Public - or Private !

There is no doubt that the economy of Australia has changed in recent years.   The global economy has robbed this country of vast numbers of middle class jobs that used to pay good wages and the general wage is not keeping up with inflation.  As a result, young people are being urged to stick with gaining a higher level of education because having a " qualification " is now essential in a limited job market.

Education has become a mesmerising subject for most parents.  They must decide whether to send their kids to private schools - or go with the flow in the public school system.  The problem for many is the cost.  A private school education usually means a financial sacrifice for most parents and in the past the reward has been what is conceived as a " better education ".  Most private schools had a connection to one sort of religion or another and discipline was stricter.  In comparison, the public sector seemed more chaotic.

We now seem to be entering a turning point.  Each year the cost of a private school education increases and it is estimated that about one in four  families are close to abandoning the private education choice if fees continue their upward momentum.  If that happens, the public system would not be comfortably able to accommodate the numbers involved and would require an immediate expansion.

Unfortunately, the public school system has been a victim of demographic changes.  Some suburbs have gracious public schools with limited student numbers because the area has undergone " gentrification "  as the domain of the elderly retired.  Younger families are now concentrated in newer suburbs and their schools are crammed to overflowing.

The education authorities are giving though to adopting the " doing more with less " mantra by simply dividing overcrowded schools into a separated system of individual morning and afternoon shifts. The hours at school would remain the same because the morning class would start earlier and end their school day at noon, and the afternoon class would commence at noon and finish their day in the early evening.

It would have the benefit of extracting more value from existing school buildings and creating a much wider dispersal peak to lower public transport overcrowding problems.  Obviously, the issue of extended teacher hours or the duplication of the teacher system would need to be resolved, but this has been in place successfully in some other countries.

There is another outcome that hinges on private school costings.   Should a quarter of existing parents supporting private schools withdraw their kids to the public system the cost of private school fees would have to accommodate an income drop that would inevitably push fees even  higher.  That could see the end of most of the private school system.

The government needs to decide whether subsidizing the private school system is a better outlay of public funds than the money that would be needed to bring the public school system up to the standard required to accommodate the students displaced if the private system went out of business. The idea of dividing schooling on a " morning " and " afternoon " basis does have the benefit of making existing schools avoid the cost of expensive replacements.

How that would sit with students - and their parents - remains to be seen !