Australian Catholic schools: a preferential option for the wealthy?

Stephen Crittenden: Welcome to the program.

Catholic schools in Australia are at a crossroads, according to a policy document released last week by the bishops of New South Wales and the ACT, a document which is focused mainly on retaining Catholic identity and improving the standard of religious evangelisation in Catholic schools.

But perhaps there are forces at work that the bishops would rather not talk about. Ever since the 19th century the Australian bishops have fiercely guarded the autonomy of their parish schools, but these days, more and more socially disadvantaged Catholics are being forced out into public schools because they can't afford the fees; while more and more middle-class, non-Catholics, are enrolling.

Well the Secretary of the Vatican Congregation for Education, Archbishop Michael Miller of Canada, has just been in Australia to speak at a conference on the future of Catholic education. He says that if Catholic children are being forced out of Catholic schools because they can't afford the fees, then there's something wrong with the funding arrangements. In fact he thinks Catholic schools should be fully funded by the government, with no school fees.

I asked Archbishop Michael Miller what made for a successful Catholic school.

Michael Miller: A successful Catholic school I think is one in which the Catholic ethos, the vision that we have, imbues the life of the school. It would include I think, among certain areas, real attention to the student, to the formation of the girl or the boy in their fullness, you know, their physical, intellectual but also their spiritual wellbeing. A Catholic school is also a place of a kind of community where teachers, parents, students, the local priest, perhaps even the wider social and church community, work together for the good of the student. Catholics schools have also I think traditionally served those who have been in special need of education. If you look at the history of Catholic schooling in Australia or the United States or Canada, or even in Great Britain, it was extended in the first place to immigrant children, and it was the way in which the poor, and those who didn't have access, were mainstreamed into society. So a Catholic school is successful, one is what I think that serves social needs, as well of course, as serving the church, at being a place for the raising of primarily young people of course, in the tradition of their parents, that their parents wish them to be raised in.

Stephen Crittenden: Catholic education it seems to me in Australia, is going through a period of rapid transition. And I guess that comes with its pitfalls too, one of which is the question that's increasingly being debated here in Australia, of whether Catholic schools are moving more and more towards being cut price private schools, and more and more Catholic kids are being forced in fact out into the public sector. Now from a social justice point of view, what are the challenges there?

Michael Miller: If children are being pushed out of schools because of pricing structures, there is something slightly awry in the original funding formula, although the government, or the State in Australia is generous in providing funding for Catholic schools.

Stephen Crittenden: You were saying in fact it's very generous by world standards.

Michael Miller: It's very generous by world standards if you compare it to the United States for example, where there is zero level funding. It's not as good as the province of Ontario in Canada where it's 100% funding. One I think though should look at the wider thing: why is there less than 100% funding for a school system when the parents choose a school system and they are I believe the ones with the right and the obligation to see to the education of their children, as they see fit, and have a right to call upon the government I think for 100% funding.

Stephen Crittenden: I suspect that very few Australian parents would be aware of the integrated fully-funded systems that you would know in Canada, or parts of Canada, right next door in New Zealand in fact, I think the UK. You've almost got a system where Catholic schools are integrated into the public sector at some level.

Michael Miller: Yes they are because they're public Catholic schools but they are not fully funded. There's still a way in which they are second level schools and poor sisters or poor brothers of a public system.

Stephen Crittenden: What about the question of identity, Catholic identity? What are the swings and roundabouts there, how's that negotiated?

Michael Miller: Well it depends. In some places the 100% funding has brought with it perhaps more State control than the church is in fact comfortable with. And therefore in other situations, is happy with less than 100% funding in order to preserve a level of independence. For me, the absolute ideal is you have a right to 100% funding and a right to support an independent school that meets the academic requirements of the State but is free to pursue its religious interests, you know, according to its own mind.

Stephen Crittenden: The Secretary of the Vatican Congregation for Education, Archbishop Michael Miller.

Well the Second Vatican Council made it clear that Catholic schools are primarily meant for educating the poor. Catholic schools are meant to be public schools, not private schools. So what has happened to the preferential option for the poor?

Well the Australian bishops are aware they have a problem. Last year Cardinal Pell called on Catholic school principals to do everything in their power to waive fees for families facing financial hardship, and the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle introduced fee concessions to parents with health cards in an effort to turn around declining Catholic school enrolments in a region where there's a lot of financial hardship. But so far there's only been limited take-up.

