NSW Public School Education: a brief perspective from the outside looking in

 

When one considers education access and equity in New South Wales one tends to think of the divide between private and public primary & high schools.

After all the top private schools such as Knox Grammar (Wahroonga), Sydney Grammar (Darlinghurst), Barker (Hornsby), Scots (Bellevue Hill) and Pymble Ladies (Pymble) have been known to bank more money in fees, federal & state funding and donations from wealthy donors than the Gross Domestic Product of some small island states.

Knox Grammar alone brought in $536,440,456 across five years up to 2021.

However, there is another level of inequality and that is the divide between public schools based on the socio-economic status of the geographical catchment from which students are drawn and/or whether those schools are classed as selective.

While public schools do not have the same ability to set fees as private schools and do not attract the same level of government funding, they do generate levels of ‘donations’

which indicate some level of advantage vs disadvantage.

NSW public school voluntary general contributions totalled $27,908,197.31 in 2022.

The top 12 public school general contributions were received by:

Sydney Boys High School — $1,038,474.50*

Balgowlah Heights Public School — $489,314.15

Carlingford High School — $437,230.57

North Sydney Boys High School — $368,278.94*

Chatswood High School — $356,701.39

Ryde Secondary College — $355,300.36

James Ruse Agricultural High School — $330,273.608*

Cherrybrook Technology High School — $306,667.75

Killarney Heights High School — $297,845.28

Sydney Girls High School — $295,009.83*

Baulkham Hills High School — $230,761.50*

Epping Boys High School — $227,940.62

NOTE:  * denotes fully selective state school

For highest and lowest an estimated breakdown of donation share per student would $1,713.65 for Sydney Boys High School and $175.33 per student for Epping Boys High School.

Not up to private school annual budgetary standards but there is a little more towards the school curriculum and extra-curricula activities.

It’s another story elsewhere in the state…..

Based on voluntary general donations raised by parents and carers in 12 schools in the NSW Northern Rivers region:

• Grafton High School — $18,201.20

• South Grafton High School — $7,611.25

• Grafton Public School — $5,435.00

• South Grafton Public School — $465.00

• Lismore Heights Public School — $1,740.00

• Lismore Public School — $105.00

• Lismore South Public School — $30.00

• Tweed River High School — $9,203.65

• Tweed Heads Public School — $457.00

• Tweed Heads South Public School — $52.00

• Ballina Coast High School — $12,134.00

• Murwillumbah East Public School — $5,430.00

For highest and lowest on the Northern Rivers list Grafton High School parental & carer ‘donations’ would equal around $22 dollars per student and for Lismore South Public School it is 0.12 cents a student in 2022.

It should come as no surprise, given the poor state funding model and the refusal of successive federal governments to contribute meaningfully to public school funding, that none of the four Northern Rivers public high schools listed in this post had students in the Top 6 (higher score) rankings for 2022 Higher School Certificate scores. While only two of the twelve public high schools in relatively affluent geographic catchments had students within the Top 6 rankings.

Of the five rich private schools identified in the second paragraph of this post only one of those high schools had students within Top 6 rankings for 2022 Higher School Certificate scores.

Across all NSW high schools the Top 10 with the highest success rate in the Higher School Certificate appear to have all been state selective or private schools.

It seems that affluent post codes or access to fully selective government schools may still have an inordinate influence when it comes to student outcomes in the final years of schooling.

 

TETRIARY EDUCATION STATE OF PLAY 2023: Australia took 121 years to finally establish national free university education and less than 33 years to totally destroy the idea that tertiary education should be fee free

 

In 1974 the Whitlam Labor Government gave the Commonwealth full control over higher education funding and made a university education free for those who met the educational entrance requirements of tertiary institutions.

In 1976 the Fraser Coalition Government tried to re-introduced tuition fees for post-graduate and second degrees as well as for tuition fees for foreign students – with limited success.

However by 1983 the international and national economic climate began to test the resolve of the incoming Hawke Labor Government and in the August 1988 Budget it announced that it would introduce university tuition fees via the Higher Education Funding Act 1988 (HECS).

The scheme was to have only one rate of contribution ($1,800 in 1989) and an up-front payment discount of 15 per cent on tuition fees. Repayment of the HECS debt was to begin once the university graduate began to earn a wage over the compulsory repayment threshold and, any unpaid HECS debts would be discharged on the death of the graduate.

