The logic of the affluent, though by no means wealthy, parent with children of school age goes something like this:
Find the best state-run primary school in the area, jam the kids in there until grade five – saving like mad in the interim – and then, as high school approaches, pull 'em out of the state system and push them into the best private school they can afford.
The reasons behind the state-private double play are compelling. These parents believe the state system goes to hell at the secondary level. And so, if they're going to drop $60,000 a year in after-tax dollars on their two children it's going to require some serious financial gymnastics.
So these parents use the state system as a five-year breather before the hits of private school fees. As the kids move into grade five, all those little gangs who grew up together in the state school yard, start to split.
The children of wealthier parents, or at least with parents aspirational enough to screw themselves financially for life, move into elite schools. The rest try their luck at selected schools, maybe a cheap independent school or, failing all that, in the state secondary system.
It's a story that gets played out all over Australia. In Sydney the children will learn the basics at Bronte Primary before joining the children of bankers and politicians at Cranbrook or Scots.
In Perth, you might feed into Aquinas from, say, Willetton primary. That was going to be my trajectory. If you didn't know, Aquinas is WA's own version of Eton. Two kilometres of frontage right there on the Canning River. In the mornings you might even see these impeccable boys in their turn-of-the-century costume rowing their little boats to school.
I didn't go.
My parents wisely feared my notorious tantrums and I went, like all my pals, to Rossmoyne High. I was actually in the catchment area for the newly created Willetton High School but an early flirtation with juvenile crime had made me a marked man. The area's most notorious child criminal, whom I'd squealed on to the local cops, had made it clear to that if I schooled at Willetton, I'd be beaten up.
And so, five years of Rossmoyne High. Neither elite nor low end. Boys and girls. School uniforms. Fierce discipline. State education at its best.
When I became a father at a frighteningly young age it was a mixture of ideology and lack of money that had me choosing the state system for my daughter. It didn't even occur to me that the state high school where I lived, in Sydney's prestigious eastern suburbs, could be bad.
It was worse than bad. "Bright Flight" had left only the poorest, roughest kids in the area. Girls in micro-minis and with texta drawings all over their thighs smoked cigarettes with slouching, morbid looking boys at bus stops around the neighbourhood.
At a school performance where parents were invited, screaming children ran down the aisles, prompting neither disapproval nor invention by the seated teachers. At parent-teacher nights, teachers gave glowing descriptions of my kid's performances despite obvious flaws in essay techniques, in general knowledge and grammar.
Eventually, I sent her to a Catholic girl's school. Ten grand a year… ouch!… and I had to pretend I believed in The Almighty, but at least there was a modicum of discipline.
Later in life, when I was better equipped to afford a good school, I put my two little boys into the French system. I figured, I could spend a million bucks putting them through the elite private system and they might make a contact that could get them into the banking system or at least a few stock tips that might set them up for life. Or, I could choose a system that values philosophy, language, history and civil values and all bound in the most secular of educational frameworks.
Hours, days, months, spent on verb conjugation, on learning the poems of Hugo and Rimbaud by rote (and performed in front of their classmates), of complex forays into European history. And they come out of it able to speak, read and write at a high level in two languages.
I figure, I spend the money, I want something concrete. What a party trick...say something in French, kid!
"Bright Flight" is real. The state system, in whichever state you live, is too slack, too willing to let bad behaviour slide. A great student will be a great student anywhere. But an average kid, someone prone to slipping into bad behaviour, what most of us have, will at least have a shot at a decent future if he gets schooled privately.
It shouldn't be this way.
