"There is a touch of Yes Minister about State Government plans for an inquiry into private schools.

When a government is bereft of ideas, an inquiry can buy it time, but is unlikely to buy it a better education system unless the Goverment is rather more specific in its inquiry objectives.

The vagueness is probably necessary to hide the political agenda. The truth is that Mr Aquilina is in a spot of trouble.

The present method used by the state government to distribute moneys to private schools is based on an Economic Resource Index (ERI) formula which is now universally accepted as being unfair and outdated.

The alternative of the proposed Federal Government method of funding has been vigorously attacked by the Labor Party in an ideological war. With both these options out, the State Government has found itself in a corner, with little idea as to how it is to distribute the education dollar to private schools. But a year long inquiry will buy some time.

Recognising that an increasingly savvy public is unlikely to be enthusiastic about a taxpayer-funded inquiry, it is being sold using grave phrases like 'fair and needs-based funding' and 'increased accountability'.

This rhetoric is hardly persuasive, for already private schools are inspected regularly and thoroughly by the State Government.

Only a few months ago the Education Department crawled over The King's School, examining its curiculum, counting bubblers and testing the non-slip surfaces on our changing rooms.

Given that King's passed the inspection, I do not feel threatened by the Government counting the bubblers again, but I rather suspect the public may see the exercise as a waste of time and money. If Mr Aquilina wants to know how private schools spend their money, I can save Warren Grimshaw who is heading up the inquiry, the trouble of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars by telling him that the great bulk of government money is spent on teacher's salaries.

Very little government money if any, is channelled into extravagant educational facilities.

These facilities, if they exist at all, have probably been built through fund-raising initiatives and other self-help programs.

The Government is in danger of wanting to remove the educational speck in the eye of private schools, while ignoring the log in the eye of State schools.

Somebody might need to whisper in Mr Aquilina's ear that the public perception of where the problem lies in education in NSW is in its State schools, which is why there has been a steady defection from State schools to private schools over many years.

This defection is greater in NSW than in any other state with 20,000 students transferring to private schools in the past four years.

If an inquiry is warranted it should probably be an inquiry into the morale of State schools, after all this is where the State government spends $5 billion per annum with less than one tenth of that amount being spent on private schools.

Given the lack of clear defensible objectives for the inquiry, it is difficult to believe the exercise is anything more than a search for an acceptable way by which the Government can reduce its support of a number of private schools.

Mr Aquilina claims the exercise is not designed to cut funding, but to increase accountability. Unfortunately political promises are generally seens a reliable as a second-hand lawnmower.

Many seen the inquiry as a means of helping the State Government to reduce its financial commitment to a numer of the State's private schools.

Some of these private schools already receive only one-third of the government support per student compared with a State school parent, with parents in private schools already subsidising students in State schools.

I would suggest that Mr Aquilina would be better employed initiating an inquiry as to how best to support State schools, rather than looking for deficiencies in private schools."

Source: Daily Telegraph, 26 October.