Connors cans tax share argument

Public education advocate Lyndsay Connors has spoken out against those who argue that parents with children in non-government schools pay their tax, and are therefore entitled to a share of it back from governments to fund whatever kind of non-government school they choose.

Writing in NewMatilda.com, she called for an "urgent" national debate about "the level of Commonwealth funding that non-government schools receive and the conditions that should apply to it, having regard to the nation's capacity to fund public schools to meet the responsibilities they bear". "Without necessarily agreeing with the funding policies of particular governments or parties, we can all agree that in any decent, democratic society governments have a responsibility to protect the educational interests of all children and young people; and that there is a public interest in the quality of schooling available to all children," she wrote.

Ms Connors wrote there was "no logic to the argument that parents with their children in non-government schools are entitled to have public funding paid either to themselves or to the school on the grounds that they have paid their tax to support public schools". "All children are legally entitled to a place in a public school. They retain that entitlement when their parents send them to other schools, and can take it up at any time should their parents so wish," she wrote.

"The tax we pay is not a personal deposit in a savings bank to be withdrawn for our individual purposes and priorities.

"Paying tax is an obligation of citizenship. Meeting that obligation does not buy the individual taxpayer specific privileges or special rights. Parents with children in non-government schools simply have the same right as their fellow parents and citizens to participate in democratic debate about how governments should allocate tax revenues to education, according to priorities that can be justified on rational grounds.

"There is a dangerous and divisive potential in the argument that the payment of tax by individual parents either entitles their children's non-government schools to some share of public funding. It is an argument that cuts both ways. If you can argue that you have a right to direct your taxes to the school of your individual choice, then I can argue to have my tax withheld from a school operated by a group whose beliefs or practices I find personally objectionable. Taken to its extreme this argument brings into question why tax should be raised for schooling at all, particularly from citizens without children," Ms Connors wrote.

This is an edited version of an article by Lyndsay Connors which appeared in the February 2 edition of NewMatilda.com, an online magazine which generates topical analysis and debate, and gives subscribers the opportunity to have a say in developing policy. Lyndsay Connors chairs the NSW Public Education Council.

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