Vouchers in Australia Linked to Loss of Higher Socioeconomic Students in Public Schools

Columbia U. National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, Occasional Paper No. 181 by Louise Watson and Chris Ryan: “Beginning in 1974, Australian students received vouchers worth 15 to 85 percent of total student costs to attend private schools. Until 1999, the voucher system allocated funds per student on the basis of the school’s or school system’s financial need, based on its total private income. Thus, the schools that charged a lower fee, such as Catholic schools, received a higher per student grant than those that charged higher fees. Since 2000, the system has allocated voucher funds based on the financial means of individual students’ families through measuring the socioeconomic status of the enrolled students’ home addresses. In this paper, Watson and Ryan examine rates of enrollment, tuition, voucher amounts, student to teacher ratio, and average school socioeconomic status of students across public, catholic, and independent schools.”