Meanwhile, according to our next guest, we're seeing a new phenomenon: the appearance of the boutique Catholic school. Queensland Education consultant, Dr Michael Furtado says the Catholic school system in Australia is increasingly losing its way theologically, choosing to colonise the cheaper end of the private schools market, ultimately it's going to have to choose whether it wants to be public or private.

Michael Furtado: Stephen I don't know if it's choosing to do that, I think that's inexorably what's happening. And it's happening as a product of the entrance of market forces into educational provision. So it's fairly inevitable, and in order to combat that, what is going to be needed is a deliberate policy to countervail that. I see no evidence of that argument being put forward by the Catholic church in Australia, about the whole centrality of the doctrine of the common good as it underpins the provision of Catholic education.

Stephen Crittenden: You say the Australian Catholic bishops are obsessed with preserving the autonomy of their Catholic school system, but that paradoxically, their intransigence is putting the Catholic school system at risk. What do you mean by that?

Michael Furtado: Since it is now Stephen, a major intention of the corporate State to deregulate and privatised education, a Catholic system that focuses on its autonomy without regard to any contextual critique of deregulation, and other aspects of school reform, plays into the hands of the neo-Liberals whose agenda is to change education from a social policy site to an economic one, and this leaves a whole segment of Australia out on very unjust grounds, who are the poor people, who can't afford private school fees. Even modest ones, such as those charged by Catholic schools.

Now this has great ramifications Stephen, for Catholic schools, which in a sense are for the poor.

Stephen Crittenden: You're talking about theological ramifications for Catholic schools?

Michael Furtado: Yes, and even practical ones. Instead of engaging critically in this discourse, Catholic education appears to regard the new fixation with diversity for instance in a deregulated mixed-sector school economy as an opportunity to develop and retain a unique identity, and there's nothing wrong with that. But the facts don't support it. What has happened instead is that Catholic schools have become subtly changed to become schools catering predominantly for Australia's new and aspirant lower middle class, which is quite different I think, from the service they provided for the Irish Australian and other migrant poor of yesteryear.

I think also there's another great difficulty with this. It's a great tragedy I think, and it's generally been ignored in the media for the past five years or more, and it's this: inward-lookingness has meant that the churches had embarrassingly nothing to say about the extension of the Catholic funding dispensation to other non-government schools at the expense of education as a public good, because I don't hear so many of the non-Catholic independent providers talking about the common good. Now I'll give you an example -

Stephen Crittenden: In other words, what you're saying is because the Catholic school system is increasingly a de facto private school system, it remains silent in the lead-up to the 2004 election wasn't it, when money was being diverted in effect from public schools to private schools.

Michael Furtado: Yes, and even long prior to that. I think from 1996 when the Keating government lost power.

Stephen Crittenden: And you're saying that if the Catholic system was genuinely concerned for the common good, it wouldn't have remained silent.

Michael Furtado: No. I'll give you a very good example of that, and then I'll stop. When Professor Judith Sloan, one of Howard's key neo-Liberal policy advisors, successfully challenged the exceptional funding position of Catholic schools within the non-government sector a few years ago, not one official Catholic voice was raised to answer her. I think that's a scandal.

Stephen Crittenden: Are you saying because they can't answer her argument?

Michael Furtado: They can't answer her and I think they rubbed out the distinctions, both philosophical and theological between many Catholic schools and most non-Catholic independent schools.

Stephen Crittenden: We have regularly featured stories in recent years on The Religion Report about how some Christian welfare agencies have allowed themselves to be carried along by the neo-Liberal welfare agenda of the Howard government, and perhaps lost their way theologically until they're almost an arm of the government. Are you suggesting that Catholic education has allowed itself to be carried along almost as an instrument of the neo-Liberal agenda in a similar way?

Michael Furtado: I think it has. I don't think the other Catholic agencies have done that. I am heartened by what I hear, Vincent de Paul, people who work in Centrecare -

Stephen Crittenden: But you're suggesting the schools have?

Michael Furtado: I think the schools have. I think the schools have people who run them who are not politically literate in the discourse of neo-Liberalism. I think the other agencies can hold their heads up because they have fought valiantly the social justice agencies of the Catholic church against neo-Liberalism, but effectively they've been lost because the education agencies have carried the day. I think the Catholic church put school funding first above everything else when it comes to election time.

