Private-school education: 'the revolt of the rich' and unegalitarian

I am not an expert on education but we are all experts on egalitarianism. The alumni of the older or elite private schools are almost certainly the primary status groups - or networks - in Australia, perceived to be the most effective and certainly the most easily identified. Certain old selective public schools also tend to mimic some of the features of the older private schools, especially in their use of alumni.

At present, about 70 per cent of school students are in public schools, about 20 per cent in Catholic schools and about 10 per cent in other private schools. Back in the mid-1970s, public schools enrolled nearly 80 per cent of students. But since then, all the growth in enrolments has been in private schools. J.K. Galbraith has described the rush to the private schools as "the revolt of the rich" in affluent industrial societies against the standard of public schools. The elite private schools in turn had to dramatically expand and extend their schools (and boathouses, and private playing fields) to accommodate the new wave.

Some of my friends sent their children to old private schools because they themselves had gone to the schools. Others who had gone to public schools sent their children to private schools hoping to give their children every advantage even if they had misgivings, feeling that they were betraying egalitarianism.

The decision to choose a private school over a public school was made partly because of a perception that the public schools have been allowed by governments to run down and that the backing of private wealth on top of government aid has given the private schools the educational advantage. After a massive burst of funding in both public and private schools in the '70s, the spending on private schools has gradually increased, along with the disparity. The public schools are sometimes, in some states, also saddled with bad bureaucracy and some anti-educational union practices (it is difficult to sack a poor teacher, for example) and, unbelievably, inadequate basic maintenance.

Some parents made the decision because they thought the old private schools gave a better academic education. This is a complicated statistical issue. On crude figures the selective public schools and some other public schools score highly along with the elite private schools in the “top ten” HSC results but this has to do with the sheer numbers sitting the HSC from public schools. The HSC has come to loom so grotesquely in our educational system this is the central thing that private schools have to sell.

Others say these schools give the child "spiritual values", or ethics and morality - yeaaah, right - such as those shown by the leaders of One.Tel and HIH Insurance Group, such as those shown by conservative Christians who teach that gays are a human out-group who can't be bishops and that women can't preach or be bishops - those sorts of spiritual values. I am not going to mention pedophilia or the efforts of the church schools to suppress information and to thwart court action against them.

I nearly forgot school tradition: perhaps better called "a sense of entitlement". The fundamental spiritual value that all elite private schools teach without having to utter a word - a sense of superiority and privilege. A conversation was reported to me of a father questioning the headmistress of an elite private school in Sydney. The father asked if there were girls other than Anglo-Christians at the school, and the headmistress replied, “Most of our girls come from the North Shore line but I believe there are a few from the Upper Epping Line.” For Upper Epping read a different socio-economic group - probably not Anglo-Christians.

The key point is that for an elite group in Australian society it is not only the HSC pass but the school that you went to that matters, and may matter more. In the revolt of the rich there is no one to blame - the parents are not to blame, they were doing their best for their children as they saw it, and certainly not the children who ultimately had little say or judgement in the matter.

But I can't see that we can go pretending that this is a decent society which streams children according to socio-economic factors. I do not see that it is to the advantage or well being of the society.

What can be done?

The good thing about increased government funding of private schools is that it gives potentially greater control over these schools.

Maybe we should insist that schools reflect the demographics of their natural catchment - or the demographics of the state.