Do private schools save taxpayers $4.9 billion a year?
As reported in today’s Australian, the Association of Independent Schools Victoria today released research showing that private schools saved taxpayers $4.9 billion in 2004-05, reflecting the lower subsidies paid on behalf of students at private schools compared to students at government schools. That’s very similar to a claim I made in a post last year.
Having done a lot of work on ‘big government’ since, I am no longer sure that this is quite the way to look at it. This is because while technically all students at private schools are entitled to more heavily subsidised places at government schools, we cannot assume that all students would switch even if private schools received no government money at all. Before state aid for private schools was introduced in the first half of the 1960s, nearly a quarter of students were in private - mostly Catholic - schools. It was trending down, and the Catholic schools were facing serious problems as the supply of brothers and nuns prepared to teach for a pittance shrank. But we cannot assume private school enrolments would have inexorably dropped without state aid. Not all private schools at the time even took the money straight away.
Nearly half a century on, in a much more affluent society, in which education is of greater significance for a child’s future, there would surely be considerable demand for private schools even without any subsidy. Some private schools recieve subsidies that are a fairly small percentage of government school subsidies in any case, and a smaller still percentage of total revenue per student.
A more accurate way of expressing the point would be that to fund private schools on the same basis as government schools would in 2004-05 have cost taxpayers another $4.9 billion, which is why I do not support a standard Friedmanesque flat voucher scheme. Sometimes there are tensions between introducing markets and keeping taxes down.
August 21st, 2007 07:34
I sort of agree with that logic. However, I presume that you are assuming that free public places are available. I’m not sure why people with enough money shouldn’t have to pay to use the public system — this already happens with the medical system, where, after, a certain amount (basically the average wage), you are forced to get medical insurance. This would reduce the demand on public schools. If you look at prices of real-estate around good public schhols, it also seems pretty clear that some people are willing to do this at least to some extent.
August 21st, 2007 07:50
Conrad - The AISV argument assumes what the public school lobby assumes - that public schools are the norm. The research was presumably commissioned to challenge AEU propoganda (though undaunted the AEU used it repeat their factoid that the federal government pays more to private than government schools, completely overlooking that government schools get far more public money overall).
Now my personal view is that government schools should not be the norm - indeed, government-delivered schooling should be abolished in my view. My point in the post was that even if we accept the AEU/AISV starting point, the AISV conclusion does not necessarily follow.
August 21st, 2007 09:12
I always found the argument that it was somehow inequitable for government schools to receive more funding than private schools an odd one. Public hospitals receive more than private hospitals. Government funded public transport receives more than private buses and taxis. Law courts more than private arbitration. The list goes on
If governments choose to provide a certain service in a certain way, why does it follow that private alternatives to that service (often with a competing vision of how to provide it) have to be equally supported?
August 21st, 2007 09:15
Of course, Andrew, that’s still from the viewpoint that government-delivered education remains the norm.
August 21st, 2007 09:44
Matt - I think your second point goes to the heart of it. Except for courts, the services you mention could all be entirely provided by the private sector.
August 21st, 2007 10:20
Whether those universal services could be entirely provided by the private sector is an interesting question. To take the key example of education, the private sector has no mandate to provide universal service, and has done quite well in cherrypicking the students that are easy to teach - either the bright ones which boost the school’s end of year performance, or more or less well behaved kids from stable background. I know that’s how my school worked, systematically poaching the brighter kids from the region for yr 11 and 12, while troublemakers were sent packing.
Private health works in a similar way - there may be mandated community rating to prevent discrimination against the sick, but the simple cost of insurance means health funds will never provide universal coverage.
Which works up to a point. But whether the private sector would find it worth its while to cater to that final 5-10% or so of the market, who might find it difficult to pay, or who are difficult to service or even unhelpful clients, is a point worth considering. And if it can’t, is a gradual ghettoization of government services, as the undesirable provider of last resort, socially useful?
August 21st, 2007 10:30
Afterthought - are there statistics around on private schools taking in low SES students, compared to their government counterparts?
