In the lead-up to the 2001 federal election, a Labor backbencher from Melbourne’s outer west weighed into the national debate on schools funding.
In a media release headed Howard’s Unfair School Funding Model Must Go, the MP attacked the Coalition Government for the funding arrangements it had introduced earlier that year.
As evidence of the inequity the release pointed out that the model treated elite private schools as more needy than public schools and gave them almost twice the funding per student. That was both “ridiculous and unfair”, the MP said. Fast forward ten years and that backbencher is now our Prime Minister.
Unfortunately, the change in her job description has not yet been matched by a change in school funding arrangements. The same SES model with the same flaws and inherent inequity remains.
To her credit, Julia Gillard has implemented a comprehensive review of these funding arrangements – the first review in over 30 years to look at how all schools are funded. Education Minister Peter Garrett also understands the need for change describing the Howard model as “flawed in design and application” and a case of “a political party putting ideology before good policy”.
It is not an exaggeration to say the fortunes of millions of children are tied to the outcome of this review, which will report to the Government in December. Given the current system will have been in place for 13 years by the time it is replaced we can expect the new arrangements to take Australia well into the 2020s.
Whatever your view about schools funding, I think you will agree the most pressing question for the expert panel conducting the review is this: How do we ensure that every child, no matter where he or she lives, no matter what their parents do or where they come from, can get a high quality education?
How successful are we in doing that now? Well by international standards Australia has a high performing education system and the results our schools and students achieve are something we should be proud of.
But our overall performance as a nation has slipped in the past decade, compared to other major OECD countries. Of even greater concern is that the gap in achievement between students from wealthy areas and those from disadvantaged areas has grown, according to the results of the international PISA test of 15 year old students.
Those gaps are now the equivalent of between two to three years learning – an unacceptable difference when you are talking about students who are nearing the end of their secondary education. Indigenous students are, on average, three to four years behind students from wealthy areas in reading. According to the PISA report, the effect of socioeconomic background on performance is greater than on average among OECD countries.
Unfortunately, the way the Federal Government is funding schools is contributing to this problem rather than helping to fix it.
Under the current system, all public schools are funded at a flate rate, regardless of the needs of their students. That rate is lower than even the wealthiest private school in the nation – the point Julia Gillard and Labor were making when the SES funding model came into being in 2001.
That inequity in funding is despite the fact public schools remain the foundation of our education system. They are the only ones open to every child, in every community. They also have the overwhelming number of students with higher educational needs who are more expensive to educate such as those from low income families (77 per cent), those with special needs (80 per cent) and those who are Indigenous Australians (86 per cent).
Rather than recognising that fundamental role and resourcing it, the federal funding system is short-changing public schools. They have two thirds of students but get only one third of the funding.
That shortfall is fueling a resources gap between schools. As My School shows, when all sources of funding - state, federal and private - are taken into account, Independent private schools have, on average, 36 per cent more recurrent income per student to spend than public schools.
The challenge, and opportunity, for the expert panel conducting the review and, ultimately the government, will be to design a funding system that better meets the needs of every child. Funding must be directed where it is needed the most.
Better resourcing our public schools must be a key part of that solution if improvements both in equity and overall achievement levels are our objectives. As the NSW Governor Marie Bashir has so rightly pointed out, our future as a nation “can only be assured with confidence through unswerving commitment to public education of the highest quality”. Our children deserve nothing less.
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