Only a very small number of people it seems – about 14% of parents in Government schools according to recent research.
Of course noisy activists will continue to ignore what parents want, I mean they know better than parents what is best for the children …
The recent research by the Centre for Independent Studies and reported in the Australian Financial Review, suggests that 86% of the parents whose children attend government schools believe that their schools have enough resources.
When it comes to the use of resources parents with children in non-government schools are more likely to report high levels of confidence in how school resources are used (70%) than parents in government schools (56%).
In stark contrast to the rhetoric of teacher unions the most common funding priority for parents is infrastructure and facilities (29%), followed by:
- offering more extra-curricular activities (24%),
- hiring more support staff (18%),
- increasing teachers’ pay (15%), and
- hiring more teachers (14%).
Unsurprisingly, across all parents the most common priority reported by parents in choosing a school is location (61%), followed by:
- facilities (48%),
- academic standards (47%),
- cost (39%),
- discipline (32%),
- interests (28%),
- special needs (13%),
- religion (12%), and
- whether a school is co-ed or single-sex (8%).
The full report can be downloaded from the Centre for Independent Studies website here.