August 21st, 2007 11:10
Matt - There are some SES stats in the AISV report, obtainable by clicking on the AISV link.
We need to separate funding and delivery; I accept some role for public funding but think it is unlikely that there is any inherent need for government delivery in education.
Private schools enrol very few of the very poor, because they all charge at least some fees to most parents, but really it is just a matter of the price being right. After all, the private sector is prepared to run jails, which is where too many kids from the worst schools end up. If they were offered enough, the private sector would take up the task.
The selectivity issue is really a red herring; most private schools aren’t academically selective. As I have commented in previous school threads, this debate is distorted by images of perhaps a hundred of the more exclusive private schools, which are not typical of private schools generally, and certainly would not be the typical model for an expanded private school system.
August 21st, 2007 14:57
“We need to separate funding and delivery; I accept some role for public funding but think it is unlikely that there is any inherent need for government delivery in education.”
Howabout the money being given to local governments to run schools? I was just googling something about education in Finland, since they seem to top the OECD education table, and they manage to have the best school system in the world using public provision. Free universities too!
August 21st, 2007 15:15
Russell - Local governments could perhaps be allowed to operate schools, but parent choice should drive the system.
August 21st, 2007 15:51
Depends on your idea of “saving” - what of the Bonnor and Caro thesis that money “saved” on maintaining existing facilities is being spent onbuilding new facilities for private schools, creating a building boom that does not necessarily flow through into the teaching for which the school was built?
August 21st, 2007 15:52
I shudder to think what parochial horror we could end up with - the US education system rather than that of Finland.
August 21st, 2007 16:02
Maybe after a bit of amalgamating ….??
Idly googling about Finland also gave me the impression that their teachers were very well qualified and very well paid. That’s surely worth learning from.
August 21st, 2007 16:06
Andrew - if parent choice isn’t a feature of some of the world’s best school systems, why is it so important?
August 21st, 2007 16:21
AndrewN, I’d like to see parents be better informed before the question of choice receives the undue emphasis that it does.
Russell, what you’re advocating is something like the ACT: big enough for politicians to get vainglorious and bureaucracies to be cumbersome, yet too small to enjoy economies of scale.
August 21st, 2007 16:22
Andrew E - I haven’t seen studies of it, but newspaper reports certainly suggest that parents prefer better facilities to lower fees in the elite private schools. It’s their trade-off to make in my view.
Russell - I think Andrew E at comment 12 has it right. I know nothing about Finnish schools, but even if they have good education outcomes what makes us think we can replicate it, given that our public schools system, along with just about every public school system, does a poor job for large proportions of those kids who need good schools the most.
August 21st, 2007 16:26
Andrew E - While ideally all parents should make informed choices for their kids, this isn’t necessary for markets to work. Suppliers respond at the margins, so long as some people act on the information they receive suppliers will have to react.
And until we have a market, there won’t be strong incentives to become well informed. If you don’t have any effective choices, there is little value in knowing whether the school your kid is at is better or worse than another school.
August 21st, 2007 16:45
Andrew - I don’t ask this as criticism, but as you’re so interested in education, why not look at countries whose students top the international rankings - and if parental choice and markets don’t have much of a role in those systems, why should we go down that path? Why not learn from what they are doing?
August 21st, 2007 17:11
I think this is the reason you got such a low Right score on the Crikey Bias-o-meter Mr Norton (and why I read your comments with interest) - you don’t hesitate to beard your ideological allies when they use dubious arguments.
Excellent post.
August 21st, 2007 17:26
Russell - I am not an expert on schooling around the world, but a quick check of a webpage on Finnish schools suggests that their basic structures differ from Australia’s mostly in the role of local government, and it sounds like their private schools are mostly free. I think it would be wildly optimistic to think Australian local government could manage education well.
Also, Finland appears to be quite homegenous in culture and religion. One of my objections to public education is that I think parents should be able to educate their children in line with their own culture and religion. A monopoly curriculum is less of an issue in an homogenous society than one like Australia or the US.
