this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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You're still focusing on the schools and not the kids. $x per year per kid. If over a third of the student population is in private education, redirecting that money to public schools and then bringing those hundreds of thousands of kids to public schools is not going to solve anything. I happen to agree with you, I am happy with public school education, which is why I participate in it. I only disagree on the point where a kid going to a private school is not entitled to their funding.
Presumably, you've already benefited from 13+ years of government funding into your education. Education is an investment into the next generation of the population.
Unless you are riding to work through open bushland, I assume you're using roads and paths that the government at some level has built. The same goes for the train: The government has funded building that train line. As for welfare, think of that as insurance. You pay into a fund that will be available to you in an emergency. If you hit that wall, you'll be happy welfare is there for you. Health falls into this category, also.
I still believe a private school with 2,000 students is due to receive ($x times 2000) in government funding. You haven't convinced me that any kid in this country is not entitled to that support from the government. If parents want to fund executive bonuses, swimming pools and whatever else above that, that's their right.
Don't get hung up on the example in Golburn being Catholic education. The sombre findings of the Royal Commission into child abuse 6 years ago brought home that that abuse happened everywhere. Public schools, private schools, scout groups, orphanages, churches (of every flavour), sports teams. Anywhere adults were entrusted to the wellbeing of kids. Just a look at the headlines in the last day or so will show you a convicted paedophile from Sunshine Coast was working as a lifeguard with kids unsupervised in the UK, as well as Jehovah's Witnesses covering up reported child abuse even after the royal commission changes.
Nope. I got most of my schooling overseas.
Roads and paths that cost a shit tonne less to maintain for cyclists than they do for heavy cars and trucks. Trains which are subsidised to a much lesser degree than cars are.
But you can't split it up like that. If a school spends 40% of its budget on marketing and executives (number entirely made up), then for every dollar the government is giving them, 40 cents of taxpayer money are going to fund private school executive bonuses and marketing. Even if that money went through a carefully-controlled process where it goes in a special trust account only to be spent on specially-approved student services, it's still in effect subsidising those other things, because it means the non-trust money doesn't need to be touched to spend on student services and can instead focus on the less productive purposes.
No, I'm focusing on the money. I'm focusing on getting the best outcome for our education system. And that's to spend every cent we have on the students, not on executive bonuses and excessive marketing.
To the extent that I'm focusing on anything other than the money, I am focusing on the kids. I'm focusing on the kids who can't afford to pay for private school. I don't support funding private schools for the same reason I didn't support the original stage 3 tax cuts. It's a hand-out to the wealthy that they don't need.
It's just absurd on the face of it to support funding a highly profitable private sector when the equivalent public sector exists, is underfunded, and gets much greater bang for its buck. There is no angle on which one can approach it and justify spending public money on private schools other than corporate greed.