Grattan's finding on that score is, simply, no, they don't, and they won't. There isn't much of a market now and "government can do little about it." Grattan's own study reinforces evidence from around the world in suggesting that any attempt to cut fees through subsidies or vouchers "will be expensive and will only slightly increase school competition."
Grattan is to be thanked for putting the empirical blowtorch to both policy and conventional wisdom, but there is much more to be said on this difficult, even "wicked" problem.
Grattan acknowledges that by just about any available measure Australian schools are the most competitive in the OECD, but regards most of this competition as of no interest because it is not about "performance." But surely it is more important to understand what competition does do than merely report on what it doesn't? To find out where and when and for whom it works, and with what consequences?
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MUCH of the competition between schools is focused on the moment when students move from primary school to secondary, and in some cases before children start school or when they're moving into the last lap, at Year 10 or 11. If a family is going to shop it does so in anticipation, and that's when schools – and secondary schools particularly – flutter their handkerchiefs.
Some schools approach this moment anxious about numbers, either getting them up or maintaining them, but most are looking for quality rather than (as Grattan implies) quantity. Schools compete for "the best" students, and the more students (families, that is) they can persuade to want them, the better placed they'll be to select "the best."
Educational performance plays a part of course, and there is much talk about "excellence" (code for "academic") and, sotto voce, about Year 12 results, but neither side can really tell how good the schools are in this arena (that is, they are unable to detect "value add"), and both have other things to worry about as well.
Families, or more precisely those families with the necessary advantages in location, cultural capital and financial capacity, shop around for the best "fit" for their son or daughter, and for the best "reputation" they can reach and afford. So schools market on presentation (uniforms, buildings and grounds), a "caring" atmosphere, and clientele, which they regulate by means of entry requirements, scholarships and, of course, fees.
In this kind of competition, as opposed to the very specific form examined by Grattan, every school and every family is affected, for good or ill, even if they play no active part in the game. Once a family and a school find each other the family bestows its cultural and social capital on that school, usually because it already has more of both, and not on other schools, usually because they don't. Every time one school forges a little bit further ahead, others fall a little bit further behind.
And this is where the consequences flow, for everyone. This form of competition is corrosive as well as pervasive. A report prepared for and accepted by the Gonski panel found that competition has served to increase both educational poverty and social segregation. It is probably not going too far to say that without any of the participants necessarily wanting it or even being aware of it, the educationally rich get richer at the expense of the educationally poor. At the extremes we now have educational slums and gated communities. Contrary to many arguments advanced in support of the government sector, this "residualisation" dynamic is hard at work within sectors as well as between them.
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Seen in this light the obvious question is not whether competition is serving the stated policy ends but what is policy going to do to control it? But the obvious question might not be the right one.
IN A particularly useful account of the difference between "autonomy" and "empowerment" Grattan argues that schools can be empowered without being autonomous, and vice versa, and that it's empowerment that matters. Empowerment is to be found in a relentless focus on student learning combined with the means of improving that learning, via teacher appraisal, mentoring and development particularly.
One half of Grattan's distinction is probably beside the point. Since we've already got more autonomy and competition than just about any other system in the OECD, the question is not whether autonomy is necessary to empowerment, but how to empower autonomous (and competitive) schools.