August 21st, 2007 18:18
“I think parents should be able to educate their children in line with their own culture and religion.” - a good point, but you could do that within a government funded and controlled system.
Surely you listen to Radio National’s Religion Report ? from last week’s, on Catholic Schools:
“Catholic schools are for the poor and that ideally they should be free - even integrated into the state public school system. That’s the way things are done in Canada, the UK, many European countries, and right next door in New Zealand. The head of New Zealand’s Catholic Education Office, Brother Pat Lynch, explains how” (transcript available - if I paste the link here this post will disappear!)
I still think if the world’s top performing school systems - don’t have parental choice, we should probably look at other factors to improve our system: teacher salaries and qualifications, teacher-pupil ratios, whether every high school has to offer so many subjects etc
August 21st, 2007 20:33
Russell,
you are also missing out on what I think is the biggest factor for rich countries — the relevant cultural beliefs. You can look up the Hong Kong system, they have higher teacher-pupil ratios than Australia (35 per class in primary schools), and have a similar sort of public-private mix. Yet they achieve better results, especially on the real scales (like TIMMS and not PISA) and despite the fact that a reasonable percentage of students are getting taught in a second language (written Cantonese is also a disaster). The main reason for this is that even the poorest parents want their children to do well at school and go to university — No-one is going to tell you that you have wasted time getting a degree. This has nothing to do with money.
August 21st, 2007 20:39
If the problem is that parents here don’t care enough about education, having a market for it isn’t going to improve anything, is it?
August 21st, 2007 20:46
BTW I only mentioned teacher/pupil ratio because over the last 20 years I think we’ve reduced the ratio while recruiting teachers with the lowest, lowest uni entrance scores. Maybe we should go the other way. Have there been any experiments putting really good teachers in large classes? If they have and they show it’s the teacher that matters more than the class size, it would suggest where we might start to improve things.
August 21st, 2007 20:48
There are problems with both the Australian and Norton’s particular definitions of private and private sector in relation to education.
Private as a term derives from the Latin word deprivi meaning deprived of public exposure.
The large “private” schools in Australia are often prominently located, widely advertised and open to members of the public with more money than sense. Many people in public positions such as premiers come from these schools. Catholic schools are part of the largest and most inclusive religion in Australia. They are not deprived of public exposure. Hence the British term public schools meaning Eton etc..
The free market thinkers need to go back to the drawing board and sort their ideas out before they set out and write books or blogs or whatever, just as the communists have had to.
You are a pack of bullshitters who do not even realise the extent of your emissions.
Get the terms correct if you are writing in European languages. Maybe next life time… Mine’s a long black with gluten free cookie..
August 21st, 2007 20:58
Russell - Check out Andrew Leigh’s very interesting research on these issues.
August 21st, 2007 21:24
Russell, our host is generous in citing my jottings, but the fact is that I don’t think we have good answers to those questions. Over the past couple of decades, Australian educational policymakers cut class sizes by about 10%, and allowed teacher salaries to fall by 10% (relative to other occupations). My hunch is that this was a bad decision, but a couple of randomised policy trials across schools would provide much more precise answers.
August 21st, 2007 21:34
Yes, it is interesting - pity it has all those statistics in it. I prefer to absorb information by listening to Radio National, preferably while lying in bed. How come, given the amount of research done in ‘education’, there’s so little known about why some teachers are so much better than others? On what evidential basis did we spend so much money reducing class sizes?
August 22nd, 2007 08:15
Russell,
you’ll have to pick up a basic stats book. Most libraries have hundreds :).
