Writer
Lyndsay Connors
Lyndsay Connors AO has held senior positions in education at both the national level and in NSW. In 2015, she co-authored with Dr Jim McMorrow Imperatives in Schools Funding: Equity, sustainability and achievement.
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Australia’s school system: winners and losers?
In a school system so deeply segregated along class and cultural lines it is not hard to identify the losers. But the question is whether there are any real winners? Continue reading »
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Australia’s school system has lost its moorings
Lack of leadership by successive Australian governments has created a rift between rhetoric and reality that has played a part in eroding public confidence and trust in our school system and generating anxiety for families, teachers and students. Continue reading »
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Australia’s school system: Entitlement vs need
While government rhetoric about the school system favours need, the way the system works tips the balance in favour of entitlement. Continue reading »
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Australia’s school system: losing common ground
The law locks up the man or woman who steals the goose from off the common; but leaves the greater villain loose who steals the common from the goose. Continue reading »
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Australia’s school system: OOPs!
“The quasi market-based nature of the Australian education system entrenches disadvantage.” The degree of socio-educational stratification among schools makes Australia an anomaly among comparable democracies. Inequity is at a level where an archaeologist delving in to the system might label it as Out-of-Place stuff! Continue reading »
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Summer: heat, cicadas and rising fees in private schools
Private school fee rises are as intrinsic to an Australian summer as the screech of cicadas. And instead of relaxing in the holiday heat, I find myself plagued with questions about whether or how to respond to the former. Do these fee rises even matter? Continue reading »
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Mirror, mirror on the wall…a better and fairer school system
In the words of Nelson Mandela, ‘there can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children’. The Review set up by the Albanese government to inform a better and fairer education system is an occasion for some serious soul-searching by Australians. Continue reading »
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Selling out our school system to profit multinationals
It was a shock but no real surprise to read that the multi-national company Inspired Education, which owns Reddam House school in the Sydney’s eastern suburbs, now plans to set up more fully for-profit schools in other areas (Sydney Morning Herald, 27/5). Who thought it would come to this? Where the inexorable march of the Continue reading »
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Belling the cat in NSW private schools
NSW needs a government prepared to bell the cat when it comes to the ongoing provision of public funding to grossly over-resourced private schools. Funds provided on the grounds of assumed entitlement are funds diverted from distribution according to demonstrated need. Continue reading »
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The sound of silence on school education in NSW
The failure of this country’s school system to give many students a fair go and a fair share of resources did not feature on the last Federal election agenda. Nor has it surfaced to date as a key issue in the NSW state election. What does this silence mean? Continue reading »
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Independent Schools: Aspiration for the few, desperation for the many
Local councils should have no role in setting enrolment caps which force private schools to turn away prospective students (and the fees they bring in). This was the claim put forward recently to the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) by a group of five principals of high-fee Anglican schools in Sydney, backed by the Association of Continue reading »
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Children overboard
Despite accumulated evidence published in this journal and more broadly of gross and growing inequality in Australia’s schools funding arrangements, this did not rate a mention in the Coalition’s Budget nor feature in responses to it from Labor. Continue reading »
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An unholy mess: discrimination tangles up schools as well as everyone else
Faith-based schools demand respect for their religious sensitivities, but turn those sensitivities on or off depending on their best interests. Continue reading »
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Kids and teachers deserve better than this crisis in the public school system
The first strike in a decade by public school teachers in NSW demands an answer to the question of how much a teacher is worth Continue reading »
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Alan Tudge as Federal Education Minister: what does he mean for our school system?
Given Tudge’s concerns that the Gonski reforms would require Catholic and independent schools to take “certain cohorts” of students, amounting to “an incredible intrusion” , it seems he will sit comfortably with the pantheon of previous Coalition ministers. Continue reading »
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Lobbyland: How the lobbies hijacked school education
In all areas of public policy there are groups that engage in advocacy and lobbying to influence public opinion and to advance their special interests. These groups have been obvious and successful over half a century of increasingly privatised school education. Continue reading »
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If that’s the worst that ever happens to you…
If we want our young people to grow up resilient it is surely unwise to give any encouragement to the idea that not having a school formal to mark the end of their schooldays is a major tragedy. Continue reading »
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Part 2: Society bears costs of education policy ‘crimes’
In most other countries it would be hard for a government to persuade an electorate it was dealing with widespread economic hardship while it was funding private schools with resources beyond the dreams of avarice. Continue reading »
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Part 1: Education policies over the decades have intensified socio-economic segregation
As prime minister, John Howard, along with his education minister David Kemp, drove the push to privatise schooling in line with their political philosophy. Continue reading »
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Taking university funding from bad to worse
“A new rule of politics seems to be that no matter how badly the pollies have stuffed up some area of government responsibility, they can always make it worse.” This was the opening salvo to Ross Gittins’s recent opinion piece on the sudden changes to university funding. Continue reading »
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LYNDSAY CONNORS. Learning the value of teachers’ work
The shock of dealing with the realities of the coronavirus pandemic has forced our prime minister to realise that schools are fundamental to our democracy and that teachers are on the front line of society and should be valued accordingly. Continue reading »
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LYNDSAY CONNORS. What the blaze(r)s!!!
If you search for St. Kevin on the internet, you will find that the references to this Irish saint are vastly outnumbered by references to the Australian boys school that bears his name and that has been dragging that name through the mud in recent times. Continue reading »
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LYNDSAY CONNORS. Words, words, words.
It is one thing for politicians to duck politically sensitive or embarrassing questions, but it is quite another when they opt for providing answers that are devoid of meaning. Continue reading »
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Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind
“They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind”, according to the Book of Hosea in the Old Testament. Not in the Australian federal system of government, they shan’t. Not when it comes to education policy. Continue reading »
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Slogans like “those who have a go get a go” are no substitute for rational, coherent policy
The status of Jean Blackburnas one of the finest contributors to Australia’s education policy is confirmed by the recently released biography by Craig Campbell and Debra Hayes covering her life and work. Above all, Jean Blackburn understood the interrelationship between schools and society. Schools both reflect and shape reflect the nation’s broad political, social and Continue reading »
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Curiouser and curiouser: The Marketing of Private Schools
CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER. The Marketing of Private Schools In its recent newspaper advertisement for a Director of Advancement, a long-established Sydney private school for Catholic boys described itself as “an inclusive, non-selective, school, with students attending from all walks of life”. This is a school with exorbitant upfront fees and resource levels to match. Such Continue reading »
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Time for a long hard look at the goals and purposes of schooling.
Schools hold up the mirror to a society as well as shaping its future. There is more to education than schools, but schooling is the formal process by which we assist young people to develop their capacity to learn and to think for themselves in a democratic society. Continue reading »
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An Inquiry is needed into the ACT Catholic school system.
The ACT should be an ideal location for operating a Catholic school system – a land of milk and honey. Continue reading »