Stephen Crittenden: In the documents that came out of the Second Vatican Council, it's quite clear that as far as Catholic education goes, there's supposed to be a preferential option for the poor. Are we seeing Catholic schools then increasingly pursuing a preferential option for the wealthy?

Michael Furtado: I think by implication, not explicitly, that is what's happening when the bishops and their senior education officers fail to address the questions that I've raised, which are questions that cannot be ignored if you're looking at a theological provision for your schools that is whole, that is balanced, that is entire, otherwise your evangelisation becomes apolitical and conservative like the evangelisation that underpins the practice of religion at churches like Hillsong.

Stephen Crittenden: You say that the Catholic bishops in Australia have asked Catholic schools to do everything in their power to be accessible to lower socioeconomic status students, and especially Catholics who can't afford to pay fees. But you say that the Catholic system is locked into an unsustainable funding structure which makes that an impossible expectation in the long run. Why?

Michael Furtado: Because I think that if something important, and as expensive in social and economic policy terms as a school system, cannot really function equitably on what is essentially a charitable dispensation, that the Catholic bishops are arguing, and asking for from their Catholic school authorities; for that to happen one would have to assume that children and parents still approach the parish priest or school authorities and say 'We would love to access a Catholic education but we don't have the money to do that'. I simply think that the world has moved on and people won't do that any more. People don't like asking for favours any more, simply because they're much more literate about issues like social justice and entitlement.

Stephen Crittenden: Doesn't that though play into the hands of the neo-Liberals? Won't those people in a two-tiered society, which is what we're increasingly moving to, won't those people just fall into the public system because they can't afford the fees?

Michael Furtado: And they have done, and it's that which I wish to stop. If we had a diverse public education system, that had a Catholic provision within it, such as in New Zealand and England and Wales and Scotland and Northern Ireland, in many of the Canadian provinces, in Holland and Belgium, then this would not occur. The bishops in other respects, on industrial relations, on aid to the Third World, on a whole range of questions, even on bioethical issues, appeal to the highly important over-arching Catholic philosophy of theology and justice. Why can they not do that in regard to school access.

Stephen Crittenden: Michael, has the Australian government ever offered Catholic schools full funding?

Michael Furtado: It has been offered.

Stephen Crittenden: When was it ever offered?

Michael Furtado: Under the Education Ministry of Susan Ryan under the last Hawke government. The offer was made to the National Catholic Education Commission to look at integrated schools in Australia as they exist in New Zealand. It was a very generous offer and this would have represented a huge public expenditure to bring Catholic schools into the public sector domain, and it was turned down.

Stephen Crittenden: Is it likely that any Federal government would want to get back into this kind of full funding arrangement?

Michael Furtado: I think it's unlikely in the run-up to an election; I think certainly Mr Rudd is not going to open up this issue because it would cost him votes. It is certainly most unlikely that Mr Howard would open up this question because he's a neo-Liberal; Howard is not a true social Liberal but when I questioned Education Minister Kemp when he was Minister for Education about ten years ago at a Catholic Education Conference in Queensland, I said, 'You know, you have mentioned that ultimately the new construction of justice which is about inclusion, is there to give parents a free choice regardless of the money they have, to choose the kind of school they send their children to, and that this is about social justice. And my question to him was 'Well why not, in that case, have fully funded Catholic schools?' He said, 'You know that is not a bad idea but I suspect many of them would not want it because they like the idea of private schools'.

Stephen Crittenden: We've talked about the way more and more disadvantaged Catholic families are being forced into the public schools system because they can't afford the fees. But Catholic schools are now bleeding from the top as well as the bottom. Catholic school enrolments are falling in Melbourne over the past five years and they're being taken up by independent private schools. I think in Frankston, down 19%, independent enrolments up 38%. Ringwood, down 12%, independents up 19%. One Catholic school principal in Melbourne recently complained of a brain drain because elite private schools were poaching Catholic students. I wonder whether the cut-price end of the private school market may actually not be a safe place to be.

Michael Furtado: It's not a safe place to be. I think if you had a fully publicly funded system, then you would have quality Catholic schools that attract Catholic parents who want a Catholic education that is both pastoral as well as academically good, and open to bright kids and any other kids from across the entire socio-economic spectrum. Now what will happen and what must be happening is that some Catholic parents who fear for the academic quality of a Catholic education, and whose attachment if you like to faith practice isn't very strong, will naturally move across to non-Catholic independent schools, because they perceive them to give their children a better opportunity.

