wow I can't believe you guys even think $500 a year is a small amount to pay.... at my school the non-compulsary fees were $80 a term, so thats like $320 a year, and probably 1/2 of the school didn't pay any fees because no one could afford it. I remeber seeing on a current affair or one of those kindof shows parents saying how hard they have had to sacrifice to get thier kids into a private school - some of the poor private school parents even sacrificed so much that they were driving around 15 year old cars. GOD FORBID !! My mum was (and still is) struggling to pay off her house (which by my guess is close to 100 years old and cost like $45 000). When I moved out of home and was on full YA I had more money than my mum did (I still couldn't afford the school fees lol). I used to miss out on alot of excursions ect. because we couldn't afford it. When I had to chance to go to the ABW at Usyd in year 12, I couldn't afford the $3-400 dollars it cost, nor transport down there. The only reason I got to go is because the school principle knew what my situation was like and arranged for the school to pay for it and one of my teachers gave me a lift there. Meanwhile our english classes used to be in a demountable set up with ovens for a cooking room. So was all the industrial arts, and some of the teachers staffrooms. I don't think any of the buildings had air conditioners. We had a big hall which doubled as inball basketball courts which we shared with the primary school next to us, and we had 1 smallish hockey oval and 2 football ovals, all shared with the primary school next to us, and community owned indoor sports centre, ovals and swimming pool which we used. Our maths textbooks were a few years old, and our legal studies ones were new, but we only had 5 or 6 of them, so you had to borrow them for one night at a time. I didn't do history, but the 6 or 7 people who did complained that they had no textbooks at all. The school didn't have the funds to buy even 7 history textbooks. 3 of our 50 or so year 12 leavers got over 90 UAI, and about 10 -15 of them went to uni.
Now I am at uni, and I am living with my boyfriend, with our combined total income probably somewhere around the 50 - 55k a year mark. Compared to what I am used to and by all our friends standards we are rolling in money. I currently have two jobs too, but it doesn't mean we are struggling for money (it just means I have no time for uni
). We could easily surive on me only having one job, but I choose to have two cos, well, I like money
I know people with 1 job who work more hours than I do, and I don't see having two jobs as nessarily meaning somebody is struggling. His car is 24 years old, and mine is 14 (we are lucky to have two cars!). Together we earn more money than any of our parents. Still, if we had kids we couldn't afford to send them to private school at 10k+ a pop. We also can't afford to buy a house here cos everything is so damn expensive.
I don't begrudge people who go to private school, but please, don't try and tell me that your parents are struggling and making sacrifices when they can afford 10k+ a pop for each of thier kids and a house in sydney (which is a mimimum of 350k, which is like $500 a week in mortgage payments - thats more than most families I know take home after tax!). Its like saying your struggling because you choose to buy a big house in an expensive suburb and have less disposable income as a result. Until you have seen the state of some of our public schools in rural areas (selective publics in sydney, or in any other area where parents can afford $500 per child per year don't show just how bad some schools are) you don't know just how badly they need it. I hope that I will have enough $$ when I eventually have kids and they are old enough to send them to a private high school, and even though I am planning on sending my kids to private, I would much rather have public schools get more $$ at the expense of private schools than get no $$ at all, and the money has to come from somewhere....