Back to the point, there is in fact evidence from other countries about class size. In HK, I seem to remember you don’t get much overall benefit from about 30 to 15? (which I presume is one reason why they don’t care about large class sizes like Aus — the government is much more practical than in Aus). Alternatively, some education colleagues I work with in HK seem to think that the big problem with big classes is picking up outliers (i.e., kids who are really bad at something, like reading), which might be made easier via smaller classes (I tend agree with this — I did some testing when I worked there and found almost no relationship between teacher’s grading of students English and some of the tests I run, so its clear, lots of them don’t know whats going on, although I wonder if Aus teachers would be better with smaller classes). However, that isn’t an argument for smaller classes — it might be a lot cheaper to pick them via external testing, should be easy (ten minutes per kid), and most HK teacher’s are not going to complain about these things (potentially unlike Australian ones).
I also wouldn’t know how well the results generalize across cultures — the extent that HK parents push their kids is much more than Aus ones. This is sure to compensate for larger class sizes in some circumstances.
August 22nd, 2007 09:15
I suspect the main explanation for the emphasis on student:staff ratios can be found in the staff statistics, with about 70% of teachers being women. I suspect they prefer the shorter hours that come from fewer students (less marking etc) to higher pay.
August 22nd, 2007 09:56
I’m sure AN’s argument is part of it, but there’s also a political economy argument - voters are more willing to support class size cuts than teacher salary increases.
August 22nd, 2007 09:57
BTW, and I can concur with Russell. Listening to Phillip Adams’ dulcet tones is infinitely preferable to working out how to bootstrap a two-sample IV estimator.
August 22nd, 2007 10:08
I used to be of the opinion that smaller class sizes might benefit struggling students, but having kids at school changes that perception somewhat. It’s all about the teacher and to a lesser extent the makeup of the class.
I thought that a smaller class might help poorer students as it would free up time for a bit of extra attention from the teacher, but this is absolutely counter-productive if the teacher is useless.
The biggest problem is the lottery involved when your child gets placed in a class. Whether expensive private, middling private or public school, the teacher is a factor that just isn’t under your control no matter how much in fees you are paying (except perhaps if you home schooled). The other factor out of your control is the makeup of the class: dull, uninterested, stupid and cruel children appear to be equally distributed across the socio-economic spectrum, and thinking (foolishly) as I did that paying school fees might weed some of them out is wrong.
There is one factor under your control and that is having the time to regularly front up to the teacher and make sure they know who you are and who your child is. That guarantees attention (even if your kid doesn’t need it). It also costs nothing.
August 22nd, 2007 10:22
AN — I’m not sure about the argument for smaller class sizes and time taken teaching. In my books, the amount of time it takes to teach follows a log function, so the more students you have, the less time it takes per student. You could therefore have larger class sizes and potentially teach less. Your assumption is that the contact hours remain stable but classes sizes increase — probably true of primary schools, but not neccesarily of high schools.
DR: You comment probably isn’t true of many good private schools — they are able to pick and choose teachers to a much greater extent than public schools. Than can also pay more to get the best ones. Also, your comment about fronting up to teachers unfortunately works a bit like a game of prisoner’s dilemma. Once everyone starts doing it, the benefit is negative. In addition, given that parental abuse of teachers is anecdotally becoming more of a problem, then, in some places, probably very negative.
August 22nd, 2007 10:42
conrad, in my experience (3 different schools, 2 private, 1 public, 1 city based the other two regional) the public school teachers were dressed worse and taught better. I’d believe the private schools pay more (and they ought to), but it doesn’t automatically guarantee more teaching skill. The idea that more money “attracts better teachers” would be very hard to quantify. It might attract a particular kind of teacher though.
August 22nd, 2007 10:48
I agree with conrad (at 22) and I think Russell (at 23) makes a point that requires a response. Clearly consumers must value something for a provider to have an incentive to improve quality. I think a benefit of markets is that they only require some (marginal) agents to take an interest in something for outcomes to improve. Without choice, all the parents at a school could be interested in the quality of education and there is no clear mechanism for that to be reflected in school decisions or performance.
The other point I would make is that the very process of making decisions forces people to pay more attention to what they are doing and leads to greater engagement in the activity. Surely this is a desirable thing?