In the following years the Hawke and Keating Labor Governments tinkered with repayment schedules and introduced new schemes based on HECS repayment arrangements for specific groups of students.

However it was during the years of the Howard Coalition Government that the floodgates were fully opened allowing the ‘user pays’ rationale to begin flooding across higher education. The debt repayment threshold kicked in at a lower annual income and universities were given greater licence to use ‘market forces’ as a tool in setting course fees, amongst other measures.

This increased emphasis on ‘user pays’ tertiary education did not cease during the years of the subsequent Rudd & Gillard Labor Governments and the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison Coalition Governments – with Abbott’s deregulation of university fees combined with his cuts to the level of government funding of universities being significant.

So although by 2020 there were 1,057,777 domestic students studying at Australia’s 39 comprehensive universities, just 60% of first-year domestic students enrolled in undergraduate courses were aged 20 or younger, the lowest proportion since 2005 [Universities Australia, 2022 Higher Education Facts and Figures, June 2022]. Additionally, by 2021 the attrition rate showed that est. 24.2% of all enrolled university students did not complete their degree, with some indication that slightly more male students than female students might be failing to complete [Dept. of Education, Higher Education Statistics, October 2022]. By 2022 only 32% of the Australian population aged between 15-74 years of age held a bachelor degree of higher [ABS, Education and Work, Australia, May 2022].

One has to wonder what the future chilling effect on higher education choices by school leavers and mature aged students might be with the changes to student loan debt indexation announced by the Albanese Labor Government in May 2023.

National Tertiary Education Union, media release, 1 June 2023:

New report reveals some degrees could take up to 44 years to repay

A new report released by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has revealed repayment periods for some university degrees may extend up to 44 years, raising serious concerns about the accessibility and affordability of higher education in Australia.

The report, titled "The Future of Graduate Debt in Australia," reveals that under current policy settings, repayment periods for certain degrees could exceed 40 years.

Many four-year degrees could end up costing more than $100,000 once debts are repaid.

The study indicates that graduates from a Business Management degree are likely to be the worst affected, with a staggering repayment period of 44 years, totalling $119,331.

The modelling shows a Humanities and Social Sciences Honours degree could take 40 years to repay at a cost of $110,353.

Female law graduates could take 36 years to pay off their qualification, four years more than their male counterparts.

The report's release comes a day ahead of repayments on the Higher Education Loans Program (HELP) debts – also known as HECS - rising 7.1 per cent when they are indexed on Thursday.

Current total outstanding HELP debt stands at $74.3 billion for the financial year ending 2022, around four times as much as 2009.

The average amount of student debt is now $24,770 per student, up from $15,191 in 2012. Students now take an average of 9.5 years to pay off their degree, compared to 7.3 years in 2006.

The report, compiled using data from across the sector, shows a combination of newly increased course fees under the Jobs Ready Graduates Reforms, reduced repayment income thresholds, and high debt indexation are to blame for the spiralling repayment crisis.

NTEU National President Dr Alison Barnes said the findings were a serious concern.

"This report paints a startling picture of the current state of tertiary education. We are seeing students who may be paying off their debts for the majority of their working lives," Dr Barnes said.

"This is not what higher education should look like. It's a barrier to equality which must be a core principle of our universities."

"We are seeing the toxic legacy of the radioactive half life of the Coalition's Jobs Ready Graduates model.

"But despite that serious damage, we are hopeful the current federal government is serious about tackling these issues to create better universities for students and staff.

"Education is a fundamental right and should not lead to decades of financial burden. We need to address this issue.

"We will continue to engage positively with the government to ensure students aren't saddled with lifelong debt into the future."

Assumptions in the report:

* Wage growth: 2.3% – the average of the last 10 years

* Indexation rate: begins at 7.07% then falls to 2.2% over the next 7 years – 2.2% is the average indexation applied over the last 19 years

* Starting salaries are those for the industry linked to each program

* In the model repayment thresholds are indexed at the same rate as student debt

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian slammed for slashing at least 28 TAFE jobs in Northern Rivers region

 

Office of the NSW Labor Member for Lismore, media release, 22 February 2021:

LISMORE MP Janelle Saffin has condemned the axing of up to 28 TAFE NSW jobs on the Northern Rivers as a betrayal by NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, who gave an iron-clad promise in 2019 that there would be no public service job cuts in regional and rural New South Wales.

 

“Deputy Premier John Barilaro and his Nationals are just as responsible here too; not lifting a finger as the Liberals continue with their deliberate actions in dismantling TAFE,” Ms Saffin said.

