Excellence in Education, or Equity: We Can’t Have Both
Equity is a straw dog that will never be satisfied. An equity argument begins with the observation that parents who read to their children produce children who do much better at school than those whose parents do not. From this simple fact some conclude that the advantage itself is the problem. The logic, taken to its extreme, suggests parents should stop reading to their children so that no child gains an “unfair” edge. It sounds unbelievable, yet it is the same reasoning that holds people today responsible for historical wrongs they never committed, or that brands the descendants of those who fought fascism as fascists whenever the charge is useful.
One cannot pursue pure equity and genuine excellence at the same time. Markers of excellence must be lowered or blurred if every gap is treated as an injustice that must be erased. The result is expensive education that delivers poor outcomes. We see this in multi-generational aid programs that produce dependency rather than competence, and in policies that encourage irreversible medical interventions before children reach maturity. Buyers’ remorse is not easily remedied.
In Australia the tension appears clearly in the school system. Public schools are funded almost entirely from the public purse, supplemented by voluntary parental contributions. Private schools receive partial government funding while fees cover the rest, and in many cases exceed it. Some argue private schools should be entirely self-funded. That step would shrink the private sector, force more students into government schools, and place heavy additional pressure on state budgets. Yet private schools, when they function properly, tend to perform strongly in university entrance and public examinations. The only consistent argument left for the public system is that some students still manage to excel despite it.
Equity also opposes excellence in NAPLAN. Critics, often aligned with socialist instincts, attack the tests on equity grounds because the results expose needs that may not fit preferred political spending. NAPLAN was never designed as a high-stakes individual ranking. It is a system-level diagnostic that maps school and cohort achievement over time. It allows us to see the effect of a school on its students. In principle it could even help identify teacher effectiveness, if industrial barriers allowed it. The slogan “teaching to the test” is deployed as if curricula themselves were somehow illegitimate. Schools exist to teach a curriculum; tests simply check whether that curriculum has been taught.
A straw poll on these issues reveals the problem. Almost no one recognises the straw dog of equity for what it is. Precious few openly defend excellence. Yet the alternative remains unclear. Who actually supports a system that refuses both high standards and the honest measurement of them?
Counterfactual considerations
Suppose we accepted the strongest version of the equity case. If parental reading, cultural capital, and family stability create unfair advantages, then consistency would require the state to neutralise those advantages—through heavier redistribution, longer school days, or even restrictions on what parents may do at home. History shows that such attempts rarely raise the bottom without also lowering the top. High-performing systems that succeed with disadvantaged students do so by raising expectations and teaching rigorously, not by treating excellence itself as the enemy.
Suppose private schools were stripped of all public funding. Many lower-fee independent and Catholic schools would close or become unaffordable to the very middle-income families who currently use them. The public system would absorb more students, including those whose parents value structure and discipline. The fiscal and organisational strain would be real. Whether overall results would improve is an empirical question the pure equity position rarely tests.
Suppose NAPLAN were abolished in the name of equity. We would lose the only consistent national measure of literacy and numeracy across every school sector. Gaps would not disappear; they would simply become harder to see and therefore easier to ignore or explain away with narrative. Systems that stopped measuring hard skills did not become more equal; they became less capable of diagnosing failure.
These counterfactuals do not prove that every equity concern is illegitimate. They do show that treating equity as an absolute that must override standards produces its own predictable failures. Excellence without any attention to disadvantage wastes talent. Equity without high standards produces mediocrity for everyone. The practical path is high expectations for all, honest measurement, and targeted support that does not lower the bar. That path is harder to sloganise than pure equity or pure excellence. It is also the only one that has ever worked.