August 22nd, 2007 11:18
Rajat - if your marginal agents have moved their children to another school (further away, harder to get to?) it could still allow the children of careless parents to be left in a dud school. Or even, as DR points out, with just a dud teacher in an OK school. Something needs to be done about the quality of bad/mediocre teaching or some unfortunate kids will suffer from it.
Offering people choice doesn’t necessarily mean they will pay more attention to their decisions - look at how most people buy food when they go shopping.
August 22nd, 2007 11:41
Russell, you’re right - I was opining in shorthand. Choice would need to be accompanied by the ability for schools to fail/close down or be taken over so that bad schools could not operate indefinitely. This is not to say that to the extent public schools remained in existence (and I agree with Andrew N that they shouldn’t), the ultimate manager (ie the State Govt) should not do everything reasonable to improve them.
As for shopping, how do you conclude that people don’t pay attention their decisions? I frankly care a lot about whether I buy Cadbury or Lindt chocolate or quilted toilet paper vs unbleached. The quality and safety of the food available in Australia is excellent - do you think it would improve if the Govt ran supermarkets? It’s true that the average Australian’s diet could be improved. But I would hope that the appropriate response to this would not be to nationalise supermarkets and have the Government restrict the range of products available!?
August 22nd, 2007 11:55
Rajat - did I say that I want supermarkets nationalised? (I want them banned).
I won’t comment on your immoral choice of non free-trade chocolate, but I’m not convinced most people have as much enthusiasm for making decisions as you have. Despite what’s on offer they will mostly buy the same things, or something that has “Special” stuck on it, or what their mother used to buy … if you look at what’s in most people’s shopping trolleys it’s hard to believe there was much (informed) decision making going on.
And why should they bother to decide between 10 different bathroom cleansers (probably made by the same manufacturer) or whatever - a lot of this ‘choice’ is just a fabrication of the advertising industry. Do you want schools to be marketed like toilet paper?
August 22nd, 2007 12:14
Russell, I think you’ve illustrated my point perfectly: You care about how chocolate is made; I don’t (although if it’s any consolation, I have been buying more Green & Black lately - for the taste, of course). You may not care about what toilet paper you use; I do. I also think Morning Fresh liquid dishwashing detergent is better than Palmolive, but am happy to use no-name powder for the dishwasher. Do you really have such little time for individual freedom that you want someone to prescribe the food we eat? If not, then why the schools children go to?
August 22nd, 2007 12:15
The idea that more money “attracts better teachers” would be very hard to quantify.
Actually, I think it would be exceptionally easy to quantify. Just imagine to yourself what the effect would be on international benchmarks if teachers earned the minimum wage, or if teachers earned twice what they do now.
August 22nd, 2007 13:29
Rajat - you bring discernment down to such a tedious level: Morning Fresh or Palmolive!
Wy do I want control over schools? Fairness. I don’t want to reinforce unfairness by having some system where kids with parents who are too poor or too careless, end up with low standard schooling.
You wrote earlier about marginal agents - wouldn’t it be the case then that if everybody’s children were in the state system, there would be marginal agents agitating for better schooling and constantly pressuring politicians to provide it?
August 22nd, 2007 14:02
In the shameless self-promotion department, here’s my best attempt at answering the ‘do higher salaries buy better teachers?’ question. (Shorter AL: yes).
August 22nd, 2007 14:20
Russell, this is why I said (at 36) that lack of choice means there is no *clear* mechanism for parents’ preferences to be translated into action. If markets do not exist, the allocation of resources becomes about political power and influence. This is something the (anglo) middle-classes have in abundance; it is not something that non-English-speakers or otherwise disadvantaged groups have much of at all.
August 22nd, 2007 14:32
“This is something the (anglo) middle-classes have in abundance; it is not something that non-English-speakers or otherwise disadvantaged groups have much of at all.”
Rajat - It’s not often I disagree with you. Kids with non-English speaking backgrounds are over-represented at both private schools and universities (the last two features possibly not being coincidental). It’s probably because migrants are, almost by definition, people trying to improve their own lives and the lives of their kids, and see education as one way of doing it.
