Eureka Street

Keywords: Gonski

EDUCATION

New schools funding model will likely entrench class divides
- Chris Curtis
- 27 June 2024
5 Comments
In the new schools funding model, schools at the upper and middle parts of the parental income spectrum will find budgets getting tighter each year, and fees will likely increase. The worst affected schools will be those whose parents earn higher incomes but which have kept their fees low so that poorer families may also enrol their children.
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EDUCATION

The myths of school funding
- Chris Curtis
- 29 November 2023
6 Comments
Australian school funding is full of common misconceptions, and creating a rational, just, and effective school funding model requires cutting through media-driven inaccuracies to understand the real needs of Australian students and schools.
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EDUCATION

A tale of two school systems
- Sarah Klenbort
- 11 October 2023
9 Comments
Parents face a complex choice: public or private schooling? Overcrowded public classrooms contrast with well-funded private institutions, revealing inequalities in educational resources. Australia's educational landscape reveals not just a tale of two school systems but the underlying values and priorities of a nation.
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EDUCATION

A Catholic response to school funding fallacies
- Dallas McInerney
- 26 September 2018
36 Comments
If governments stopped supporting low-fee non-government schools, fees would rise. This would force parents to move their children to the free government school in the same suburb, and the non-government school would become unviable. Families would be denied their school of choice, and the bill for taxpayers would be greater.
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EDUCATION

School funding after Batman and Longman
- Frank Brennan
- 06 August 2018
28 Comments
The school funding battle has featured in the last two rounds of federal by-elections. Economics writer Ross Gittins has suggested the Catholics are trying to extract special deals. There are three principles of public policy at play in this ongoing saga, and the consistent and fair application of all three principles is a big political challenge.
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EDUCATION

The myth of the average teacher
- Tim Hutton
- 22 June 2018
12 Comments
I have the controversial opinion among my colleagues that teachers, on average, actually get paid pretty well. Averaging, however, is the crux of debate. Yes, if a teacher's job is averaged over the year, their pay is reasonable and their workload is manageable. Alas, teachers are mere mortals; they aren't Time Lords who can redistribute their work to a time of year when they are less busy.
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EDUCATION

How schools funding became such a problem
- Andrew Hamilton
- 06 June 2018
16 Comments
Tony Taylor's study of the funding of Australian schools from the time when Menzies first aided Catholic schools until today explains how school funding has come to pose such an intractable problem for governments. It is also a lament for so many lost opportunities to build an educational framework that would open opportunity to all.
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ECONOMICS

Devils in budget detail
- Gabriela D'Souza
- 17 May 2018
2 Comments
There were the stories that didn't get much of a mention in the mainstream press but will net large gains for young people and new entrants to the labour market. Under the budget measure, inactive super accounts with balances of less than $6000 will have a three per cent cap on fees charged. But is this policy quite what it seems?
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EDUCATION

Students need teachers, not technicians
- Fatima Measham
- 10 May 2018
8 Comments
For the past several years, education has been treated as solely a technical problem. One of the pitfalls of this is that political will becomes a function of money, which in turn rests on political expedience between federal and state governments, further complicated by external lobbying. Education gets ground to a grain.
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EDUCATION

Best of 2017: Hanson's autism remark misses value of diversity
- Madeleine Hamilton
- 11 January 2018
2 Comments
The mood was subdued at the gates of our small Catholic primary school at 3:30pm on Wednesday. Ten per cent of our school's students have an autism diagnosis, and for their parents who had read Pauline Hanson's comments to the Senate that afternoon, those familiar feelings had been activated yet again.
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RELIGION

Citizenship and the Common Good
- Frank Brennan
- 30 August 2017
6 Comments
'There was one controversy in which Lionel Bowen was involved that does provide good lessons for the contemporary Catholic considering the desirable law or social policy on a contested issue - lessons for the citizen weighing what is for the common good. Back in 1979 there was debate in the Parliament on a motion which was framed to stop Medicare funding of abortions. Bowen, a strict Catholic, was strongly opposed to the motion. He did not think the motion was about abortion. He thought it was about money.' Frank Brennan's 2017 Lionel Bowen Lecture
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EDUCATION

Hanson's autism comments miss the value of diversity
- Madeleine Hamilton
- 22 June 2017
19 Comments
The mood was subdued at the gates of our small Catholic primary school at 3:30pm on Wednesday. Ten per cent of our school's students have an autism diagnosis, and for their parents who had read Pauline Hanson's comments to the Senate that afternoon, those familiar feelings - dismay at the ignorance and lack of empathy of some people, worry for the future, and defiant pride in their diverse children - had been activated yet again.
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Keywords: Gonski