Education is about children, lives and families

by Darren Saffin

I live in Jamieson Street, Coburg. If my boys were to go to high school now, where could they go? The options mentioned in a letter from Minister for Education Bronwyn Pike to a member of the High School for Coburg group are:

• Strathmore High – zoned - can’t go there
• Brunswick Secondary College – zoned with an enrolment ceiling – can’t go there
• Coburg Senior High School – years 10 to 12 only – can’t go there
• Pascoe Vale Girls Secondary College – girls only – can’t go there
• Fawkner Secondary College – available - years 7 – 10 revolve around VELS (Victorian Essential Learning Standards). VCE available in years 11 and 12 – possible but not necessarily what we need
• Box Forest Secondary College – available – 5km away

As an aside, there are other schools similar distances away but these were not mentioned in Minister Pike’s letter. These include Princess Hill (zoned), Northcote (apparently over capacity) and Thornbury (apparently told by the Department of Education to raise its cap from 800 to 1200 because Northcote is over capacity and will be capped in 2012).

Minister for Education Bronwyn Pike states “Education is the Brumby Labor Government’s number-one priority” but if you live in the Coburg area you would be hard pressed to find evidence of this statement. In this broader area we have seen seventeen secondary schools closed down or merged in the past eighteen years.

The result in our area is that kids have to move around to find a secondary school, and this is what the government wants. Their policy has made education a free market like trade or economics but they obviously aren’t the same. Education is about children, lives and families. Education is not money or a trading commodity and can’t be treated the same way.

The government thinks competition between schools will improve the system, and making parents move around to find a school will force schools to get better in order to attract students.

So will I send my boys to the schools available near here?

Stephen Lamb, Associate Professor in Education at University of Melbourne, who researches education issues found that people who have to travel to send their children to a secondary school travel to a school in an area with a higher socioeconomic status.

This is logical. If you have to travel to take your kids to school, you aren’t going to travel to an area where the perception is that schools are funded less and students achieve poorer results. Unfortunately these schools tend to be in areas of lower socioeconomic status (SES).

Mr Lamb’s findings show schools started out equal across all SES areas but after the Government introduced its policy of forcing students to travel, the schools in areas of high socioeconomic status have gotten bigger and receive more funding and can offer more choice, while the schools in areas of lower socioeconomic status have gotten smaller and receive less funding and their options become limited. It’s creating a two tiered education system.

The bigger schools get the choice of high achiever students who are travelling to find an education while the smaller schools don’t have this choice.

I will be joining the ranks of parents who send their children to a school where they believe their individual needs will be met and where they think will get the best education.

Darren Saffin is member of the HSC working group. He lives in Coburg with his wife and two small sons. In his "free" time, he handles our media. This is his personal story about how the lack of a general entry high school will affect his family. If you would like to tell your story please email us at highschool4coburg@gmail.com .