Free Schools

Bestselling author David Gillespie shows parents how to choose the best school for their kids, how to avoid fees, and how to make a less-than-perfect system better.David Gillespie has six kids. Like many parents, he and his wife faced some tough decisions when it came to choosing a high school. He calculated that sending his kids to a private school would cost him $1.3 million. A businessman at heart, he thought it worth doing some research to find out what he'd get for his money. In other words, would his kids get better results? The answer was no.Intrigued, David continued his research, only to discover he was wrong on most counts - as are most parents - when it comes to working out what factors deliver a great education. Among other things, he found out that class size doesn't matter, composite classes are fine, fancy buildings and rolling lawns are a waste of money, the old-school-tie network won't cut it in the new industries and NAPLAN is misread by everyone so is largely meaningless as a measure of quality.Taking on an entrenched system of vested interests - the unions, the government, our own sense of worth, privilege and entitlement - this book is both a practical guide to getting the best for our kids and a provocative overview of why the system is struggling.