- The Guardian
- Issue #2201
What happened in Ein Arik
2 August
This afternoon, settler militias – backed by the army – attacked farms in the West Bank village of Ein Arik. A farmer was severely beaten, and 18-year-old Khaled Ashraf Shilo was assaulted, beaten, and brutalised, suffering broken arms.
Additionally, Ahmed Hassan Shilo was arrested, and more than 200 head of sheep were stolen from his farm. Several homes were also attacked.
This is just a small fraction of the daily attacks.
I am speaking about the village where I live, located 7 km from the city of Ramallah.
Hosny Shilo,
Member of the Palestinian National Council,
General Director of Media for the PLO’s Department of Labor and Planning,
Member of the General Secretariat of the Journalists’ Syndicate
Education inequity
I’ve been reading Jane Caro’s Rich Kid, Poor Kid and was pleased to see the Australian Education Union’s article about the ‘Deeply Unfair’ school funding system currently in place in this country backing up her insights.
However, they were too polite to name the cause. Another book, by Amy Remeikis Where It All Went Wrong: the case against John Howard explains it all.
I’ve lived behind a Catholic school for 16 years and have seen it buy up the houses on its perimeter. Three years ago I watched a music/drama complex being built, while the public primary school around the corner is still using demountables.
So many of our present inequalities can be placed at the feet of little Johnny Howard – the increased racism, the inequitable housing situation, health insurance, the expense of child care and aged care, and education. All of which Howard carefully privatised. He withheld the Hawke-era ‘new schools’ policy which would not support anyone who wanted to establish a non-government school in an area already well-equipped with schools. Howard simply didn’t fund them.
But he introduced a new funding scheme to replace the Educational Resources Index (ERI). The ERI wasn’t perfect but was at least based on the total private income of a school. Howard’s new socioeconomic status school model (SES) didn’t take into account the private income of students’ families, so rich kids from areas classified as having poorer socioeconomic status, would get more money for the school.
He guaranteed additional funding for any non-government school possibly disadvantaged by the switch in funding models. This meant that more Commonwealth money could be funnelled into already wealthy private schools. Between 1999 and 2005, Federal funding to private schools increased by $1,584 per student compared to just $261 per student in the public system.
To add to this inequity, state governments then began closing or consolidating government schools, which resulted in a larger recruitment in non-government schools due to reduced public school availability. This has seen a steady decline in enrolments in public schools. In 1996, 74% of high school students went to a public school. In 2023 it was 69%.
I won’t even begin to talk about his influence on our universities through threats to withhold their Commonwealth funding. We now have Australia’s major universities being run by big business and their networks with little input from staff, students, or academics. Today the unhealthy high cost of degrees is a result of his meddling.
E Whitehead
