Let's talk about education funding under a hard-right Morrison Coalition Government

If one attempts to assess access and equity in education across Australian society there is a measurement tool available which gives some indication.

The Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) is a scale that represents levels of educational advantage based on the relationship between the educational advantage a student has, as measured by the parents’ occupation and level of education completed, and their educational achievement.

This measurement as applied to a school is broken down into five factors:

1. Parents’ Occupation

2. Parents’ Education

3. Geographical Location

4. Percentage of Aboriginal students

5. Percentage of disadvantaged LBOTE students.

Therefore if the majority of a school's population come from families where one or both parents had a tertiary-level education and the employed parent/s has a profession, or is self-employed or in a management position and these families live in suburbs where the median household income is above the average for the region and, there are fewer indigenous and/or disadvantaged students in the school population – then the community socio-educational advantage score will be higher for that school.

According to http://www.schoolcatchment.com.au  the Top 20 Australian Primary Schools for 2016 were:

PRIMARY SCHOOLS  (combined ICSEA score as a percentage of all Number One schools)

Sydney Grammar School – 100%

Presbyterian Ladies' College – 99.69%

St Aloysius' College – 97.57%

Abbotsleigh – 95.26%

Yarwun State School* – 95.20%

St Andrews Christian College – 94.39%

Northcross Christian School – 94.20%

Huntingtower School – 94.14%

Haileybury College – 93.98%

Meriden School – 93.86%

Matthew Pearce Public School* – 93.81%

John Colet School – 93.79%

Arkana College – 93.61%

Burwood East Primary School* – 93.33%

Artarmon Public School* – 93.28%

Camberwell Girls Grammar School – 93.09%

Woollahra Public School* – 92.96%

Fintona Girls' School – 92.92%

Hornsby North Public School* – 92.68%

Serpell Primary School* – 92.68%.

Only 7 government schools across the country are in the Top 20 Primary Schools.

While 47 of the Top 100 Primary Schools are government schools.

Conversely the Top 20 Australian Secondary Schools for 2016 are dominated by government selective schools.

However, 73 of the Top 100 Secondary Schools are non-government schools.

When it comes to the total Australian primary & secondary school student population, Independent schools enrol 5% of children from below the ICSEA benchmark average, Catholic schools enrol 11% of children below the benchmark average and Government schools which enrol est. 65% of all children also enrol 52% of children below the benchmark average.

Therefore the non-government sector is weighted overwhelmingly to the upper end of the ICSEA scale and is required to do much less of the educational heavy lifting.

Yet under a Morrison Coalition Government $4.5 billion in additional funding is to be given to private schools – most of which do not appear to require this additional funding to produce high education outcomes.

Apparently Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison and his hard-right cronies consider only families from the likes of Vaucluse, Point Piper, Toorak, Bulimba, Cottesloe, Mosman Park, Forrest, Red Hill, Rose Park and Sandy Bay are the type of people who "have a go" and therefore deserve to get "a fair go".