and non-government sectors reacted to one another. I hasten to add that the comments of the then PM who declared state schools as “values free zones” did not help the cause of unity. Both sides became infuriated with one another.
I have always argued (for what it is worth) that the nation needs a powerful and properly resourced state education system. I honour the excellent work that occurs each day in our state schools and I absolutely reject absurd generalisations about the quality of one system versus another. The evidence does not support such a claim. However, I believe that all children in Australia have an entitlement to be materially supported in their education by the government and that all people should have a right to choose the school that best suits the needs of their children. The notion that reducing the funding to non-government schools increases the resources available to government schools is both false and unhelpful. It is far more useful to look at funding as a percentage of GDP and by comparisons with other OECD countries. We need to enlarge the pie, not cut it into smaller portions.
As a case in point, St Andrew’s Cathedral School was once an unwilling member of the so called “hit list” of schools across the country deemed to be too wealthy to receive government funding.
There was a sense in which the “hit list” was a kind of club of the outstanding independent schools in the country and some people were quite happy to be listed in such company. However, a few facts about the School will reveal how absurd it was to generalise and to make comparisons with other places (both government and non-government).
Although founded in 1885, St Andrew’s did not own any property in its own right until 1984 when we purchased our Outdoor Education site known as Kirrikee (when the School was in its 99th year). We did not own any city property until 1989 when we acquired blocks that were later developed as the Bishop Barry Centre. It was not until 2000 and 2001 that we set in place arrangements for permanent occupancy of St Andrew’s House and further space in the BBC. We have a comparatively high debt and there we face high fixed costs as a city school. We strive to resource the School well, but we must do this in a complex and challenging city environment. Our funding level originally was set as a result of the 1973 Karpin Report into funding private schools, which placed us on Category 1 (the lowest level of government funding). This arose in the main because of the complex formulae associated with the costs of running the School in the city. Over the decades that followed, St Andrew’s made several unsuccessful attempts to have this decision overturned. As a consequence, St Andrew’s operates in a tightly managed financial setting. We are not a rich school for rich people and it has always offended many of us to hear that kind of assertion. Our families are committed to their children and to the School because of the good things that it brings into their lives and character.
Last week, the Deputy Prime Minister portrayed a different vision for future education policy. She spoke not of funding need but of funding “excellence”. She upheld the pre-election promise that guaranteed the present system of funding until 2012 and she foreshadowed a general review of the funding model with a view to making it simpler and more transparent. Of course, there is always “devil in the detail” and we await further developments with interest. Yet there is a new and refreshing spirit of dialogue and openness that gives hope that we might avoid the past errors of rivalry and division.
Interestingly, the Age newspaper in Melbourne the following day reported the Deputy PM’s speech that night as having sent shock waves through the independent school community across the country. It must have been a different seismic event – the idea that a new government might actually tell the truth and uphold their promise.
Peace
Phillip Heath
Head of School
