Inner Sydney proposal exposes Government neglect

SUE SIMPSON writes the Government's plans for 33 public schools are only piecemeal solutions.

Mid-way through the Carr Labor Government's second term and less than one week after Public Education Day, the Carr Labor Government revealed its plan for 33 public schools in inner Sydney.

The "proposal" recognises, indirectly, the consequences of past policy failures - under-funding, school stratification and competition between public and private schools. It fails, however, to provide more than piecemeal solutions. It highlights the need once again for a comprehensive review of the state of public education.

The NSW Education Act states: "The principal responsibility of the State in the education of children is the provision of public education." This requires state governments to champion the achievements of the public education system above all else, to address its needs first and fully. The public school should be the first built in new housing areas and should be the last left in areas of declining numbers of school age children.

The "proposal" would have the Catholic primary school the last school left standing in Erskineville and Catholic secondary schools would be the last in Maroubra and Marrickville.

The need for $110 million for the refurbishment of those schools left standing acknowledges chronic under-funding. But the much-needed refurbishment is financed by the sale of school sites with the highest real estate values. No private school is required to sell off cricket pitches to pay for paint.

There is no additional funding for public education. The sell offs are proposed without regard to predictions of a baby boom in the rapidly changing demographic of the inner city.

Inner Sydney has had the full hierarchy of school types with the greatest number of selective, single sex and specialist high schools as well as private schools of anywhere in the state. The proposal to introduce a "selective stream" into some high schools is a belated recognition that comprehensive local high schools can lose their comprehensive nature when surrounded by specialist and private schools. These schools involuntarily end up "specialising" in education for lower ability students and end up getting more than their fair share of the disruptive. The proposal to establish two "Alternative Schools for students who find traditional schooling difficult" recognises this as well as provides for those students' needs.

Nevertheless the stratification and the market in schools remains - just in a different form. The proposal calls for the return of single sex junior high schools on the basis of parent popularity rather than educational rationale. The proposal for an Aboriginal school is controversial.

The "proposal" recognises the "intensive competition" with private schools that has contributed to the enrolment decline of Vaucluse and Dover Heights High Schools. In the 1996 Census only 26 per cent of secondary age students in the state electorate of Vaucluse attended a public secondary school. The Government needs to change the public policy framework that has contributed to this long-standing problem. There is no recognition that already eight secondary schools have been closed over the last 20 years in the area covered by the "proposal". This has not stopped governments, both federal and state, funding the expansion of existing private schools and the establishment of new private schools.

The plan calls for the closure of four small inner city public primary schools. Yet The Michael School for Rudolf Steiner with only 19 students; Birchgrove Community School with 30 students and Eastern Suburbs Montessori School Bellevue Hill with 40 students (based on 1999 figures, the last publicly available) will continue to receive state and federal funding.

A decade ago Maroubra Bay High School amalgamated with Maroubra Junction High School to form Maroubra High School. It now has 234 students and is proposed to close leaving two private high schools in Maroubra: Marist College Maroubra with 446 students and Mount Sinai College Maroubra with 232 students (1999 figures). In the 1996 Census only 46 per cent of secondary students attended a public secondary school in the Premier's electorate of Maroubra.

The "proposal" is about trying to stop further enrolment losses to the private sector through refurbishment, selective streams and the provision of alternative placements for difficult students. It provides little for a dynamic, expansionist vision of public education - lower class sizes, professional development and pre school provision.

What can be done?

Federation is working with school communities fighting school closures and unwelcome reconfigurations.

The union will conduct its own independent review if the Government continues to avoid coming to grips with past policy failures that have resulted in public secondary education becoming the residual system in parts of Sydney.

Substantial funding increases for public education in the May 29 State Budget must be provided to compensate for years of government neglect of its own public education system.

The Government's Review into Non Government Schools must eliminate double standards in funding and reassert the primacy of the public education system.

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April 2001 contents