Lines drawn for class warfare

By GREG ANSLEY

You know it must be an election year. John Howard has pulled on his steel-capped prime ministerial boots and hoed into Australia's state education system, accusing it of precipitating an exodus to private schools by ignoring "values".

Not to be outdone, Labor Leader Mark Latham - like Howard, a product of public schools - had Neville Smith, one of his old teachers from Ashcroft Primary in Sydney's west, along to this week's party conference to champion the state system.

"If Mr Howard wants a debate about values in education, I say, 'Come and talk to Neville Smith, and the thousands of teachers like him, right around Australia'," Latham told delegates in a tub-thumping speech.

The education of Australia's children, always among the most sensitive of issues, is about to undergo another provocative airing in the coming months as the nation prepares for the showdown between Howard and Latham in the election, likely to be called late in the year.

State schools are an easy target: always struggling for money and resources, plagued by anecdotal accounts of schoolyard violence and drugs, accused of academic indifference and meaningless grading systems, and chided for allowing political correctness to erode core values.

Periodically, horror stories emerge to add ballast to the accusations. Last year, for example, the former principal of Punchbowl Boys High in Sydney, Clifford Preece, sued the New South Wales Education Department for failing to protect him from violence that included a gun pointed at his head, death threats and a bid to poison the teachers' tea.

In an interview with the Australian that sparked a furious debate around the country, Howard said parents who educated their children privately felt that public schools had become "too politically correct and values-neutral".

Howard later attacked Queensland schools that had replaced Christmas with generic celebrations - "You respect minorities in the community by being sensitive to their values and their rights, but [not] by abandoning your own beliefs and your own practices" - and slammed the politics of teacher unions.

"The teacher unions a year ago encouraged teachers to discuss the war on Iraq in the classroom," he said. "This was code for attacking the Government's position."

In fact, many of the ills that afflict state schools also affect their private counterparts. Many have similar agonies in finding enough money, and suffer similar problems of bullying, violence, drugs and discipline.

Last year the entire upper school of Canberra's St Edmund's College was suspended after a collapse in behaviour and discipline.

And neither side of politics is advocating, even for a moment, that the Government should abandon private schools.

Even Labor, which has attacked privilege and elitism for decades, only goes as far as proposing to take taxpayers' money from the wealthiest private schools and hand it to the poorest - regardless of whether they are public or private.

"I promise you this," Latham told the Labor conference, "as Prime Minister I won't be sitting on the sidelines, a negative, whingeing, carping commentator taking potshots at government schools.

"If there's a problem in our schools - public or private - I'll be getting stuck into it. The education of our young people is too important for political potshots."

But beyond the polemics is a real and disturbing trend. Parents are moving their children out of the public system at an alarming and accelerating rate, taking teachers with them and increasing the pressure on the most vulnerable state schools.

In 1980, 22 per cent of students were enrolled in private schools. Within a decade this had risen to 28 per cent, and climbed again to 31 per cent in 2002.

Within three years, according to projections by the Department of Education, Science and Training, 33 per cent of the nation's students will be at private schools.

The department also expects public school enrolments to fall by 20,000 by 2007, against a 37,000 rise in private school students.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures tell a similar story. Between 1999 and 2000, the number of teachers at private schools rose by 207, compared with an increase of just 128 in the state system. In the same year, while nine government schools closed, 14 private schools opened.

The question now is: why?

The Federal Government's view is that at one end the states are failing to put enough money into the system, while at the other the schools themselves are wallowing in a values-free morass of political correctness.

The funding argument is an easy target for Canberra, because education at primary and secondary level is primarily a state responsibility. Because of the importance of the private sector to the national education system, however, Canberra subsidises private schools on a sliding scale based on the economic status of their catchment areas, rising from a low of 13.7 per cent of the cost of education at a public school in the richest suburbs, to a high of 80 per cent in the poorest.

"Why does a parent earning A$40,000 [$45,450] a year, who is struggling to feed the kids, pay the car and the mortgage, make enormous sacrifices to send children to private schools?" Education Minister Brendan Nelson pondered.

"Why do they bypass good government schools to attend a non-government school? What parents are looking for in education is values, and we want our kids to be taught how to read, write and count."

Perceptions of state failings do appear to play a role in the swing to private education. Studies by the Council for Educational Research identify the key indicators of school quality as: strong leadership, a thriving culture of learning, and high expectations of students; the instillation of a sense of student pride and belonging; an emphasis on values of respect, tolerance and inclusion; good evaluation and monitoring of school performance; and strong parent and community involvement.

For many, that puts private schools in front. Research for the National Council of Independent Schools showed parents chose a private education for their children because they believed non-government schools offered safer, more stable environments, were responsive to students' individual needs, provided for their social, cultural and spiritual needs, and were more accountable, with real co-operation between parents and teachers.

But this view is opposed by many educationalists, parents, community leaders and politicians, including some angry and outspoken members of Howard's own backbench.

Last year an inquiry led by educationalist Professor Tony Vinson into public education in NSW concluded that the public system was still consistently performing to the highest international standards, although it was in urgent need of more money and suffered some disadvantages, including its obligation to accept students with behavioural and other problems whom private schools could turn away.

There is also a great diversity - economic, cultural and otherwise - within private education.

Catholic schools, the largest network, are often among the most struggling. The fastest-growing are Anglican, evangelical Christian, and Islamic, but others are run by Jews, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and the Exclusive Brethren. There are also Montessori, Ananda Marga, Scientology and non-affiliated schools.

Far from all are elite, wealthy or centres of excellence. And many were as angered by Howard's attack on public school values as the most fervent defenders of the state system.

"All schools have core values that reflect the particular school and it's a nonsense and an insult to any school to say that they're value-free," said Tony Keenan, general secretary of the Victorian Independent Education Union, which represents non-government schoolteachers.

The headmaster of Sydney's exclusive The King's School, Tim Hawkes, told the Sydney Morning Herald that the Government should increase funding to both public and private schools instead of pitting the two sectors against each other.

And Australian Education Union federal secretary Rob Durbridge, representing state teachers, thundered: "Two-thirds of Commonwealth funding is being poured into private schools, and only one-third is given to public schools.

"This is a reflection of the Howard Government's values. Public schools encourage the core values of inclusion and fairness. Howard's values are about elitism and inequality."

Howard, in fact, has not spelled out the values he believes the public system is missing, although most commentators believe he has implied traditional religious and moral standards.

But his own Education Department has defined the values all schools should be pursuing in a study on values education released last August.

Notably, case studies used during the study were drawn from both public and private sectors, with no distinctions drawn between the adequacy of their programmes.

"Values are often highly contested, and hence any set of values advanced for Australian schools must be the subject of substantial discussion and debate within their school communities," the study concluded. "The application of those values to real school circumstances inevitably requires they be appropriately contextualised to the school community concerned, and involve the community in the process of their implementation.

"For all of that, Australia's schools cannot, in an increasingly value-laded world, operate as value-free zones, failing to make explicit the values which guide their work."

The study drew up a set of 10 core values, identified as common values already being fostered by many schools and which were consistent with Australia's democratic traditions and beliefs in equality, freedom, the rule of law, and a multicultural society.

The values were: tolerance and understanding of other people's differences; respect, and treating others with consideration and regard; personal, social, civic and environmental responsibility, including self-discipline and the non-violent resolution of differences; a commitment to social justice and excellence; care for self and others; inclusion and trust; honesty; freedom, including the rights and privileges of citizenship and standing up for the rights of others; being ethical and acting in accordance with generally agreed rules and standards of moral conduct or practice.