Fees charged by elite private schools go on rising. But who is paying the price?

On 23 January, The Australian Financial Review reported that “the most expensive private schools are on are on a track to double their fees in a decade to $100,000 a year”. The AFR asked “where will it end, and will parents be deterred?”

The answer is almost certainly that many won’t be. In fact, the more these schools charge, the more some parents want to buy their child a place.

Barbara Preston has documented how our country has forged its way to achieving high and increasing levels of segregation and inequality in our school system accompanied by poorer educational outcomes, and becoming what she described as ‘a diminished nation’. Given growing threats to democracy across the world, a school system degraded by class and wealth divisions is something to avoid.

Of all the forces contributing to growing inequality in our school system, the most significant is the inequitable distribution of teachers among schools. 

The sector that contributes most to this problem – the independent private school sector – is now the fastest growing. And it is the highest-fee schools that contribute most.

Within this sector, schools operate on a more individualistic and less collective basis than systemic schools, public and Catholic. There is more scope in both systems for efficiencies in the sharing out of teachers; and when it comes to teacher salaries, Catholic system authorities operate largely in parallel with public schools and do not set higher rates.

As Chris Bonnor pointed out in the Sydney Morning Herald, if Australia’s teachers were more equitably distributed,........

© Pearls and Irritations