Watching a promo for the Insight programme (SBS, Tuesdays, 7:30pm) just then, on the topic of whether teachers' pay should be performance-based, Gam pointed out the hypocrisy of the government's insistence that the 'best' teachers should be paid more than their colleagues, and while simultaneously proclaiming that politicians' salaries need rise after rise after rise in order to attract "high calibre" candidates of the sort that are currently in office. The old 'pay peanuts, you'll get monkeys' argument gets dredged up time and time again in relation to the salaries of politicians, but the bastards are incredibly dismissive of the same principle in relation to teachers.
12 comments:
Free market, huh Hayden? And why do you think that would be better? Is it because private schools pay so well? (they don't, especially considering the extra work many of them require).
And, if we did place it in the free market, how, exactly, would schools get money? From the pupils? Where, then, would poor people go?
IMHO all education, pretty much, should be public.
the value of education is long term and difficult to quantify. as a result it doesn't lend itself well to market pricing. further the ethos of education is ability, not financial means. i don't think hayden undestands that a market is not the best way to decide the price of everything.
there are plenty of countries around the world with free market education systems, but i don't think you'd send your kids to somalia or russia.
Hmmm, okay Hayden. Let's play with some numbers then.
You probably don't know (most people don't) that for every $1 somebody pays in tax, care of investing, etc. it comes back as roughly $42, at a federal level. When people start talking about spending their tax dollars directly, this is an important factor rarely taken into account. There's a lot of $2 to waste in that figure we wouldn't have if the money got broken up into smaller chunks.
If, as you say, $2 - $4 is spent on administration, how is that lost? Administration of anything typically takes up a large portion of budgets. There is no evidence that private schools have less administration, far from it.
This also ignores the fact that governments _do_ currently fund private schools. They fund them a shitload, in fact, and when parents send their kids there, they are essentially paying twice for the one education.
In the private education sector - obviously far more deregulated than the public education sector - prices, have not, it seems, been subject to competition. On the contrary, it seems they have been going up.
So in summary, the money currently spent on education is not 'lost', nor is it confined to public schools, nor is there any indication that private schools would have better administration.
The idea that a minimal government is capable of quashing monopoly is, I think, highly contestable, seeing as we have a massive one and it does a so-so job most of the time.
The problem with competitive markets is that you have conflated them with free markets, when no such link exists. The fact is - something first-year economic lecturers are loath to point out - is that free markets inescably shift towards monopoly. The private education sector is bumping schooling prices up in a way that has nothing to do with the good purchased.
You state that the absence of unions would get better pay for teachers, and yet teachers in the private sector earn only marginally more than their public counterparts, and indeed, every teacher salary raise over the last ten years (possibly more, I don't know) has been a direct result of union bargaining power, and in some cases the addition of strikes. Without these recourses such pay rises would never have happened.
Finally, as Gam says, educational outcomes are a murky and ambiguous business. I can think of few outside government qualified to assess what is best for people - because not all goals take place outside the context of profit.
After all, if you look at education purely vocationally, most of us could arguably be set free after we learn to read. When you look at times when the government has not had a say in schooling, poor people have typically been forced to get their kids to work instead of to classes, so they can eat. This situation is only uncommon now in the developed world.
What I would be interested to hear, though, are your recommendations as to how we can cut down government expenditure on administration in education funding. Real policy is usually quite boring and very tricky, but that's how you make a difference, Hayden, not by simply saying that no child should be in poverty (or public school ;) ) by 1991...
that's nonsense, money invested in an educated populace isn't lost. it's been invested in people who earn more, hold better jobs and have more transferrable skills. as a result they pay more taxes for longer. thus our tax revenue is higher than places like indonesia or bangladesh. it's also the reason why we have a retail driven economy, well educated people have more disposable income. your economic model is positively reaganite.
a free market is not the best way to decide the price of everything because the costs are not always apparent. even the most crazed libertarians are able to grasp this.
you don't even have the first idea of how a free market works. getting rid of unions will fatally skew the market in favour of employers. it's as foolish as suggesting we'd all get the best prices if every shopping centre except coles were outlawed. seriously, i don't know where you types get these ideas.
you're an econ grad? which uni, please.
Hmmm Hayden, I suspect we are going to fundamentally disagree on this one - I'm practically communist compared to you - though I do have one major difference, I don't have ultimate faith in any area of society.
Your faith that a 'free' market (As if there is such a thing) would benefit everyone, not just economically, but in every other aspect of life strikes me as surreal - or it would, if I hadn't spent a lot of time with economoics students and graduates.
The thing that blows my mind about this is that the free market regularly fails, moreover, the 'free-er' a market it is, the more horrible things seems to be for the majority of the populace there - AKA the poor people.
I am yet to see any economist demonstrate a situation where a rapaciously free market has resulted in anything but a disaster, and yet economy students (not so many academics though...) seem to believe in this dogma with a fervour rivalling the commies they so vehemently despise.
You are yet to address my points about unionism, the failure of the private market already, or the rising prices of private schools.
Teacher's output is not easy to measure. They have a much greater impact than the student's class results. Hence, performance-based pay shouldn't be used to a great extent.
Excellent point. "Performance pay," particularly if it is linked to such measures as league tables, will likely have a devastating effect on education: rote learning, spoon-feeding, teaching to the test, etc.
Hayden,
Teachers are not teachers for the money. They never have been. They are in it for the job satisfaction. Like recent studies have said. Mentor younger teachers when they get in so they stay in instead of leaving when they realise how stressful it is.
The other thing too is monster parents are on the rise. The sort of parent that feels ringing a teacher at home is acceptable to talk about their kid.
Imagine if it was reversed?
Get rid of the unions indeed. Like it's the unions that are responsible. Not.
(Mikey is a Unionist)
Perhaps the very failure of the government to provide adequate schools (or perceived) is the reason for an increase in demand for private schools.
Parents think they are doing their kids a favour by sending them private. A lot of it is to do with networking and as a status symbol for the parent. ie it's more about them than the kid.
But then when you have a federal government that has vastly ramped up money for private schools - including those with polo fields and rifle clubs - what do you expect.
(Disclaimer: Mikey went to a private school and asked to leave when he realised that his parents were paying 6000 a year (in the 80's) to send him to a thug factory. Mikey was once nearly stabbed by a giant compass by a fuck knuckle and when he complained was told he bought it on himself. Mikey was also once tortured for two hours by prefects because he told one of them out of school hours to get fucked).
Private Schools are like 4WD. Hardly anyone need them and only status conscious dickheads think they are a good idea.
Private Schools are like 4WD. Hardly anyone need them and only status conscious dickheads think they are a good idea.
Hear hear!
Teachers are not teachers for the money. They never have been. They are in it for the job satisfaction.
My cousin wants to become a maths & science teacher. She's doing honours in science and is smart as they come.
She is also really well motivated, and perfectly capable of making a hell of a lot of money if that was what was important to her. Instead she's taking up teaching.
Personally, I'm hard pressed to think of many jobs I would want to avoid more than teaching, given the hard time I've seen given to teachers throughout my years at school. I've seen teachers reduced to tears, suffer nervous breakdowns (or whatever the term for it is these days). It's not a job for people who want to get rich and have it easy.
Mikey- it sounds like you had similar experiences at private school to my dad and one of his older brothers (who committed suicide at 19- I don't know if his school experience was a contributing factor). Boys at private schools aren't necessarily more violent, but they're more likely to be able to deceive people into thinking they're not thugs than their public school counterparts, I think.
The irony is my brother who also went there is now a teacher there.
But he was 6'2". That helps a lot.
That's sad about your uncle.
Post a Comment