August 22nd, 2007 15:32
Andrew, I agree that many migrants care a lot about education and their children tend to do well (in fact I endorsed conrad’s comment to this effect). What I was referring to was the ability or willingness of migrant parents to front up to their MP or the local state school principal and/or galvanise the community to fix up a local school, as Russell suggested (in 42). Other things being equal, I think the ability to choose a school provides relatively greater advantages to less confident and articulate parents.
August 22nd, 2007 15:47
Rajat - Yes, good point. Requiring things to be decided politically favours people who have knowledge of local political systems and can express themselves persuasively.
August 22nd, 2007 16:08
So where have Rajat’s marginal agents gone? Can’t be too many schools where every parent is inarticulate and lacking confidence. Better the articulate parents haven’t just taken their children elsewhere.
Plus we now have these standardised tests to find out where standards aren’t being met - whether parents are interested or not.
August 22nd, 2007 16:16
Russell, that’s why I said articulate and connected parents will have *relatively* more success with political processes than inarticulate and unconnected parents. That’s not the same as saying that a political process for fixing schools will work as well as the market.
August 22nd, 2007 16:43
At least our political processes aim to have fairness as an outcome, and can be held to that - the market doesn’t.
August 22nd, 2007 17:05
“At least our political processes aim to have fairness as an outcome,”
Yet surely the poor outcomes for low SES students condemn the public school system, even by your own measures?
August 22nd, 2007 17:18
Andrew Leigh wrote:
It’s an interesting paper Andrew but doesn’t really address the issue of whether paying for your child’s education (in order to access “better teachers”) has any benefit i.e. it’s compelling in understanding why people might become teachers, but not why they stay teachers.
From my understanding, you’ve demonstrated a possible link of overall teacher salaries to the attractiveness of the occupation (hardly surprising I suppose - intuitively we might expect that result) but my contention is that because teaching as a whole is poorly paid, prospective “better” teachers don’t end up in the private OR public systems, and paying school fees buys you access to a subset of teachers from the same pool.
Now I know Andrew Norton wants to abolish government run education (I assume because, as usual, his tax bill gives him the dry horrors), but without some mechanism for lifting overall teacher salaries it won’t matter a damn who’s providing it.
Rajat, will markets really work better than better than politics? Overwhelmingly, where parents have a choice of schooling, they use their peers for information rather than a price list. I find it hard to believe that school fee pricing (generally reviewed annually) could be anywhere near as efficient as a whispering campaign amongst parents.
August 22nd, 2007 17:40
David has a point which I have often made to voucher advocates: that in the medium term we have to make do with most of the teachers we have already, as even if better salaries attract higher quality people to teaching it would be 20 years before they were the ‘typical’ teacher.
August 22nd, 2007 17:42
David R: Perhaps you hadn’t noticed this, but not all teachers are the same. There are no doubt good and bad ones, as there are in any distribution of almost anything. Even if the overall distribution is poor, I can’t see why it stops private schools taking the good end of it.
Its easy to see via example. One of my friend’s friends is a maths/physics teacher. She is apparently very good at her job. She joined one of the “elite” schools in Melbourne, and earns about 20K more than her previous job. She is obviously not going to trade that in for a public school job. Hence the rich private school gets the rather rare good maths teacher, despite the overall shortage (let alone shortage of good teachers in that area)
August 22nd, 2007 17:43
David, I’m not sure what you are getting at by referring to price lists and whispering campaigns. Markets are first and foremost about decentralised decision-making. Prices signal relative scarcity, which may indirectly signal quality. But parents tend to have a range of criteria for choosing their child’s school - prices, reputation, curriculum, location, etc. There is nothing about school choice that prevents parents from making choices based on a range of criteria. In fact, it is axiomatic that without choice, there is no ability to choose on the basis of any criteria.
August 22nd, 2007 17:46
“Yet surely the poor outcomes for low SES students condemn the public school system, even by your own measures?”
Yes, they point to faults, which need fixing. They aren’t necessarily an argument for moving to your proposed solutions.