 

“How many cuts can our TAFE system take before it is completely decimated?”

 

TAFE NSW late last week advised the Community Public Sector Union of NSW that the Berijiklian-Barilaro Government is slashing almost 700 frontline TAFE NSW jobs, including 470 regional jobs.

 

“Figures provided to me by the CPSU-NSW show that we are looking at up to 28 local jobs going under two major restructures – in educational support and in student services, facilities management and logistics,” Ms Saffin said.

 

“In our Electorate of Lismore, six positions could be cut at the Lismore campus and one at the Murwillumbah Connected Learning Centre.

 

“In the neighbouring Electorate of Tweed, Kingscliff TAFE will be hardest hit with the Government targeting 12 positions, and in the Ballina Electorate, eight positions at Wollongbar TAFE and one position at Ballina TAFE are under threat.

 

“I will stand with the TAFE staff and their union, and with TAFE students, to fight these cruel job cuts because local communities cannot afford to see their TAFE campuses run down as the NSW Liberal-Nationals pursue their privatisation push, at the expense of local jobs and economy.

 

“Enough is enough.”

Morrison Government's class warfare sees this hard right group closing the door to students from low income families and cutting funding to universities

MORRISON GOVERNMENT SPIN

SBS News, 20 June 2020:

Mr Tehan outlined the coalition's latest plan for rejigging university funding in a speech to the National Press Club on Friday afternoon. He is offering to increase the number of university places by 39,000 over the next three years, rising to 100,000 more by 2030. 

The coalition had effectively capped places over the past couple of years by freezing its funding at 2018 levels. 

The trade-off in the new deal is changing what students and taxpayers pay. 

A three-year humanities degree would more than double in cost for students, from about $20,000 now to $43,500. The government's contribution would drop to $3300. 

 Fees for law degrees, typically four years, would jump from $44,620 now to $58,000. 

Conversely, the government would contribute more and charge students less for courses it says are more likely to lead to jobs. 

Agriculture and maths fees would drop from nearly $28,600 over three years to $11,100. 

Fees would also be cut for teaching, nursing, clinical psychology, science, health, architecture, IT, engineering and English courses.....

THE REALITY

From January 2021 students entering Humanities courses such as Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Arts & Business, Bachelor of International Studies, Bachelor of Politics Philosophy & Economics, Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Advanced Studies (Media and Communications), Bachelor of Education, Bachelor of Arts/
Bachelor of Advanced Studies (Languages), fees will more than double, putting them alongside law and commerce in the highest price band of $14,500 a year or est. $43,500 for a completed degree. Making these courses more expensive than studying medicine.

The Australian, 22 June 2020:

Universities will be paid less to teach courses such as maths and engineering under the Morrison government’s overhaul of higher education funding — despite those programs being promoted by Education Minister Dan Tehan as post-pandemic job creators. 

Education Department data shows the commonwealth will cut university funding for each enrolment in those courses while also cutting how much those students pay to study. 

The reforms are intended to push students towards high-­priority courses such as maths, teaching, science and engineering by lowering how much students, through the HECS-HELP loan scheme, pay. 

Universities currently receive $28,958 a year for each science course enrolment, made up of $19,260 paid by the student through the HECS-HELP loan scheme and $9698 from the commonwealth. 

Under the new system, however, students will contribute $7700 and the commonwealth will pay $16,500, leaving universities with $4758 less revenue for each science student enrolled. 

Universities will lose a similar amount for each student enrolled in an engineering course under the reforms announced by Mr Tehan on Friday, and lose $3444 per student in an agriculture subject, one of the key areas where the government is hoping to drive enrolment growth. 

That’s because while the commonwealth is increasing its payment per student from $24,446 to $27,000, that does not compensate for the fall in student contributions from $9698 to $3700. 

Frank Larkins, a researcher at Melbourne University’s Centre for Higher Education, said the fall in overall revenues per student in high-priority areas was likely to make it more difficult for universities to teach more students in those job-creating subjects. 

“It appears there are two mess­ages here. The government wants students to go into nursing, teaching and STEM subjects, but they also think those courses are overfunded,” Professor Larkins told The Australian on Sunday. 

“Agriculture — one of the areas they want more students — would retain its funding in the present scheme, but it’s cut by 17 per cent in this new one. It’s a curious situation. 

“The areas of study we are touting as the national interest are actually diminishing under these changes. 