Stephen Crittenden: Presumably one of the things going on there is that many Catholic parish schools can't afford to offer the breadth of curriculum; the music, for example, that wealthy independent schools can afford to offer, and an increasing number of public schools can offer. Is Catholic education in some respects, being structured for mediocrity?

Michael Furtado: I think in some respects, apart from the basics, in music education, in the performing and visual arts, that may well be the case. I'm embarrassed to say so as somebody who has been through and taught in Catholic schools all my life and whose children attended Catholic schools; I think that is the case. They slot children into differentiated socioeconomic roles far too early in life, with very few opportunities to beneficially influence their life chances. Except through going to better grammar-type schools which are generally, but not exclusively, run by the religious congregations, by some of them at least. But because fees are charged, people are duped and pay up for what in comparison to European and Canadian Catholic schools, I think Stephen, is generally decidedly narrower, comparatively narrower.

Stephen Crittenden: In other words, Catholic parents, because they're charged fees, imagine that they're paying for something that the kids in public schools whose parents aren't paying fees, aren't getting.

Michael Furtado: And are getting, plainly.

Stephen Crittenden: So they're not getting something more for the money they're charging.

Michael Furtado: No, Catholic parents, some of them at least, then are doubly disadvantaged, the poorer ones. They say on the one hand they're duped, and only the other hand they don't get the full quid.

Stephen Crittenden: Michael you mentioned the more upmarket, independent, grammar-type schools run by certain religious orders who specialise in educating the children of the wealthy; hasn't there always been a two tiered church here in Australia just like there is in Latin America, a church of the rich and a church of the poor?

Michael Furtado: I think for some Catholic schools it's three-tiered. The principal, the Headmaster as he called himself, of a prominent Christian Brothers School in Perth told me that Aquinas was for the aristocracy, Trinity was for the meritocracy, and Fremantle and Leederville at that stage were for the wogs. He seemed quite happy with that. He thought that was an adequate provision for a whole range of the Catholic community because they were socially and culturally differentiated. I don't think by the way, that Fremantle is any more that kind of school because it's a very posh suburb. I'm sure the school has moved with the times to accommodate the well-to-do. That pattern is replicated in Sydney and in Melbourne and in Adelaide by the other congregations as well. It's about time we gave that up.

Stephen Crittenden: Dr Michael Furtado.

Well as we've heard in many countries in Europe, the UK, Canada and New Zealand, Catholic schools are integrated into the public school system in a way that is mutually beneficial, and because they're public schools, they don't charge fees. How does it work? The Head of the Catholic Education Office in New Zealand is Brother Pat Lynch.

Pat Lynch: In 1975 the New Zealand Catholic church's education system virtually became bankrupt, and it was saved in effect, by the passage of a piece of legislation which was supported by the two major parties in parliament which was called the Private Schools Conditional Integration Act. That Act essentially was the structure for transferring all of New Zealand's catholic schools into the State system, so that we are now referred to as State-integrated schools. That means in effect that the State provides all operational funding for the school, that is everything to do with maintenance of buildings, and all salaries, but that the Board of Trustees that operates the school and all New Zealand schools, the whole 2,700 of them, be they State or State-integrated, operate as self managing schools which are known as Crown entities. So a Catholic school operates from a governance point of view with an elected board of parents and a few others who are there as well, and it operates under the Education Act of 1989, because we made some significant and sweeping changes to the way we operated schools in 1989. But that's the Education Act.

Stephen Crittenden: OK, so in other words, they're entirely integrated, the State system and the Catholic system are in fact not administratively separate?

Pat Lynch: They are totally the same, and therefore it's just so wonderful to see the President of the New Zealand Secondary Principals' Association to be the Principal of one of our Catholic schools, and he or she as the case may be, speaks on behalf of all New Zealand Secondary Schools.

Stephen Crittenden: Wow, no sectarianism there.

Pat Lynch: Doesn't operate.

Stephen Crittenden: What role therefore is there for you? Because you're the head of the equivalent of the New Zealand Catholic Education Commission?