August 22nd, 2007 17:57
Rajat Sood wrote:
My experience here is that there is already an incredibly robust market based entirely on information, at least for those parents who don’t knee-jerk either way (i.e. two ends of the spectrum are shoving kids into local school without consultation, or send them to the school you went to yourself). School reputations are built in the little covens of parents waiting to pick up their kids after school: within minutes you’ll know which teachers are bad and good, which kids are causing trouble and what the other schools are like. No money and no privatisation involved (i.e. the information source is already outside government and always has been).
August 22nd, 2007 18:07
“School reputations are built in the little covens of parents waiting to pick up their kids after school: within minutes you’ll know which teachers are bad and good, which kids are causing trouble and what the other schools are like. No money and no privatisation involved”
What I think the classical liberals would like to see is parents having the ability to act on that information. That’s where the question of funding arrangements becomes relevant.
August 22nd, 2007 18:49
Or it’s the job of the school principal to act on it ….
August 22nd, 2007 20:40
Dave R, just because parents maybe aware of which (state) schools are the best, doesn’t mean they have the freedom to act on that information unless they are prepared to relocate. Housing costs and school performance do tend to correlate, although what the relation is is not strictly clear. Do high housing costs indicate that parents from the upper middle class socioeconomic end of the spectrum value education more and are therefore more likely to agitate for good schools and pay more attention to their children’s performance, or are housing prices higher because parents are attracted to good schools? Both come into play.
With state education, the agitators you value as marginal agents choose with their feet or their wallets, relocating to suburbs with better schools or scrimping to send their children to private schools. This also results in poorer suburbs, since socio-economic diversity decreases as aspirational families cloister themselves off in better suburbs, denying the poorer suburbs of the active marginal agents. Family and community ties become weaker as people foresake them for better opportunities for their kids.
With a fully private system, although location will still have an impact, the need to relocate to send your children to a better government school will disappear. Private schools don’t care where you live, so long as you can pay. Parents who previously couldn’t afford expensive private schools, nor move to get into a better school catchment, will have freedom to move their children between schools that cater to their budget, putting competitive pressure on the schools.
Under state schooling, all they could do is agitate at a single school, they had no choice, since the state system must divide up access to resources somehow, and by geographic region is the way the schooling system has developed. There really is no other way other than some sort of lottery perhaps.
Saying that all schools should be equal denies the complexities inherent in organising any activity. Just compare the quality of fast food restaurants between richer and poorer suburbs. Now McDonalds pride themselves on uniformity, but even they can’t make a restaurant in Red Fern a more pleasant experience than one in Paddington.
August 22nd, 2007 21:36
Brendan,
I get the idea that not everybody has access to good public schools (or is willing/able/can find one/wants to move to it). My situation is different in that these things are easier in smaller towns (compared to Sydney it’s a breeze for example). If we were still in Sydney, the girls would probably still be in the crappy school they were in despite the fees, simply because it’s harder to get info on the local school when so many of the kids go straight from there to after-school care because mum and dad are working and won’t be home until after 6.
What is missing from the debate about schooling and quality is that sense of community that enables the kind of information flow that allows parents to make reasonable choices. My town is relatively small and has lots of schools - they don’t tend to insist on geographical boundaries as cutoffs for school choice to anywhere near the extent that happens in large cities: it allows parents to choose their school. If you live outside of town, none of the notional boundaries apply in any way. If you live in town, the boundaries are treated as rough guides and are not hard and fast.
I’d like to see that flexibility extended to more parents. The idea that merely ponying up the cash to choose a school will solve difficult problems of incomplete information doesn’t apply very well to schools. The prices do not change quickly enough (and parents to not get to choose often enough) for the prices to reflect quality in the way you might expect of a consumer good. Perhaps if they regularly auctioned places at the end of each term (disruption to the kids would be horrible, but hey, efficiency must always be job #1 for libertarians, right?)
