Private and public education

The dual public and private system of schooling is the powder keg of Australian educational politics. During the 1960s, and again from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, it blew up into major disputes over state aid to private schools and the balance of government priorities between equality of opportunity and freedom of choice. Relations between the school sectors were stabilised by Labor's new private schools policy in the mid-1980s, but Liberal National Party policies support more rapid growth of private school funding, threatening to ignite the state aid controversies once again. This chapter reviews twenty years of commonwealth policies on schooling, and draws up a balance sheet on the prospects for the private sector in higher education.