The 2020 school education summit: The public good and the education of children State Library of New

1
The 2020 school education summit The public good
and the education of children State Library of
New South Wales, Saturday June 28th, 2008

• What should be essential in the role, character
  and provision of public education? What role
  should private schooling play and what
  arrangements might support this role?

Mike Furtado, Co-Director, Boyce Furtado
Education Consultants, QLD.
2
Overview and Introduction What is negotiable
and not negotiable in public education
inclusivity?

• Inclusion equal opportunity, belonging,
  identity, diversity
• About welfarism, redistribution (RED) and a
  return to statist education?
• About a moral-underclass discourse (MUD),
  anti-nuisance education or critical engagement
  with the dominant culture?
• About a social integration discourse (SID) or
  separatism? (Levitas 2005)
• Public education as a poststatist new times
  inclusive discourse

3
What is negotiable and not negotiable in public
education free?

• Free available and accessible to all- fiscal
  restraint?
• Free available to public-private partners-
  accountability?
• Free available to low and high SES- equity?
• Free available to diverse public providers, e.g.
  state schools and faith schools that are open to
  all?

4
What is negotiable and not negotiable in public
education secular?

• Secularism as a liberal-democratic non-sectarian
  pluralist discourse and not as an anti-clerical
  Nietscheian discourse
• Religious education and schooling as a liberal
  modernist democratic post-Vatican II discourse,
  and not as an anti-democratic, clericalist,
  fundamentalist discourse
• Whats negotiable and non-negotiable in the
  present Post-Septembrist 11/2001 global context
  and whats realistic?
• More especially, politics being the art of the
  possible, whats possible?

5
What is negotiable and not negotiable in public
education comprehensive?

• Comprehension or selection Newsom (1963) and
  Plowden (1967) Reports?
• Comprehension and attacks from the Right (the
  History Wars, Critical Literacy and grammar,
  pedagogy and social reproduction)
• Comprehension and private education are they
  generically incompatible?
• Comprehension and Catholic education why they
  are inseparable
• Comprehension and inclusivity as a discourse that
  potentially unites public and Catholic education
  and some others?

6
What should be essential in the role,
accountability, operation and obligation of
publicly-funded private providers (1)?

• Problems of publicly-funded private provision?
  Whats essential and what isnt?
• Essential equity, anti-discrimination and
  transparency of professional conduct through the
  separation of powers, access to administrative
  justice and effective community participation
  through processes of governance. (The governance
  of private education is often clerical or
  corporate managerial and only selectively
  anti-discriminatory and publicly accountable).
• Varying mechanisms and structures result in
  varying standards, practices and mechanisms,
  sometimes streamlined but at other times redolent
  of star-chamber administrative treatment with
  leaders chosen on grounds other than merit, e.g.
  religious grounds.
• Effective governance requires greater
  accountability, the publication of reports, and
  transparency of administrative practice, external
  audits, accountability to Ombudsmen, and
  commitment to equal opportunity and social
  inclusion.

7
What should be essential in the role,
accountability, operation and obligation of
publicly-funded private providers (2)?

• Advantages of integration
• Integrated schools have brought a large measure
  of subsidiarity to school administration, e.g. in
  New Zealand all schools are Ministry schools
  rather than Departmental schools, demonstrating
  high levels of autonomy at local and internal
  levels, resulting in heightened teacher autonomy,
  accountability and standards.
• Integrating schools has stymied trends towards
  the external imposition of standards in education
  through the appointment of an external
  inspectorate as in the UK and instead generated
  increased professional exchange and
  collaboration.
• Integration has resulted in the demise of the
  state aid issue and a proper focus on the
  relative advantages and disadvantages of public
  and private schooling.
• Independent schools in integrated polities do not
  get public funding.

8
What should be essential in the role,
accountability, operation and obligation of
publicly-funded private providers (3)?

• Further Advantages of Integration
• Integrated schools only independent focus is on
  effective religious education otherwise they are
  completely equal, accountable and comparable.
• Integrated students pay low-figure dues on
  capital investment and therefore do not pay fees.
  Otherwise they enjoy equal access.
• Integrated schools must enrol all students who
  seek their ethos.
• There is no difference between the general
  aggregated SES profile of public and integrated
  school students.
• In particular instances where these exist funding
  is amended to reflect levels of need.

9
Is it possible or desirable to create better
alignment between public and private providers of
school education?

• Desirable?
• Yes especially through integration
• Otherwise stick with the status quo
• Possible?
• Yes through consultation
• Through individual school agreements
• Eliminating the no-disadvantage clause
• Recognising that the systems differentiate
  between allocative and redistributive formulae
• Ensuring that all funding (Commonwealth and State
  as well as for all programs) is rationalised

10
Conclusion and Summation

• Public education must be inclusive, fully
  publicly-funded, secular in terms of pluralism,
  non-sectarian, and comprehensive
• All private schools should be invited to
  contribute to the draft of a conditional private
  schools integration act New Zealand provides a
  successful evidence-based precedent for this
• Education should be defined as a global merit
  good, emphasising the collective purposes or
  common goods of education
• This can be done by identifying the socially,
  culturally and economically inclusive purposes of
  schooling, and how all schools might best assist
  in achieving those purposes through accessing
  public funding
• This would inject a welcome but not exaggerated
  diversity into Australian schooling as well as
  contribute to the development of a regulatory
  regime to ensure that these purposes are
  implemented and met
• I have no doubt that all Catholic schools and
  several others would join.