The parent

Chris Campbell (not his real name) moved his two boys to a private school after two years at a government secondary school.

It's an incredibly complex question. It's a matter of how good, bad or indifferent you perceive the local government school to be. What are the talents or aspirations of your kids? What are your expectations of what you want for your kids? One of the motivations for me was I didn't want to be looking back in five years time saying 'if only we had spent the money'. I didn't want to be guilty of not having done the best. A lot of it was because there's an expectation that the private school would have a more disciplined work ethos and we wanted the kids to be subject to that.

The things that we weren't happy with had nothing to do with the school. It was purely that they were under-resourced in terms of the numbers of teachers and the demands of the broad mix of kids they had. The bottom third of the students the government school had to accept were the lower achievers, more disruptive ones. We were quite happy with the commitment of the teachers and more than happy with the standard of teaching. In fact, their subject offering was better than the private school.

Having said all that, the other motivation, which sticks in my gut because I hate to say it, was an element of pure old snob value. At the end of the day, there are lots of government schools that just don't have the social cachet that private schools have and we didn't want to disadvantage them by that. It does give them an advantage socially and people who don't admit that are lying.

On a scale of one to 10 where 10 is totally happy with what we've done, we're probably around a six and a half. Their results are much the same. The facilities are clearly much better.

Non-government school

Fiona Ogilvy-O'Donnell is CEO of the Association of Independent Schools of Victoria.

I don't think we can talk about it in an adversarial way. We have to recognise it's about what parents consider to be most appropriate for their children. Many of them are looking for particular types of curriculum - it might be languages, it might be music. You have to look at the range of programs that schools are developing that really challenge students in terms of their physical, spiritual and emotional development.

There is a range of programs, particularly in the middle years and in year nine, where we're seeing schools providing different environments. I think that's one of the opportunities that independent schools have is that they can tailor-make what they think is appropriate education for the students and families.

Education and schooling isn't something parents think about on the day their child's due to enrol in school. A lot of parents are planning three, four, five, six years down the track for their children's education. There are financial supports provided by the schools. From time to time, parents struggle for a range of reasons and it's my experience that schools work extremely hard to ensure that students' education isn't disrupted as a result of temporary hardship or change in parental circumstances.

Often the debate is portrayed around schools who charge fees considered to be expensive, whereas there are many schools charging fees that are not in the $10,000 bracket. They are also providing a range of family discounts to enable people to access the education they want for their children.

Because they are independent, they obviously have the capacity to provide particular types of curricula, services and facilities that are different from government schools. At the end of the day, it's parents and children who are the focus of schooling. Parents are looking for an environment that will best bring out the particular talents and skills of their children, provide a learning environment that is encouraging.

Public school

Don Tyrer is deputy director of schools for the Education Department of Victoria.

There are three issues for government schools to which I'm very committed and they're social, economic and educational issues. Socially, I don't know another country that has such success in terms of respect for diversity and yet at the same time a cohesiveness and a growing identity of ourselves. Look at the diversity of our background and the religious, cultural, ethnic mix that is Australia and the fact that we are so accepting of difference and safe and secure and ask me what has created it and I say it's government schools.

In terms of economics, I do wonder about people who spend so much money on non-government education and what impact that has within their family. Schools are there to help parents bring up their kids. What we provide in government schools is quality education and we provide it as a government service, which is free of charge.

There's a lot of furphy about that academic thing. We do extraordinarily well academically. The government schools are right up there but what we don't do is ever exclude. We willingly embrace everybody. And I don't think you can put a value on that.

We don't have the third oval and the second swimming pool. In a physical sense, we would like better resources but all of our research is indicating that what makes a difference is the classroom teacher. It's about quality teachers.

Government school kids do very well at university because they're more resilient. They've had exposure to diversity, they've coped with a variety of circumstances that are within society. Make decisions about lifestyle, too, and that's the economic argument. Think to yourself, "what could I do with that money?"

Fact file

• For a guide to non-government schools, go to the Internet Schools Directory. Parents can search for details on co-ed schools or ones of a particular religious denomination.
• Read: Choosing a School for Your Child Victoria (Universal Magazines, $7.60). The affiliated website contains a list of all schools in NSW, Victoria and the ACT.