The parents fleeing Australia’s public school system – and those choosing to stay

Michael Dukes wanted his children to have a public school education. But the Coffs Harbour dad opted to move them to a private school – even though he has to work two jobs to afford it.

For Alice Springs parent Elliat Rich, public school has only ever been the plan for her 13-year-old son. The cost was one part of it, but mainly she sees public education aligning with her values of schooling as a holistic pursuit of creating “well-rounded humans”.

Their contrasting choices mirror the decisions made by thousands of parents around Australia each year. Different factors influence each family, but a school’s resources are one big consideration – and the decade-long failure to fully implement the changes recommended by the Gonski review mean a relative lack of funding for public schools is pushing more people in the direction of Dukes’s thinking.

Last year, 64.5% of students went to public school – a fall from 69% two decades ago. That makes Australia an outlier in the OECD, where 80% of students on average attend public schools.

The trend away from public schools continued after the Gonski review was released in 2011, before starting to reverse in 2016. The shift away public schools picked up again in 2020, with the sharpest increase since the review of students opting for private schools.

Experts say the shift away from public schools is part of a broader crisis in the sector that is further segregating the public and private school system between the haves and have-nots.

It’s exacerbated by a funding model that benefits the private sector.

“If we want to understand the drift to private schools, follow the money,” says Tom Greenville, co-author of Waiting for Gonski: How Australia Failed its Schools.

“Governments have chosen to help non-government schools have a resource advantage to attract students away from the public system.”

A two-tier education system

Dukes’s son needs additional learning support, and says his son and daughter faced problems with bullying at the public primary school they attended. When Dukes toured the local private school, he only found more reasons to make the switch.

The school had new Apple computers and a music, swimming and drama program. Their old school had just cancelled its swimming carnival.

“Because they do have such a large influx of money, you get to have the top-rated everything,” he says. “When you come from a public school where they’re struggling to provide even books and pencils, it’s just such a huge disparity,” Dukes says.

In 2017, the Turnbull government scrapped its funding to public school infrastructure, leaving it up to the states. This came after the Gonski review highlighted that poor public school facilities were leading to an increase in private school enrolments.

At the public school Dukes’s children previously attended, teachers were doing their best to cater to students, he says. But they were stretched thin, and Dukes saw his son, now nine, start “to fall through the cracks”.

When the current funding model of public and private schools was conceived, its aim was to give parents more choice. But Dukes felt forced into his decision to send his children to private school, even though it meant taking on a second job to afford the $16,160 in annual fees. Most of the other parents at his sons’ new school are like himself, scrimping and saving to afford the fees, he says.

“The difference with how the kids are now is night and day,” he says. “There’s also been more resources for them to do art and drama programs which [was] really important to us.

“[We] shouldn’t be faced with a two-tier education system that’s based on how much you can afford and how privileged you are, but that seems to be the case.”

Chris Bonner, a former school principal and co-author of Waiting for Gonski: How Australia Failed its Schools, says some parents are drawn to private schools for better resources, worried their children could be missing out. But that’s not the whole story, he says.

There’s a broader phenomenon of parents scrambling to get their children into schools with a higher proportion of students from more affluent economic backgrounds.

This manifests as a drift from public to private schools, Bonner says. But a similar trend can be seen within the government system in some states, especially New South Wales, with high-performing students often enrolling in state-funded selective schools.

At Keira high school in Wollongong, 40% of students are in the bottom quarter of socioeconomic (SES) advantage and 13% are in the top, according to My Schools data. Over the fence is the selective school, Wollongong High School of the Performing Arts, where 15% of students are in the bottom quarter of socioeconomic advantage and 31% in the top.

Bonner says these trends are exacerbating the i high concentration of disadvantaged students in the public system, leading to poorer educational outcomes for those students.

The Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) data shows students from a high socioeconomic background tend to perform just as well at a public school as they do at a private school. But the same is not true for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

Bonnor says this is due to the “peer impact of schooling achievement”.

“The sad reality is that a kid with a low SES family background will on average do better in a school where other enrolled kids are from a more advantaged background,” he says. “It’s not the parents’ fault, nor does it point fingers at individual schools – it’s the way the system works.”

Sticking with public education

Elliat Rich says the depth and breadth of learning at her son’s public school is “extraordinary”.

“For a young person to be exposed to these fantastic passionate educators, and also be friends and peers with really resilient and resourceful young people who fit outside the mould … that’s an incredible opportunity.”

She says she’s aware of parents choosing the private education system out of a stereotype that children are subject to bad influences at public schools. But she says parents need to have more faith in the schools – and in themselves as parents.

“I understand the desire to protect your young person, but that’s the learning that they have to do,” she says. “It’s almost like we are so outcome-orientated that we’ve forgotten about the process.”

Still, from her child’s first six months at public high school, she can tell teachers are stretched.

RMIT professor David Armstrong says the failure to fund schools according to their needs is putting teachers under great strain to cater to students with complex needs and from low socioeconomic backgrounds. More than three-quarters of people with a disability who went to school attend, or have attended, government schools.

“Schools under pressure to deliver curriculum are less likely to support vulnerable students, leading to a decline in the quality of teaching and learning in classrooms,” Armstrong says.

At the same time, public schools are grappling with a crisis in teaching recruitment and retention.

Armstrong says it becomes a self-fulling cycle as parents lose faith in public education and the government doubles down on regulation. Students leave and funding declines because funding is tied to enrolment numbers.

“You’ve got a rising workload for teachers, a collapse in morale and high workplace stress – it’s a sinking ship.”

Even with the challenges, Rich says, she can see the positive impact of having her child in the public education system.

“We were driving home the other night and our young person was in the back of the car and they said, out of the blue, ‘Maybe I’d like to be a teacher when I grow up,’” she recalls. “It just goes to show the level of inspiration that those teachers are imparting.”

But Dukes, too, feels happy with his decision. He wants to believe in public schools, but he doesn’t want to risk his children not meeting their potential.

“We never had any intention of sending them to private schools,” he says. “But that’s the choice we feel we were left with.”