In June last year, the Australian Senate cross-bench voted with the Turnbull Government to pass its $23.5 billion ‘Gonski 2.0″ needs-based schools funding bill.
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.
Indeed, the original botched Gonski program implemented by Labor would have seen non-government school students – and those in Catholic schools in particular – receiving greater taxpayer funding than average public school students by 2020:
By comparison, the Gonski 2.0 package proposed by the Turnbull Government would redirect some funding from these privileged Catholic schools to public schools, improving equity and saving the Budget billions in the process.
At the time of the Bill’s passing, the Labor Party vowed to restore the prior Gonski model should it win the next federal election. And on Friday, Labor pledged an extra $250 million for Catholic schools if Labor is elected. From The Guardian:
In a move that could again make education funding into an election issue, the opposition leader has promised to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with Catholic schools in their increasingly bitter campaign against the government’s changes to education funding.
This week Shorten wrote to the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference chairman, Denis Hart, promising the sector would be $250m better off in the first two years of a Labor government and billions over the decade.
“We are committed to funding all schools based on a proper assessment of their need, while also supporting parental choice,” he wrote.
Shorten has previously said the government’s model had “unduly discriminated” against Catholic schools, but the letter confirms that a Labor government would revisit funding arrangements if elected.
On Thursday the Labor deputy leader and education spokeswoman, Tanya Plibersek, backed Shorten’s comments, saying the government had “seriously disadvantaged low-fee Catholic schools”…
On Friday Birmingham accused Labor of abandoning the principle of needs-based funding and said Shorten was promising a “special deal” for one part of the school sector.
It is true that Catholic Schools are worse-off under Gonski 2.0. Their federal funding is projected to be $3.1 billion lower over the next ten years, according to the Grattan Institute’s Peter Goss. However, “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”, and merely removes a distortion that should not have existed in the first place.
By contrast, public schools will receive more government funding – a clear win for social equity.
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.
