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

Maybe we should use a lottery to select the student intakes for highly desired schools, with no reserved places for children of the alumni.

Maybe we could eventually transform all high schools into independent schools run and owned by their parents, students, teachers and the local community, but partly financed and supervised by some sort of "educational fairness commission". Maybe the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission could have a look at the fairness of the competition among schools.

Maybe, once we have identified disadvantaged schools, we could redress the inadequate spread of options, teacher quality, even simple things such as computer access, quality of book, film and music libraries, aesthetics of the buildings - and correct these by funding or by paying teachers at disadvantaged schools more.

Maybe the distribution of informal resources could be better co-ordinated. For example, visits by artists, businesspeople, professional people, sportspeople and other role models and experienced human "resources" could be co-ordinated on a state, regional or district basis so that the rich schools do not command the stars.

To be opposed to privilege is not simply a soppy idealistic political position. It is a fundamental for an effective and vital economy. Simply put, privilege screws things up. Privilege is bad for the market economy because it ultimately means that incompetent people get the jobs, incompetent people get the contracts and the wrong people get to allocate financial and other resources and manage the resources, say media.

Educational privilege, favoritism, nepotism mean that it is likely that a dumb person will get the job over a smarter person. That's the fact of the matter. Corruption and privilege are a tax on the rest of the economy.

Oh, another thing, I happen to believe that community schooling and the absence of privilege make for better civic life.