Schooling
Divorced fathers have no say on children’s education
TWO sets of warring parents forced the courts to decide where their children should start Year 7 this week.
In both cases judges ruled a mother knows best.
In one case a father offered to pay $25,000 a year in fees to send his son to a private Sydney school with his friends rather than send him to the Catholic high school his mother preferred.
And in a pitched battle to rival any schoolyard barney, a mother went behind her ex-husband’s back and enrolled their 12-year-old daughter in a school without telling him when the girl failed to gain entry to a selective high school they both liked.
The Family Court last week dismissed an appeal by a dad to cover expensive school fees provided his son go to a private school where most of his friends were enrolled.
The court heard the couple, who split shortly before the birth of their 11-year-old son, could not reach an agreement.
It was revealed the boy’s father was about $86,000 behind in child support, having never made a payment, and offered to catch up by paying fees for his son to go to private school with his friends so he would not get bullied.
"If the father pays a minimum $25,000 a year for the boy to go to [school] and if you multiply it by five, at least you will be in some [way] compensated for all the financial burden you have carried," the dad’s solicitor told the mum.
The mother argued she was worried their son was falling in with the wrong crowd.
In the end the court upheld a judge’s earlier decision on the grounds the dad’s lacklustre financial support to date meant he was likely to default in covering the tuition costs.
In the other case the Federal Magistrates Court upheld a mother’s decision to go behind her ex’s back and enrol their daughter in an all-girls school instead of a co-educational school they had both agreed on previously.
The legal spat erupted after the mother secretly put her name on a waiting list thinking she would not be accepted.
The ex-husband had concerns over the school’s "reputation" after his daughter told him she did not want to go.
"It was awful. The girls were all stuck up and snobby. They all had their skirts up real short," she told him.
While the court accepted the father’s concerns it found the girl had settled in at the school and because it was closer to her home she should remain enrolled there.
- Richard Noone
- From: The Daily Telegraph
- February 03, 2011
Feuding parents use My School evidence to decide which schools kids should attend
COUPLES locked in bitter legal disputes are using data from the My School website to argue over the school their children should attend.
Family Court judges and federal magistrates are increasingly being asked to consider data from the website, which lists schools’ literacy and numeracy scores, when deciding where children of broken relationships should be educated.
In one case, a NSW man wanted his children moved from their public school in Newcastle to a Catholic one on the state’s central coast, where he was living with his new partner. The man argued his children would be better off at the new school, whose students had achieved higher results on its NAPLAN tests.
Family lawyer Matthew Shepherd said the courts were eager to accept the data into evidence and had been giving it some weight in their deliberations.
“In cases like this, the court needs to decide what’s in the best interest of the child, and there’s no presumption in favour of either parent,” Mr Shepherd said.
“Parents are looking for anything that can give them a strategic advantage in getting the court to rule in their favour. Statistical evidence like this can be used to do that.”
However, courts so far have been reluctant to embrace NAPLAN results as a justification for moving children. For instance, in the case of the NSW man, federal magistrate Kevin Lapthorn “respected” the father’s perspective, but “found no evidence to suggest the children were not doing well in their current school”.
In another case, magistrate Judith Walker ruled in favour of a Sydney mother who submitted NAPLAN results, but said the main reason for her decision was that the child should attend a school that was “reasonably convenient to where she lives”.
When the My School website was launched in January, Prime Minsiter Julia Gillard said it would give parents new information when choosing schools for their children.
“My School is giving parents more information than they’ve ever had before,” said Ms Gillard, who was then education minister.
School Education Minister Peter Garrett declined to comment yesterday.
Australian Education Union president Angelo Gavrielatos said he was disturbed by the legal trend, which he described as an unfortunate consequence of the website. “When a government attaches so much value to something like NAPLAN, it’s only reasonable that parents would attach a similar amount of value to it,” he said.
“NAPLAN is a one-time snapshot of children’s results, which at most provide a useful tool to teachers. I’ll leave the courts to decide how to judge it but if they asked our opinion it would be exactly that.”
Mr Shepherd said that only a fraction of schooling disputes reached the courts, and it was likely the same discussion was occurring privately in separated families across the country.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/feuding-parents-use-my-school-evidence-to-decide-which-schools-kids-should-attend/story-fn59niix-1225976464837
