The type of school a child attends is known
to impact on educational attainment and laterlife
outcomes. But there is very little persuasive
empirical evidence—despite widespread
and varied anecdotal evidence—on why parents
opt to educate their children outside the
state system. In this article, we seek to address
this question by comparing the determinants
of private school choice in both Australia and
the United Kingdom. The experiences of the
two countries have been very different over
the recent past. Whilst private school attendance
has remained largely flat in the United Kingdom at around 6–7 per cent of children, it has risen sharply in Australia, with about one third of children currently attending a school outside the government sector. Fully 20 per cent
of Australian school children attend Catholic
schools and about 13 per cent attend other nongovernment
or independent schools. The levels
of public subsidies are also very different in
the two countries, with large public subsidies
on offer inAustralia and no direct subsidy in the
United Kingdom. Ryan and Sibieta (2011) describe the differences between private schooling in the United Kingdom and Australia in more detail