Dursley’s greed and arrogance are mirrored with grotesque accuracy by NSW’s private schools. Dursley’s greed and arrogance are mirrored with grotesque accuracy by NSW’s elite private schools. Already over-padded with opulent facilities they consistently demand (and inexplicably receive) yet more public moneys. It’s more on every count: more than they’ve had, more than the public schools, and more even than Gonski 2.0’s Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) recommends. Sometimes almost twice as much, to help them “adjust” to this new level of hardship. Poor babies. Most public schools, by contrast, receive less than 90 per cent of their SRS. And no, although thanks for the thought, this is not the politics of envy. It’s about one lot of kids who grow up trying to focus on algebra or mitosis in un-air-conditioned prefabs in suburbs with 10 or 12 over-40 degree days a year (that much hotter for the smog the eastern suburbs sends west) and another lot who think everyone skis in Aspen and “povo schools” is a fun colloquialism. It’s about what kind of nation we’re making.

Scots College recently submitted plans to the NSW government for a $25 million redesign of its library to look like a Scottish castle. Right now, just seven of the wealthiest schools are preparing to spend more on additional luxury facilities than NSW’s entire proposed expenditure on the backlog in essential school maintenance. These seven – Scots College, Loreto Kirribilli, Cranbrook, SCEGGS Darlinghurst, Aloysius, St Catherine’s and Loreto Normanhurst – will build $390 million worth of additional aquatic centres, “teaching terraces” and “vertical connection pods”. Bear in mind that two of the seven (Loreto Kirribilli and St Aloysius) already receive from the federal government almost twice their SRS. Loading At the same time, only $365 million will go towards a massive $570 million backlog in essential NSW public school maintenance.

Maintenance, mind. That’s not new facilities. That’s just rendering the old ones approximately habitable. Sorry if this sounds repetitive, but I find it boggling. It’s Marie Antoinette territory. While public schools cry out for cracked windows to be fixed, ancient carpet to be replaced and playing fields that don’t flood with every serious rain, wealthy private schools are running not primarily as educational institutions but as businesses - and getting our help to do it. Loading Charging up to $37,000 a year in fees and receiving vast public monies as well – more than half, per student, what public schools receive – elite private schools deploy their massive surpluses into self-decoration, donning luxury facilities to attract even more of the obnoxious rich to the arms-race of opulence. Our money builds them theatres bigger than The Wharf, aquatic centres better than Olympic, school art prizes to rival the Portia Geach, ex-Wallabies to coach their rugger teams and ex-Olympic medalists to coach rowing. It’s no surprise kids grow up thinking it’s okay to cheat at cricket. Or (for that matter) at banking. We don’t even pretend to level the playing field. It’s a system that teaches children – “don’t play fair, play mean. Play to win, whatever it takes. Winner take all.”

It has a name, this system. It’s called the class system. Or, more honestly, caste. Born poor? Fine. We’ll do everything we can to make sure you stay that way. Oh and yes, how we love this classless country. On top of all that is the chasm in teachers’ pay grades. Of course, dollars don’t necessarily deliver quality teaching, mainly because teachers – even more than most professionals – are remarkably altruistic. But teachers who make this choice are themselves penalised, for they, too, must find a way to school their kids. It has a name, this system. It’s called the class system. Or, more honestly, caste. Somehow we think it’s normal to be penalised for living by your principles. It’s not, and it shouldn’t be. My parents were both teachers. For their generation education was a liberation, a way out of a class system that seemed stiflingly rigid and to generate oppression, depression and war. They were moderns, devoting their lives to making the world better and fairer, not because they were political. Hardly. They were small-i intellectuals. That was just what you did. My father was a pathologist who chose to remain in the public system despite being courted by private labs where he would have become rich. My mum taught music at public schools and on public radio and English, especially ESL. Both had been dux of their school and first of their family to attend uni, yet they chose to spend their lives in the public system. And here’s the point: they could make that choice because sending us kids to excellent schools and universities was completely free.

Had they lived in Sydney, that would have been impossible. A system that forces people into second mortgages for essential stuff like decent education and healthcare is a system that forces good people into greed and selfishness. It’s just like cricket. If you have to cheat to win, you’re not winning at all. You’re not even playing the game. That Harry Potter scene makes you yearn to divert just a couple of horrible Dudley’s presents toward emotionally-starved Harry. A truly level field would require such a switcheroo – decanting the rich kids into the povo classrooms. Clearly that’s not happening but at the very least, unless we want a rich-poor apartheid, we need to stop giving the fat little piggies such a hefty, gold-plated leg up. Twitter: @emfarrelly