Every university will have a different reaction, but these changes are almost disguising a cut in funding for some of these courses the government is promoting.”....

@RichAFerguson

ABC News, 21 June 2020: 

If you were thinking about starting a university degree in the future, you've got a new fee structure to take into account. The Government has announced an overhaul of the university fee system, slashing the price of courses it says are more likely to get you a job and hiking up fees for courses in the humanities. 

The changes will mainly apply to future students, with no current student to pay increased fees for the duration of their degree. 

However, if you're a current student enrolled in a course that is getting cheaper, you'll pay less from next year. 

Many of you told us the changes will affect your choice of study, and for some it will deter you from going to university altogether.... 

Robert H: "My son is in grade 11 and he picked his subjects for grades 10 to 12 at the end of grade 9. So even if he wanted to pivot towards the cheaper STEM degrees, he would need to go back in time to the end of year 9 to reselect his subjects. So much for a fair go." 

Monika O: "This is terrible. We need to encourage a variety of careers as we all have different gifts and abilities. It's not justified to discriminate and "punish" people who choose to study arts and humanities. These topics encourage critical thinking skills and communications skills — all much needed abilities. 

David D: "This an appalling idea. Prejudicing young people because their ability and passion are in the humanities, and rewarding those whose ability and passion just happens to be what business thinks they require now for jobs … Many businesses are actually crying out for workers with critical thinking and creative skills.".... 

Emma J: "Doubling humanities degree costs is appalling. These are the only degrees where you are taught to think for yourselves and where ideas and innovation are encouraged. Without social and political sciences and history and Indigenous studies, we're going to have a workforce which can only follow rules and can't think for themselves." Shane H: "Two of the most valued skills employers want is the ability to think critically and emotional intelligence. How many STEM subjects teach that?" 

Carolyn J: "Humanities subjects are foundational and help to produce people who understand the history and nuances of our society. They teach people how to communicate ideas, how to analyse language, image and thought. The arts themselves provide beauty, expression, reflection, critique, examination. They are vocations — sometimes compulsions — not job choices." 

Johny M: "More than doubling the cost of humanities degrees is not only sad, but grossly unfair. They teach critical thinking, research skills, and broaden our worldview. It is easy to rip into them for not being 'job specific', but that ignores they are the scaffold to everything we know about our society." Stefan P: This is absolutely tragic. The choice of which course to pursue within higher education should be entirely dependent on a student's desires, not their financial situation and the whims of the economy. Besides which, if the Federal Government acknowledges the difficulty of finding work as an arts student, then saddling them with even more debt is simply counterintuitive." 

Matt B: "I'm a Medsci student progressing into medicine, arguably an 'in demand' degree. However … the arts/humanities allows scientists to put the research in perspective of humanity and thus allows us to better communicate to the public and (science-ignorant) governments why we do what we do. Arts isn't a second thought; it's a priority, more so than learning chemistry and biology is for a doctor, because without the arts, we cannot communicate and appreciate the meaning of cancer beyond it being a mutation of cells.".... 

Lili K: "I'm just about to finish my honours degree in politics, and it has been the most rewarding and interesting years of my life. I know if this price hike happened when I was at my poor public country high school, I would have had to take a different path."....

 Anna G: "I have an arts degree. I work for the Government in a relatively senior role. My degree gave me essential critical-thinking, analytical and writing skills that equip me to do my job daily. It's frustrating to know that the Government thinks that my degree isn't 'job focused' when I use it to support and deliver its policies and programs.".... 

 Lana G: I am a business/politics (humanities) student. I am the first in my family to attend university, and all this does is make university (for the most part) unattainable. My degree is now going to be on par with the cost of a medical degree … Poorer kids are going to move away from economics, humanities and law."..... 

The Sydney Morning Herald, 24 June 2020: 

 The government will fund an extra 39,000 places by 2023 – an increase of about 6 per cent – as the recession prompts more school leavers to stay on in education (and avoid taking a gap year), but will compensate for this by cutting the amount of its funding per student. 

 According to calculations by Professor David Peetz, of Griffith University (whose former job as a senior federal bureaucrat helps him find where the bodies are buried), the government will cut its funding by an annual $1883 per student, with the average increase in tuition fees of $675 per student reducing the net loss to universities to $1208 per student. (The fee changes won't apply to existing students, however.).... 

