Recent headlines confirm that it is now difficult to deal with the market forces that successive governments in this country have unleashed in our school system and which are now driving it in perilous directions. 

Take the disruptive effects of the growing entanglement between Australia’s preoccupation with real estate and the market forces that are endemic to schooling and recent complaints in the Sydney Morning Herald from parents who are outraged by government changes to public school catchment areas: “Catchment changes leave parents on the outer” (16 February) and “Rezoning shatters family dream” (4 March).

Democratic governments have an obligation to respect the role of parents in the education of their own children, while ensuring that the decisions made by some do not damage the educational opportunities of others.

But the NSW Government’s recent attempts to re-draw some school catchment zones in the interests of all the students in the area are receiving pushback. Some parents are complaining that they have “paid a bit of money” or ‘stretched their budget’ to buy homes in the catchment zones of top-performing public schools in well-off areas of Sydney; and that in so doing they have an ongoing guarantee of a place for their own children in these schools regardless of the effects of changes in the local school population.

This sense of personal entitlement has been encouraged by the crude “freedom of choice” mantra of the kind embraced by the Howard Government, in particular.

But how does this work when it comes to the provision of an essential service such as a school system? It can mean expanding the options available to all students through building the capacity of all schools to provide learning opportunities built around their interests, aptitudes and aspirations – as well as the knowledge, experience and skills essential to active and informed citizenship. This is quite different from promoting consumer choice and provider competition in a system where the great Australian dream of home ownership achieved by some parents creates a nightmare in which other people’s children are left on the outer.

The reality is that the preferences of individual parents do not conveniently add up to a high-quality school system in respect of equality, equity, efficiency and effectiveness.

Take some current tensions in the NSW public school system.

Some parents (and students) want senior Year 11-12 colleges, while others want secondary schools for Years 7–12. This “mix” can result in the latter having insufficient student numbers in the senior years to offer the full range and depth of curriculum.

Some parents want co-educational secondary schools, while others favour single-sex schools. This “mix” can result in a sex imbalance in the co-educational schools.

And then there are those parents who demand co-educational schools for their sons and single-sex schools for their daughters. Leaving aside the chutzpah of those who want other people’s daughters to provide co-education for their sons, this “mix” of schools creates a mathematics problem which is difficult for governments to solve.

It is difficult, therefore, not to feel sympathy for the Minns Government in NSW as it attempts to meet its obligation to manage the changing demography of this universal service in the real world of ongoing fluctuations in the school population at the state and local levels. This challenge is exacerbated by our hybrid school system, where the responsibility for planning is borne disproportionately by the public school system.

The National Party’s Sarah Mitchell, NSW education minister in the second Berejiklian ministry, was confronted by the costs arising from individualised parental “freedom of choice”. In relation to the public school system, she introduced stricter zoning regulations and adopted the mundane expression of “shopping around” to scold parents. At the same time, she maintained the government’s loftier descriptor of “freedom of choice” for fee-paying parents in the private sector and the minimal planning responsibilities of these schools. What our system lacks in high standards, it makes up for in double standards!

For those of us who are disturbed by newspaper reports of the ongoing shift in enrolment shares from public to private schools, there was a quirky message last year in a Sydney Morning Herald supplement that was both startling and gratifying.

There it was, in the 2024 Independent Schools Guide. Amid the self-congratulatory articles promoting high-fee independent schools was an advertisement emblazoned with the NSW Government logo and promoting public schools as providing “the best education money can’t buy”.

The idea that the amount you pay for your house should buy you access to a place in a particular public school is spurious. This would be like claiming that your purchase of a luxury car entitles you to a special lane on the roads… or to exemption from the road rules designed to ensure safety and efficiency for all… or that buying a house next to a public hospital guarantees you a place at the head of the queue in its emergency waiting room. Equally specious is the idea that living in a particular Sydney suburb buys your own child a place in a particular school ahead of the children from families who arrive subsequently. The claims made by one public school action group — that residents had been “displaced” to accommodate an “influx” of residents from newer developments — suggests a worrying indifference to the children of others and to the vision of a school system in which all students are treated fairly.

It is unrealistic, however, to ignore the fact that governments have ceded their obligation for a well-planned school system to the real estate market to a degree where parents can, in a practical if not a legal sense, “buy” a place in the public school of their choice.

In suburbs like Kellyville or Killara, homeowners who bought in to gain access to a particular school but are no longer in its catchment area have options which include selling the first house and buying another which is in that school’s current catchment area. Or renting their existing house and finding a rental property in the “right” catchment area. Or they could do what it seems is not uncommon, which is to rent a property in the preferred school’s current catchment area and then live there briefly until their child is enrolled – or even to pretend that they live there for enrolment purposes! Other parents might not wish to vacate their home in the original catchment area and settle for sending their children to the school in their currently designated zone. There they could join their neighbours and their children’s teachers in working to support that school to become a high-achieving school… understanding that the school/house-price link works in reverse and that their efforts might contribute to raising the value of their own home.

In the private school sector, the entanglement between the property market and the location and size of schools is even more bizarre! An article in the SMH (24 September 2024) quoted the principal of an independent school in the Oran Park area stating that Catholic and other private school providers are being approached by property developers to establish schools in this and similar areas. This surely raises the question of whether or not some form of incentive is given by property developers to these religious school providers for their assistance in boosting sales and profits in new housing enclaves.

While raising this issue, it would be churlish not to acknowledge the financial contributions by the higher-fee independent schools which, along with Harvey Norman, add to the advertising revenue of my daily newspaper – helping to keep it afloat to inform us that there are religious providers available and willing to assist property developers in adding to the already extreme socio-economic stratification of our school system.

In the context of the approaching federal election, readers may wish to refer to the platforms of the two major political parties.

Under the heading, Quality Schooling for Everyone, the ALP platform states:

“Public schools are among our nation’s most important institutions and should be fully and fairly funded to deliver excellent secular education that meets the needs of every child.”

Chris Bonnor is right that the minister Jason Clare and the federal ALP government deserve credit for raising the Commonwealth’s funding to public schools and insisting that states meet their funding obligations. But this falls far short of what is needed to meet the party platform objective.

The Liberal Party platform, under the heading, Creating Opportunities for Australians, states: “Liberals believe in a society in which all children have the opportunity to develop their potential….”

There is no reference here, however, to public schools and their significance in our democracy, but there is a promise to provide “the widest possible freedom of choice in education”.

This party line will further entrench Australia’s dysfunctional schools funding system, which is already heavily geared to favouring the more advantaged over the under-privileged; and to increasing the income gap per student between public schools and the Catholic and independent schools with their relatively small percentage of the students with greatest need.

Any additional public funding to be promised by parties or candidates in the coming federal election must be directed towards public schools if we wish to avoid the kind of educational divide that threatens the future of democracies.

That is a future which wise parents would surely not wish on their own children, nor on others.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.