A topic we’re really looking forward to at the Sydney Opera House Festival Of Dangerous Ideas mind-meet this weekend (among others including All Australians Are Racist, Children Are Not Innocent and The Devil Is Real) asks whether we should abolish private schools.
Why? Because despite the fact that Aussie students excel by most international measures of intelligence, socio-economic background still has a very high impact on how well our children do. A place where this doesn’t exist is Finland. The Finnish system, recognised as among the very best in the world, is a class-free education system which values equity and social inclusion above all else and is egalitarian to the point where no one pays for education (there’s no such thing as private school) and full-time students receive a free meal every single day. It stands as a brave, progressive and successful experiment that has eschewed the Western trend towards systems such as standardised testing and monetizing education through well-defined tiers of public and private operation, resulting in more Finnish kids exceeding in school regardless of their socio-economic background.
So then, should we follow the Finnish system? Should we abolish private schools and create a fairer and more equitable access to quality education? The issue will be discussed at length next Saturday by a panel of guests including Pasi Sahlberg, a leading expert on the Finnish education system, Director General of CIMO in the Ministry of Education in Helsinki and the author of Finnish Lessons, and speakers from all sides of the education debate in Australia, but in the meantime, here’s what the public think.