Andrew Leigh’s paper indicates that there is a potentially serious problem with the quality (not the quantity) of available teachers which may be addressed indirectly in a fully private system, but where exactly will the pressure come from? The “best” schools are rarely chosen on academic performance - more what your wife hears outside the school or down at Woolies.
There is possibly one very simple way to fix the issues with (say) the ability for Principals to pick their own teachers and assign performance pay as many are agitating for: abandon schooling in regional areas. I’m not sure how many Australians are willing to make that trade off.
August 22nd, 2007 22:57
Who said anything about auctioning off school places? And what does afterschool care got to do with school performance?
If a personis going to pick their children’s place of education on the basis of gossip at Woolies, then perhaps they don’t value education very much.
Believe me, privatised schooling will be judged on the basis of cost and performance, like everything else you buy, and at every budget level.
The reality is that bureaucracies like state education can’t operate without setting geographical limits on school catchments. If it is the case that rural schools are able to bend the rules more, then that is probably got more to do with their distance from the power base.
Your solution of mobility of school selection fails to address the need to allocate resources. If there are three schools and one of them has much better performance, not all students can attend it. You still have to say no to someone. How do you decide?
August 23rd, 2007 08:02
brendan halfweeg said:
First come, first served. The catholic school system operates that way with their non-catholic places and it works OK for them.
After school care has a big effect on communities - if you aren’t regularly and informally seeing the parents of the local school, you can’t tap into the information about the school. The pick-ups from after school care are too spread out to foster any kind of regular stand-around group who are waiting for a bell to ring and the kiddies to pour out. Car based communities are crap for maintaining local ties - and a school system where everybody drives different directions to take kids to school is a recipe for further isolationism and alienation of families from their own streets and suburb, not to mention the extra issues of increased obesity levels of kids who aren’t walking.
Don’t discount the value of gossip - the most efficient way of finding a good tradesman isn’t the yellow pages, it’s asking the neighbour.
August 23rd, 2007 18:18
“The catholic school system operates that way with their non-catholic places and it works OK for them.”
Last I heard, Catholic schools were in the private domain. Do you really think a state system would be considered fair if it arbitrarily cut of people because of their place in the line? What is the coherent argument in support of rejecting one out of wo equal students from a public school on the basis of who got in line first? Say both families are equal in all other respects? Go on, I’m really interested in seeing how you can justify such a system.
As for a private system, well, randomness is more acceptable, primarily because the parents involved haven’t already paid for said super school.
Why shouldn’t parents feel an entitlement to send their children to the best state school? Why shouldn’t all parents be outraged at such injustice?
First come, first served? You sound like a capitalist!
August 23rd, 2007 22:48
No kids Brendan? The public schools use first-come, first-served on out of area kids as well. No rioting occurred. Nobody considered it unfair just because money didn’t change hands. Resources are funny things - they aren’t just money. Some people value time, or knowledge. Some people couldn’t be bothered finding out how things work and insist somebody else “fix” them so they don’t have to do any investigating themselves. It’s lazy.
August 27th, 2007 10:16
Andrew, to answer the original question posed by the post, I’ve generally taken the view that if it weren’t for the de facto private school voucher system operating in Australia, we’d have the US level of private school attendance, which is about 10% (Australia’s is about 30%). So my best guess at the amount that private schools save taxpayers would be 2/3rds of $4.9 billion, or $3.3 billion.
August 27th, 2007 12:27
Andrew - You could be right, but two points:
1) I think path dependency plays a role in education (as in many other things) and the fact that we had high private school enrolment prior to state aid suggests that this would have been maintained. For example, more than 60% of people who themselves went to private schools send their oldest child to a private school, suggesting that ideas about appropriate schooling are shaped by the school experience of parents.
2) Even if your assumption is correct, that $$$ number mayoverstate the savings, since the kids who would stay in private schools without any government subsidy are disproportionately likely to be in schools that receive relatively low government funding now.
December 4th, 2007 07:22
[...] their children’s education. The latter group count against conventional voucher systems. It would cost $5 billion in additional taxation to fund them on the same basis as government [...]