So much for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s innovation agenda, which hinges on having an educated workforce.
After all but confirming that it would slash university funding, the Coalition it is now looking to discontinue providing funding public schools, although it would continue to fund private and Catholic Schools. From The Canberra Times:
Mr Turnbull said on Thursday he believed the federal government should move to end its involvement in public schools, but continue funding private and Catholic schools.
States would be able to make up the shortfall by levying their own share of income tax, he said…
The federal government currently pays $6.4 billion a year to public schools, compared to $10.7 billion to non-government schools…
However, the Government’s own Green Paper cautioned against the idea for fear that it could create a more unfair system and create “perverse” incentives for cost shifting:
“This option could, however, lead to very different funding models being applied across the states and territories and between the government and non-government sectors, leading to differences in the level of public funding for schools with similar population characteristics”.
“This is likely to give rise to concerns about fairness, as well as introduce perverse incentives for governments to shift costs within the system”.
“It would also undermine the considerable degree of cooperation across the schooling sectors that has built-up over many years,” the green paper found.
Fairfax’s Jessica Irvine is particularly scathing of the proposal:
Kids from low socioeconomic backgrounds are our greatest untapped source of potential growth. They are our most undervalued stock…
Investing in public education for disadvantaged students makes solid economic sense.
Of course, a better quality education leads to higher private incomes for individuals. But diverting kids from a path of poverty also saves costs for society, in jobless payments, family support, mental health resourcing, and law and order…
And a large part of the change comes by investing in high quality free education.
Which, of course, was the major finding of the Gonski report: that education dollars should be better targeted at those in need.
It doesn’t mean spending taxpayer funds on kids who will do fine anyway…
Want to innovate? Educate. Want to create the jobs of the future? Educate. Want more tax revenue? Educate.
Investments in our human capital offer the best returns around…
In contrast, by addressing the negative gearing and CGT rorts, and in the process raising some $32.1 billion over 10 years according to the Parliamentary Budget Office, Labor has promised to maintain school funding:
Labor’s commitment is to spend $4.5 billion to fund the final two years of Gonski, compared to the Coalition which wants to negotiate new funding arrangements to apply after 2018.
In defending Australia’s property tax rorts, while slashing funding to schools and universities, the Turnbull Government has effectively killed off its innovation agenda before it even began.
