by Squawk » Thu Aug 16, 2012 1:57 pm
Ahhh, this discussion is an oldie but a goodie.
Me - public primary, private secondary.
Juniors? Probably the same.
I have to say, there are lots of private schools I wouldn't send my kids too, and a very short list of ones I would. As for public schools - there aren't a lot of quality ones there either, I don't think. Sadly.
On the funding of private schools, Jimmy41 is spot on. A lot of the facilities are often paid for by the school, not through govt funding. I know of one school close to Jimmy's heart that had new laboratories built, largely funded by Clipsal. The same school has raised money through a bank sponsorship for a new sports complex, with gap funding raised by the old scholars association and other fundraising. Bequests are another traditional income stream.
Kids at these private schools still have to pay for a lot of extra curricular activities, like overseas travel, ski trips, etc.
When I was at senior school, it was largely WASP - white anglo saxon protestant. Now, it is very diverse, almost to the point it is a shock to me. They offer scholarships for indigenous students, disadvantaged kids, disadvantaged kids with a rural background and so forth. There are heaps of overseas students. There are new sports being played.
I cant believe that these days, my school now offers more than just sporting colours - they give colours for academic achievement and other "modern happy world' things. The school has seemingly become so warm and fluffy that it concerns me that its aim to churn out well-rounded, community minded students of the world, will now be churning out soft kids who want to dig wells in sub-saharan Africa, play Olympic Chess, and speak 4 useless languages.
So gone are the days of having to write "Lines" at lunch time - the line being "few things are more distressing to a well educated mind, than to see a boy, who ought to know better, disporting himself at improper moments." I doubt they still have school duties or Saturdays either - and those forms of discipline were the ones that scared me the most. I remember having heaps of Lines and a number of (after hours) school duties, and being told I was on my way towards getting a "Saturday". I went home and advised my mother in advance that if I was given a Saturday, she would need to drive me to school because you had to attend in full school uniform and there was no way I could catch two buses there, and back again, on a Saturday in full uniform. Her answer was that this would be exactly what I would have to do. The prospect of humiliation on a bus in full school uniform on a Saturday was enough to scare me out of pushing the enveleope too far and getting such a punishment.