Australia’s increasingly segregated school system is weakening both educational equality and social cohesion. Breaking the policy deadlock may require giving citizens a greater role in shaping long-term decisions about education.

For decades, Australians have argued about schools as though the problem was simply one of education policy. Funding formulas, curriculum reforms, teacher shortages, NAPLAN and school choice dominate the debate. Yet perhaps we have been looking in the wrong place.

Despite countless reviews, inquiries and election promises, one trend has remained remarkably consistent. Australia now has one of the most socially segregated school systems in the OECD.

Funding inequalities have tended to make public education the safety net for those who can’t afford private education. Public schools now educate a disproportionate number of students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds, while many families with the means to do so have moved into the private sector. Educational inequality has widened, and opportunities for children from different backgrounds to learn together have diminished.

This is having dire consequences for our democracy. Schools do more than teach literacy, numeracy and vocational skills. They help shape the kind of society a nation becomes.

Most parents naturally seek what they believe is the best education for their own children. The issue is not individual parental decisions but the public policies that shape those choices and their cumulative consequences. The democratic question is whether governments should simply respond to those choices or also protect the common good.

Democracy depends upon citizens learning how to live with people whose experiences differ from their own. Free, compulsory and secular public schools are places where young people from different cultures, religions, incomes and beliefs can encounter one another as equals, develop........

© Pearls and Irritations