TUITION FEE DISCRIMINATION AT NON‐GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb009758 |
| Date | 01 February 1976 |
| Pages | 252-260 |
| Published date | 01 February 1976 |
| Author | ROSS I. HARROLD |
| Subject Matter | Education |
THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION
VOLUME XIV, NUMBER 2 OCTOBER, 1976
TUITION FEE DISCRIMINATION AT
NON-GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS
ROSS I. HARROLD
This article considers the use of charging differential fees for the same tuition services as a
means to widen the financial accessibility of non-government schools to children of less af-
fluent parents in Australia. After discussing theoretical aspects, the author considers how
the theoretical concepts could be operationalized, then how a sliding scale fee schedule
could be implemented without, and with, external financial assistance.
INTRODUCTION
If death is the Great Leveller, inflation can be said to be the Great
Separator for its role in widening the social rifts between those who can
and those who cannot afford to send their children to non-government
(private) schools.
One fifth of Australian school children attend non-government schools.
Of
these,
four fifths attend Catholic schools; most of the rest go to schools
with Protestant church affiliations. In the last few years both Catholic and
non-Catholic schools have been forced by inflation to raise fees by sub-
stantial amounts. Yet these increases only make it more difficult for
families of moderate financial means to (continue to) send their children
to these schools. Critics have often claimed that non-government schools
are socially exclusive1: successive fee rises serve to give more credence to
these criticisms.
Equality of educational opportunity is a major aim of the Schools Com-
mission, a body established by the Australian Labor Government in 1973
to recommend levels and distribution of financial assistance to both
government and non-government schools. Consistent with this aim, the
Commission's funding is directed in part towards ...
"increasing their
(i.e.
the
non-government schools') accessibility to parents
of limited incomes.''2
Its main strategy to this end has been to provide larger subsidies for those
non-government schools in greater "need", defined in terms of
the
Schools
Recurrent Resources Index, which compares the private resources
available with total resources required by each school.
This is not the only approach the Commission could take. Nor is it
necessarily the most efficient in terms of assisting the target families with
least public cost. Those more affluent families who send children to "high
ROSS I. HARROLD is Lecturer in the Economics of Education at the University of New
England. He holds the degrees of M.Econ. and Dip.Ed. of the University of Western
Australia. Mr. Harrold was a member of Rotary International's Group Study Exchange
team to New Jersey, U.S.A., 1971.
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