EDUCATION AND NEO-LIBERALISM

14 July 2026

Driving home from a walk around the Swan River foreshore, Susan and I caught the end of a talk about the state of our education system and what it means for our democracy. We had no idea who the speaker was but we kept nodding and agreeing with every point. It turned out to be the 2026 Hugh Stretton Oration by Dr Susan Close who is the CEO of the McKinnon Institute for Political Leadership at Monash University, having been Deputy Premier of South Australia: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/bigideas/is-education-policy-damaging-our-democracy-dr-susan-close/106838974

Some of the points she made are worth repeating:

 “The neo-liberal view we have allowed to take root here has laid the ground for the anger we experience now.”

“Education is formative….brings out the potential of every young person to equip them for their future  Failure here is formative for a life time. Further it is formative at the first experience of public policy through which Australians learn whether the state is fair, whether effort is rewarded and whether they belong.”

She points out four problematic features of Australia’s current education system that need to be changed if we’re going to break intergenerational disadvantage and lessen the grievances we see being expressed in, for example, over 200,000 people voting for One Nation in the recent South Australian elections:

1.  Money – public funds are given to private schools but government doesn’t regulate fees they can charge. Apparently, we unique in this approach.  Some countries give private schools the same money as public schools but they can’t charge a fee. The other model is no subsidy to the private sector. Close gave examples of a  public school spending $48k on student of which $8 comes from government and a  public school spends $18k per student and that doesn’t take into account the difference in capital spending.  

2.   Flight from public schools – nearly highest % of kids in private schools in the world – 40% and climbing. Compared to US – 10%; UK, Canada, Ireland – 7%; NZ – 5%

3.   Segregated system with disadvantaged students put together more often than nearly other country. Research shows that a child from a background that values education isn’t held back by being a class with a disadvantaged child but the latter will experience demonstrable benefits both within the classroom and in the school itself with mixed schools benefiting from more parental advocacy, volunteering and fundraising. The most powerful point Close made was that countries that outperform Australia in education measures have less segregated schools.

4.   Australian education results are falling e.g. in 2000 1/5 disadvantaged students were low performers in reading; in 2018 1/3 were.

As Close says: 

“… a democracy struggles to survive a generation that is taught early and often that  fairness is not for them….they teach some that the system will invest in them and others that it will tolerate their exclusion…”

Why did this come about? In Close’s view and I’m not going to disagree with her:  

“Dominance of neo-liberal philosophy is the cause…the steady substitution of individual choice for collective improvement. The preference for competition over system capability...competition on an uneven playfield as an engine for quality.”

 “The neo-liberal view holds that government is to be used as last resort other than as a subsidiser of private choices; that our first loyalty is to our immediate family and our first priority is to the creation and maintenance of private wealth. It is a world of competition between winners and losers. Not one of equity and mutual benefit. The neo-liberal view of schooling is that there are limited chances for prosperity in our society so your child can only succeed by getting them away from those who face more challenges. This has meant the deliberate construction of choice as a substitute for equity, competition for system wide competence and parental anxiety for confidence that the government can be trusted with our childrens’ futures.”

“Another hallmark of neo-liberalism is grievance experience by those missing out on the bounty available to those with resources.”

We’ve built an unfair underperforming system.

Her approach for change, with which I agree:

• ·         Incremental defunding of private schools
• ·         Strengthening public schools.

As she says somewhat ironically:

“Could it be fairly said that Australians deliberately wanted an expensive, dysfunctional and international unique in all the wrong ways education system? Could it be said that it’s doing any good for our country and our democracy even though it’s been delivered by elected representatives of the people?” Surely not. 

As I write this I appreciate that it’s all easy for me to say. I don’t have skin in the game anymore. But I do think of a single mother I know, on the pension, but determined to send her child to a private school because she doesn’t believe the public system will deliver a good education. What sacrifices will she have to make to pay the fees? She and her child should have access to a good, well-resourced, free public school.

As Dr Close concludes, “Our democracy is at risk from those who’ve been left behind.”