In a speech in NSW Parliament’s upper house yesterday, Ms Munro bluntly stated that regulations on ratios should change to cut costs in the sector.
“There are ways we can make childcare cheaper. We can change the regulations around educators who are childcare providers,” she said.
“We don’t need five or six highly educated people to look after 50 kids. Maybe we need one.”
This is a stark contrast to the current National Quality Framework, which mandates a maximum ratio of one educator for 10 children over three years old.
Or, another idea - we stop subsidising private schools and only give public money to public schools? I don’t think the private school down the road really needs a fifth auditorium while the kids at the public school are sitting in the library for science class because there’s literally nobody to teach it. But I guess we don’t want the poors getting educated, can’t have my landlords little princes and princesses competing with the peasant class for jobs.
I swear if anyone tells me they’re voting LNP I’m going to have a really hard time not just punching them in the face.
I’ve always disliked this idea. I’m the product of public education and my kids are in public schools as well. I believe every kid has a right to government funding toward their education. If a rich family wants to spend fees above and beyond the government allotment so their kid goes to school with a swimming pool or rowing team, I am ok with it. Those kids shouldn’t lose their government education funds because they come from wealth. They are still citizens and have the same entitlement.
Besides, if the million kids currently in private education suddenly turned up at their local schools tomorrow to enroll in the public system, they would totally break it.
I’m on the other side of this one.
If wealthy parents want to pay for an education that’s fine but when more taxpayer money goes to private schools than public it feels a bit off.
Temporary increase in funding and long phase out would help mitigate the issue.
It’s like the amount of money we put into subsidising private healthcare. I get why private exists and wouldn’t want it to go away overnight but why not properly fund public instead.
I’m going to stop now before I go down the do things like Norway rabbit hole
This is a really frequently misunderstood topic and there are plenty of people who intentionally cherry-pick the numbers to make the government look bad over it. So, I genuinely understand where you are coming from.
The first bit of confusion is that public schools get most of their funding from their state government. A comparatively small percentage comes from the federal government, usually for major works. Private school government funding comes from the federal government.
The second bit that confuses people is that funding isn’t just that ‘every school gets $x’. The. Amount of funding is mostly dictated by the student cohort. Rather than thinking of it as every school gets $x, think of it as the default amount per student is $x.
So yes, you get situations where a big private school with 2,500 students seems to get more money than any public school. But average it per student and account for what the state government is providing to the public school and the numbers come out far more evenly.
I sure agree that this should be far more apparent and easy to follow. Maybe the federal government should give the funds to the state education departments and have the states fund the private schools? I’d be on board with that.
Ignoring my personal distaste for private schools for a sec, I find irony in the fact that we’re discussing this topic on a post about early child care - where it is almost all private. We managed to get into the local government childcare centre, but it was not easy. And not much different in price.