Just days after the Australian Senate cross-bench voted with the Government to pass its $23.5 billion ‘Gonski 2.0″ needs-based schools funding bill, the Labor Party has vowed to restore the prior Gonski model should it win the next federal election. From The Guardian:
Tanya Plibersek has promised Labor will restore every dollar that has been cut from Catholic and public schools, adding an extra $17bn into the education system on top of the Turnbull government’s newly passed $23bn Gonski 2.0 funding package.
This would mean restoring the Labor model, which provides extra funding to Catholic education, after the sector committed to campaign against the Coalition before the next election.
“We say this is a $17bn cut,” Plibersek told Sky News. “We have committed to restoring every dollar of the funding that has been cut. That means a better deal for public schools and Catholic systemic schools and the other systemic schools”…
She said Labor would continue to fight the new school funding system, which will be implemented from the 2018 school year.
In the lead-up to the Senate vote on Gonski-2.0, several education experts voiced their opposition to Labor’s original flawed Gonski model, urging reform. These included:
- the Grattan Institute’s Peter Goss, who contended that the lion’s share of the extra billions that Labor promised to spend at the 2016 election would represent wasteful investment that would not deliver any notable improvement in student outcomes;
- the left-leaning Centre for Policy Development, which urged politicians to pass Gonski 2.0 so that past mistakes in school funding could be undone; and
- the former head of the Australian Education Union, Dianne Foggo, who also urged the Senate to back the Gonski 2.0 legislation on the grounds that it is better than the existing system.
On Friday, the Grattan Institute’s Peter Goss also penned an enlightening article in The Conversation lauding the passage of the Gonski 2.0 bill and explaining why it would unambiguously improve school funding outcomes:
A Senate packed with cross-benchers and minor parties was supposed to make political compromise harder, and good policy all but impossible.
But the cross-benchers have proved the naysayers wrong. Not only did they pass Education Minister Simon Birmingham’s needs-based funding plan – an olive branch summarily dismissed by Labor – but they negotiated amendments to improve the plan.
What will change with the passage of Gonski 2.0?
Birmingham’s original package, the so-called Gonski 2.0, makes key improvements to the existing national school funding framework established by the Gillard government in the 2013 Education Act (explained further in our Senate Inquiry submission).
First, Commonwealth funding of schools increases, and is also more consistent across all states and sectors…
Second, Gonski 2.0 removes some of the special deals so that underfunded schools will get the Commonwealth share of their target funding within six years – much sooner than under the 2013 Act. Many overfunded schools will have their funding growth rates slowed, and a small number of the most overfunded schools will have their funding cut over the next ten years. This is an important break from the former Labor government’s promise, embedded in the 2013 Act, that “no school will lose a dollar”.
Third, it makes several changes to the funding formula. One big change is a revised parental “capacity to contribute” measure, which removes the “system weighted average” approach for non-government systemic schools. The Catholics hate this change, because it overturns a generous funding arrangement that enabled them to keep primary school fees low regardless of how wealthy the parents are.
Fourth, Gonski 2.0 reduces the indexation rate for school funding in line with low wages growth. It will remain at 3.56% a year until 2020, but from 2021 a new and lower floating indexation rate will apply, based on wage price index and CPI. (A minimum floor of 3%, added at the urging of stakeholders, is problematic but far from a deal-breaker.)
Lastly, Gonski 2.0 creates a stronger link between Commonwealth funding and agreed national initiatives to improve student performance…
What this means for schools
Schools will now have more certainty on how they will be funded – at least from the Commonwealth…
Winners and losers
The only way to determine which schools are “winners” and which are “losers” is by looking at what would have happened if the Senate had voted down Gonski 2.0. So, here’s the “scoreboard” under Gonski 2.0 compared to the 2013 Education Act.
Government schools are (mostly) winners
Government schools in all states, and in the ACT, will get more Commonwealth funding…
Catholic schools will lose
Catholic schools are right to say they will be worse off than under the 2013 Act. Their federal funding is projected to be $3.1 billion lower over the next ten years.
This loss arises from the removal of the generous “system weighted average” in the capacity to pay measure, which treated all Catholic schools as average rather than basing their funding on each school’s parent body…
Independent schools have mixed outcomes
The impact on independent schools is mixed. Those serving low socioeconomic communities are winners. A handful of (mostly wealthy) private schools will have their overly generous funding arrangements whittled back…
So, the Coalition’s school funding package passed by the Senate will give greater funding to public and low socioeconomic schools, but reduce funding to wealthier (over-funded) schools.
Therefore, it’s hard to understand why Labor is still complaining and why it would vow to overturn Gonski 2.0 should it win the next federal election.
