‘Intruders’ not welcome: Coalition to decide who is worthy of education funding

Private schools should not be “compelled … to take certain cohorts of students (my emphasis) or lose school funding”. So said the now federal Education Minister Alan Tudge when discussing the then Labor government’s plan for a more equitable approach to school funding.

Tudge expanded on those sentiments in his speech to parliament in 2011. Catholic and independent schools may for the first time be required to take these ‘certain cohorts’, which would amount to “an incredible intrusion”.

His short speech had connotations of the Howard mantra that “we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”.

The graduate of Haileybury College in Victoria did not elaborate on the nature of those…