Professor Ian Jacobs, boss of UNSW, who points to the perverse incentives the changes will create (assuming the Senate is mad enough to pass them). Unis will be tempted to offer most places in those courses with the widest gap between the high government-set tuition fee and the cost of running the course. They'll be pushing BAs harder than ever. 

This, of course, is exactly the way you'd expect the vice-chancellors to behave when you've taken government-owned and regulated agencies, spent 30 years pursuing a bipartisan policy of cutting their federal funding (from 86 per cent to 28 per cent of total receipts, in the case of Sydney University) and pretending they've been privatised.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s poor judgment on show again

Just because Scott Morrison’s maternal grandfather and mother were New Zealand citizens and he lived in that country for a few years as an adult, did he really have to wish this NZ political disaster zone on Australia?

BuzzFeed, 29 November 2018:

In a speech to the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Wednesday night, prime minister Scott Morrison announced Steven Joyce would head the first national vocational education review in more than 40 years…..

Joyce is a former New Zealand National MP who was given the nickname "Mr Fixit" (making him the Kiwi equivalent of our very own Christopher "I'm a Fixer" Pyne) during his time in politics.

He served as the tertiary education minister for about seven years (January 2010 to December 2016) and was the architect of former prime minister John Key's massive cuts to training programs across the country.

During his first four years on the job Joyce cut more than $60 million from regional and urban training centres, according to New Zealand's Tertiary Education Commission data…..

Sandra Grey, president of New Zealand's Tertiary Education Union, said Joyce's time as minister was a "real disaster for New Zealand".

"The real cost of his cuts is a $3 billion shortfall over the 10 years just gone," Grey told BuzzFeed News. "A $3 billion hole... we're never going to fill that. That's where the strain on staff and students comes. He chose to keep the budget flatlined but it cost more and more each year to run the sector."

Figures from the New Zealand Treasury confirm the Key's government budget left the sector more than $3 billion underfunded by not increasing year on year expenses in line with CPI.

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".

Fair Funding Now campaign kicked off in the Page electorate on 23 May 2018

When Nationals MP for Page Kevin Hogan stated that "our local community was a winner from this year’s budget with money put back into family budgets, the creation of more jobs and a guarantee of the essential services that we depend on as the Government continues to heavily invest in regional infrastructure" and "Our schools will also receive an extra $23.5 billion over the next decade. This means funding per student is increasing by around 50 percent over the decade making sure our children get the education they deserve" he appears to have misjudged the mood of the electorate.

Echo NetDaily, 23 May 2018:

Principals, parents and teachers in the Page electorate will join with community members at the local launches of the Fair Funding Now campaign at Grafton and Sandy Beach today and tomorrow.

The campaign aims to secure fairer funding for public schools and a reversal of the Turnbull Government cuts which will cost local schools over $23 million in 2018 and 2019 alone.

Speakers at the campaign Grafton launch today (Wednesday) will include NSW Teachers Federation president Maurie Mulheron, South Grafton PS principal, Peter South and P&C President Kelly Vickers while principal Dianne Blevin will address the Sandy Beach PS event tomorrow.

Mr Mulheron said: ‘We are running the Fair Funding Now campaign because a fair go for all children is needed now.

‘All children in the Page electorate should have the opportunity to get the highest quality public education.

‘Polling by the union shows the overwhelming majority of voters in 18 key marginal electorates, including Page, believe federal funding for public school is too low and that funding should be increased straight away.

More important than tax cuts

‘Results show school funding will be a key federal election vote decider, with 83 per cent of respondents stating that public school funding is very important or fairly important to how they will vote. 

‘School funding is more important to voters than cutting company tax rates, with 79 per cent of respondents stating that increasing public school funding to the national schooling resource standard is better for Australia’s future than cutting company tax rates.

 ‘If our leaders can’t commit to ensuring every school is at 100 per cent of the resourcing standard, then they should look at every parent and teacher in the eye and explain to them why their children aren’t a priority.

‘We will be active across Australia, through social media, outdoor advertising, and targeted action in 18 marginal Federal seats including door knocking and phone banks.

Essential Research 22 May 2018 polling results suggests that this campaign will gain grass roots favour.

Click on images to enlarge

Perhaps Mr. Hogan should remember the last Nationals Deputy Speaker who held the seat of Page and who also voted blindly followed the  Coalition party line no matter what policy madness was on the table.

His end was less than glorious - facing a mutinous electorate and lacking credibility, he retired ahead of the 2007 federal election, before the could be sacked by voters.