Category: Public opinion

The stalemated school choice debate

~ Andrew Norton ~ 6 Comments

The compilers of the IPA Review 13 biggest mistakes list think that it is impossible to even trial a genuine parental choice system, where the money follows the pupil. Leaving aside the dispute over whether federal private school funding contributed to this situation, they may well be right to be pessimistic.

We can say two reasonably clear things about public opinion on schools.

The first is that private schools are generally seen as ‘better’ in various ways. With nearly a third of students already at private schools, obviously there is considerable revealed preference to that effect. Thousands of dollars paid every year are more convincing than any answer to an opinion pollster, but the polls back up those actions and add more. The Australian Survey of Social Attitudes has twice, in 2003 and 2005, asked its respondents to agree or disagree with the proposition that ‘private schools offer better education than public schools’. On each occasion, about half have agreed and a quarter disagreed.

Back in 1994, a Saulwick poll asked if its resondents had children, and money was no object, would they send their child to a private school? 58% said yes. Among respondents with children actually at a government school, 45% said they would choose a private school, suggesting a large minority would like a voucher that they could use at a school of their choosing. Ten years later, in 2004, an ACNielsen poll for the SMH (some information here, but the page is dysfunctioning) found that 34% of government school parents would not choose a government school if the cost of the alternatives was the same. Again, we could infer a constituency for vouchers here. Put together the parents who have already taken their kids to private schools and the parents who would like to and there is probably a small majority for proper school choice.

But the second thing we know about public opinion on schools casts doubt on that conclusion. This is that ALP/Australian Education Union campaigns on school funding have had an impact. When asked to agree or disagree with the proposition that ‘public schools receive less than their fair share of the education budget’, 3 polls in 2003, 2004 and 2005 came up with almost exactly the same result of nearly two-thirds agreement. Perhaps this just means that they think government schools should get more without private schools getting less. But in a 2004 Saulwick poll, 40% rejected the idea that paying taxes entitled parents to any financial assistance for sending their kids to a private school (though this was 11 percentage points down on 2001). So there is considerable scepticism about increasing funding for private schools.

The seems to be a stalemate here. There is too much support for the existing private schools for the left to achieve its goal of an entirely state-controlled system. But there also seems to be too much opposition to further funding of private schools to give all parents choice. Private school enrolments are likely to continue growing, aided by federal government policy and greater affluence meaning more parents can satisfy their underlying preferences. But unless their kids are bright enough to get scholarships, many poorer parents will just have to take their chances with the state system.

Is the quality of life in Australia getting worse?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 4 Comments

According to today’s SMH happiness coverage, four out of ten Australians think that the overall quality of life in Australia is getting worse, while a quarter think it is getting better. The text of the question looks to be from a Newspoll series:

Thinking now about the overall quality of life in Australia, taking into account social, economic and environmental conditions and trends, would you say that life in Australia is getting better, worse or staying the same?

But if as a pollster you were asked to design a question to get junk answers you couldn’t do much better than this one. It is very vague – compared to when? (one of the earlier surveys found that people were inclined to regard the years of their early adulthood as the best general period, which suggests that personal experiences rather coloured perceptions of the overall social climate). It also requires respondents to do two things that they are not very good at – comparing over time, as I discussed earlier in the week; and assessing how other people are going, where they suffer from information bias – the media is more likely to report negative than positive stories, for example. As a result, when you ask people to judge trends in time for verifiable social or economic circumstances or events they almost always gets it wrong.

The political health of the Medibank Private sale

~ Andrew Norton ~ 12 Comments

Despite its name, Medibank Private is owned by the Australian government, which wants to sell it – though not now until after the election.

One thing we can be sure of, though, is that public opinion won’t support it. In the 1980s, there was some popular support for privatisation, but it went into decline after major privatisations began in the early 1990s. Asked at an abstract level in 2005 (in the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes) whether privatisation brought more benefits than costs, 53% disagreed and 17.5% agreed. On more specific privatisations, some of the ‘don’t know’ respondents say ‘no’, with about two-thirds typically against the two main recent sale proposals, Telstra and Medibank Private. This was seen again in an ACNielsen poll published in yesterday’s Fairfax broadsheets, with 63% against selling Medibank Private off and 17% in favour. Newspoll recorded almost the same result back in April.

Politically, I believe that marketisation and privatisation are contrary agendas – though in a policy sense they are synergistic agendas. The pragmatic Australian electorate wants reliable, cheap services, and as I argued last year in Telstra’s case if things are broadly ok people will stick with the safe status quo. Telstra’s service levels have improved significantly since the telecommunications market was opened up, and so removed the ‘do something, anything’ frustrations that were probably driving pro-privatisation opinion. Similarly, Medibank Private operates in a competitive market already so it is hard to see how privatisation will create any significant consumer benefits, and indeed as the Newspoll found most people think premiums would rise if it was privatised (though in reality competitive conditions in the industry will be the main determinant of prices).

The government isn’t likely to win this debate, but far more significant privatisations than Medibank Private have proceeded without obvious political cost, so they may as well take the cash from a sale if and when they can.