This morning I was listening to Jane Caro talk about how our public education has been gutted. She has published a book Rich Kid Poor Kid about it. She's touring the East Coast to talk about her findings and what we need to do to stop the rot which is creating more class division and a system which is more expensive than in ay OECD country (even public ed.)
If you live in Brisbane, Canberra, Sydney or Melbourne you may be interested in checking out what she has to say.
Mods, If this is seen as an ad, let me know so I can change the wording . I do think it's a very important topic.
I'm seeing Australia as rank 13 on spending per student for oecd countries. I had to check because I was pretty sure the united states spends way more than most (#3) just behind Norway, and well behind Luxembourg. That's basically middle of the pack for you guys. I have no idea if that matters in the context of your post.
Thank you for having a look.
The trouble with education spending in this country is that the govt subsidises the already wealthy schools that charge a mint as well as public schools in the poorest areas. This obviously skews in favour of the rich and middle-level schools while the public schools, which mostly have the most challenging teaching and learning situations, are not funded as they should be. The problem is worsened when parents choose private or Catholic schools for their kids in fear of the lacks of public education (unless the public school is in a middle-class area and then the school is better supported by the community) making the situation worse. Surprisingly, it's been found that when it comes to academic results public schools punch above their weight. Nevertheless, the funding model is very flawed and we should keep demanding better funding for our public schools.