
As a marketer, I love think tanks, no really, I do. I love the way they manage to take stuff that is already well known, package it up and release it as news! That’s some damn clever spin right there.
The latest is the earth-shattering information (not) from The Grattan Institute that disadvantage compounds throughout a kid’s life, no matter how much native ability they may start out with. Frankly, duh!
This has been at the centre of the warnings public education advocates like me have been attempting to ram home to policymakers, parents and anyone who will goddamn listen for – oh, I dunno — about 30 years.
When Gough Whitlam first gave recurrent funds to private schools, we warned that we would end up exactly where we have ended up. And that is with one of the most class segregated education systems in the developed world. And class segregated education systems do worse internationally.

What did we think was going to happen when we encouraged (via ever more generous subsidies) middle class parents to opt out of the public education system entirely and leave poorer kids to their fate?
When I went to a comprehensive public high school back in the 1970s, they enrolled almost every kid in the community. My peers came from the families of company directors, lawyers, plumbers, what were then called “deserted wives”, and the nearby housing commission.
We didn’t know, we didn’t care — we judged one another on our merits as teenagers. I assume the kids who topped the class (never me, by the way, despite my CEO dad) came from all sorts of backgrounds but I didn’t know then and I don’t know now. Isn’t that great?
Top Comments
The fact of the matter is that the government needs to put more $ into public schools. No-one would dispute that, however the funding of private schools is NOT to the detriment of public schools in terms of funding.
The government handing out funding to independent schools is smart - they are educating children/teens for a fraction of the cost it would be for them to be educated in the public system BECAUSE parents are prepared to pay additional fees.
We chose an independent school because, with fee-paying parents, the school COULD cater to my child's needs. The local public could not. I was not going to sacrifice my child's well being for the greater good.
"...just as kids do worse when surrounded by disadvantage they do better when surrounded by advantage..."
So I should sacrifice my kid and send them to a school where they can be surrounded by disadvantage and do worse in school, just so the disadvantaged can be surrounded by my advantaged kid and do better.
She didn't say that. She was pointing out a systematic peculiarity - and one which makes it v difficult to unwind the disadvantage that's compounded by it. Besides, kids who are already 'advantaged' don't get infected by disadvantage. On the contrary, they often stand out more easily as achievers at the same time as they are role models for others - win-win.