Pat Lynch: Yes well our office here is the New Zealand Catholic Education Office, which its shareholders are the bishops and the other proprietors of our Catholic schools, and our role is to interface with government and government departments to ensure that the way the legislation is set out, that we actually work together in partnership, because the words the Crown uses in our regard and we use in their regard, is that we are in partnership and we work together. If there are any difficulties we work them out, we don't grandstand or anything like that. So Catholic education is no longer the political football that it was prior to 1975.

Stephen Crittenden: And what requirements are made of you in return?

Pat Lynch: We basically have to follow exactly the Education Act and all other pieces of legislation with these exceptions: when it comes to the appointment of staff, we are able clearly to appoint Catholics and in our primary schools we have 60% of them, they have to be practising Catholics to get the job. In our secondary schools the figure is 40%. Now the Private Schools Conditional Integration Act says that that process does not breach the Human Rights Act, so there's an exemption there. When it comes to youngsters, they have to get a preference certificate from church authorities and that's generally done through parishes, to state that their parents have a connection with the Catholic church and there are criteria for that. Now we only take Catholic kids who meet that criteria, and in our schools we are able to take generally 5% of people who are not Catholic. Now we have large numbers who want to get in, but because there is a cap at 5% in about 30 of our schools, because of a historical quirk, it's 10%, but generally speaking it's 5% with the majority of our schools. Now again that's built into the contract, this integration agreement, between the Crown and the proprietor. As to the rest of it, when it comes to curriculum, we are allowed by way of the legislation, to have our religious education in terms of classes, we're able to run the school according to what is known as the special Catholic character of the school, that means church services and the whole Catholic ethos and culture of running a school, that's built in to an understanding that that's where we can look at a curriculum.

Now besides Catholic schools in New Zealand we've got a Hari Krishna school which our office works with, we've got a Muslim school which our office works with, as well as mainstream Christian schools and then a Rudolf Steiner school.

Stephen Crittenden: And are they all integrated too?

Pat Lynch: They're all integrated and they operate according to their particular philosophy or religious view of the world.

Stephen Crittenden: Right. Now I'm sure there are some people who would be suspicious that the State would use an arrangement like this in order to get Catholic schools to toe the line in terms of anti-discrimination policy against gay teachers or divorced teachers or what-have-you.

Pat Lynch: Whenever I go to Australia and I get into discussions with people -

Stephen Crittenden: That's the first thing they mention, is it?

Pat Lynch: What you're saying is exactly the first question. Well people need to be assured that it's not an issue here because the integration of our Catholic schools in New Zealand into the State system, is a situation where you can have your cake and eat it. Because the safeguards that we require and our bishops have required, are built into this Deed of Agreement known as an Integration Agreement. Now internationally, it is a unique beast, in the sense that what happens in the United Kingdom, in the Netherlands and France and elsewhere in the country where a lot of Catholic schools are actually in the State system, they don't have the safeguard of this Deed of Agreement that we've got, because essentially the bishop has the right under the legislation, and the contract, to determine what is the Catholicity of the school and what that means in practice, and the Crown doesn't come near it, so we don't have any fights over it.

Stephen Crittenden: But how does that affect employment and hiring?

Pat Lynch: No problem at all. So that we are able to still abide by the Human Rights Act and still ensure that people who, when it comes to the sensitive Catholic positions in the school, that we actually only appoint people who actually meet the Bishop's criteria.

Stephen Crittenden: Have there been any problematical areas?

Pat Lynch: We have never been to court in 32 years over any issue associated with the integration of our schools.

Stephen Crittenden: You mention that Catholic education in New Zealand is no longer a political football. I take it what you're talking about is that come election time you don't have Catholic bishops visiting the leaders of political parties to cut deals?

Pat Lynch: None whatsoever. Because the deal was done in 1975.

Stephen Crittenden: I wonder what they do with their time?

Pat Lynch: I don't know.

Stephen Crittenden: Tell me this, what's your view of the current state of Australian Catholic schools?

Pat Lynch: I have been invited in the last three or four years to speak to various groups on the Eastern seaboard, particularly parental groups, and when they hear what I've got to say in terms of what I've said to you, they say Well look, why can't we do that here?

Stephen Crittenden: Thank you very much for being on the program.

Pat Lynch: OK Stephen, thank you.

Stephen Crittenden: The Head of Catholic Education in New Zealand, Brother Pat Lynch.

Well that's all this week. Thanks to our producers Hagar Cohen and Jenny Parsonage.