Public vs. Private: A legitimate choice or social apartheid?

Where to send ones child to school is a fundamental question both parents and children are faced with. Questions around education quality, proximity to geographic location, resonance of school values and history of success in academic achievement of the school are often primary considerations in making said choice.

The idea of being able to choose where to attend school has the potential to be simultaneously positive and negative, with the response altering according to who you ask. A fundamentally neoliberal idea, choice allows the individual to discern the optimum product and consume it accordingly,  allowing education to be defined against the market as an investment made in order to maximize return (Welch, 1998, 158). In this frame of reference,  school choice is shaped by market mechanisms which allow it to be driven by demand and thus increase competition for the best schools available. This, in turn, places upward pressure on performance which, optimistically speaking, should increase education quality and provide better outcomes for all.

The dominance of rationalist neoliberal ideology advocates not only choice, but the provision of free enterprise as an alternative to 'interventionist' state provided institutions. In Australia, this notion has translated into an increase into the number of private schools. As a recipient of both private and public sources of funding, private schools are generally able to provide a superior product as they have access to more resources – including the distinguished pool of alumni they produce. Students (as well as their parents) are simultaneously producers and consumers as they both consume the product of education, and add value to it through their consumption (Kenway and Bullen, 2001).

This idea is glaringly evident in the continual support for funding the most prestigious of private institutions by the very students who attended them, and are currently in the positions of power to influence decisions pertinent to school funding (Cowey, 2012). This cycle continues despite evidence that the school market and its propagated fable of choice only benefits individuals with the purchasing power to compete to enter the 'best schools' which often have prohibitive cost entry levels.

The evident increase in independent and religious schools under the 'private' school umbrella further promotes not only the disparity between students who attend public and private schools, but also increases monoculturalism and what has been dubbed 'social apartheid' as the segregation of students according to their beliefs and value systems further pushes them away from goals of social cohesion, as there is less opportunity for students to mix with others of different backgrounds of their own and foster the understanding and tolerance that are the professed goals of the multicultural, pluralist society the Australian government advocates.

References

 

Cowey, Tom (2012) The Power Index: religion, private school lobbyists at #4, Crikey.com.au http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/09/27/the-power-index-religion-private-school-lobbyists-at-4/   

 

Kenway, J. & Bullen, (2001). Consuming children: Education-Entertainment-Advertising. Buckingham: Open University Press. Chapter 5: Designer schools, packaged students.

Welch, A.R. (1998) The Cult of Efficiency in Education: Comparative Reflections on the Reality and the Rhetoric, Comparative Education, 34 (2) Special Number (20): Comparative Perspective