PC: Increased school funding has not delivered

By Leith van Onselen

The Productivity Commission (PC) has released a new draft report examining the further development of a national education evidence base, which argues that there has been a 14% real increase in spending per student over the last ten years, yet student performance remains broadly static and in some areas has actually decreased:

Australian students’ performance on national and international student assessments has stalled or, in some cases, declined…(for example, mathematics, figure 1).

The report cautions against allocating more funding to schools until it can be proven that it would boost outcomes:

Without improving and applying evidence to policy-making and teaching in schools and classrooms, there is a substantial risk that increased resourcing of schools will continue to deliver disappointing outcomes.

And it calls on the Government to use “data and evidence to identify, and then apply, the most effective programs, policies and teaching practices”.

Responding to the findings, Ken Boston, who helped develop the Gonski education reforms, has called for a more strategic allocation of government funding for schools instead of increased funding.

He has a point. Back in June, the Centre for Policy Development (CPD) produced a report entitled Uneven Playing Field: The State of Australia’s Schools, which projected that under current policy settings, mid-range private school students are on track to receive $1,000 more in taxpayer funding than average public school students by 2020:

For some years total funding of private schools has exceeded the funding of government schools with similar types of enrolment. However our data analysis reveals that most Catholic schools are presently on track to receive more government funding than their equivalent public schools. The data also reveals that we are in fact over-investing in many advantaged students…

Meanwhile, as the graph below shows, we are seeing a convergence of public funding for all three school sectors, with public funding for non-government schools projected to outstrip that for similar government schools in the next few years based on recent trends…

The report called for a freeze on funding increases to non-government schools until a review of how the funding should be more fairly distributed is conducted.

A separate analysis conducted earlier this year also found that the average public funding of some of Victoria’s most elite private schools increased at eight times the rate of the neediest public schools.

Then The Age reported that Private schools are outspending Victorian public schools by four to one, splurging on frivolous things like rowing tanks, pilates studios and sky decks.

I don’t know about you, but giving substantial taxpayer funding to already well-resourced and affluent schools doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and seems highly inequitable.

Instead of simply increasing the pot of taxpayer money, how about spreading it around more efficiently so that it targets those schools (students) most in need?

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