EDUCATION'S HALF-YEARLY REPORT

Funding for Australian schools has for over a decade assumed the shape of a football to be kicked purposefully around by state and national teams until it is barely recognisable. There’s nothing new in this but Trevor Cobbald’s recent study (dated 2.6.2018) highlights a current state of play that no-one should cheer about.

The rationale behind the Gonski funding model in the first place was that schools (and their students) should be financed equitably. It wouldn’t matter where the school was, who the students were or what ‘system’ the school was a party to. Every school would be funded to a minimum resource benchmark.

The logistics of this funding model are complex but, at the dummy levels of understanding that I employ, it meant that both the federal and state governments would contribute to achieve the shared goal which, you guessed it, was one of financial resource equity. It’s really as simple as that.

The federal government has come under some deserved fire for transforming the original funding model into a ‘Gonski Lite’ souvenir edition. In effect, this edition meant less money from the federal coffers but it still adhered to the principle of funding equity for schools. As would be reasonably expected, the state governments have taken to the aggrieved moral high ground when reacting to the feds’ downsizing. The states’ posturing has been quite remarkable given that many of them are from the same political stable as the Coalition nags.

But Cobbald’s analysis adds another layer to the wreck that is schools’ funding. His figures, which target government funding over the period 2009-2016, indicate that state governments have been systematically cutting their funding to state schools whilst delivering large increases to private schools.

The differentials are staggering. Over those seven years, real total government funding per student in public schools was CUT by an average of $110. Now get this……. for the same period, funding for Catholic schools increased by $1170 per student and for Independent schools by $1025. Remember, the period 2009-2016 includes the two Gonski-level funding installations yet public schools are coming out with LESS money than before the whole equity thing started. How fucked is that?

It seems that the state governments, far from being the principled standard bearers for the brave new world of equity and justice, have been siphoning off money at the expense of the very schools that they run. The hypocrisy and opportunism just cannot be overstated.

Australia’s waning performances in international measurements of student achievement have been well documented. There’s been plenty of wheel spinning and finger pointing in the tedious debriefing periods that accompany each new assessment ‘event’. Improving teacher quality, stoking up the ‘autonomy’ flames and chasing the pedagogy mirage are just some of the remedies that are regularly tossed up. Crucially, not one of them has gained any traction in halting or slowing the decline.

But the international tests and the NAPLAN program all reflect one defining characteristic of Oz education that we’re champs at. The gap in achievements between affluent and non-affluent students is widening. Like it or not, postcode persists as the strongest predictor of any student’s future success and that close association is becoming even more intimate. Australia leads the world in failing to close the gap in educational outcomes between its richest and poorest students.

So what do we do? We throw more money at the joints that are well resourced and physically subtract funding from the state schools that do the heavy lifting when working within disadvantaged communities. Anyone with a modicum of thinking matter knows that true nation building begins with a strong and equitable education system. You don’t have to be an ‘identity’ politician to recognise this. But the smoke and mirrors claptrap that’s going on with federal and state politicians, administrators and dons is relegating the futures of a significant sub-group of our citizens to the scrap heap.

For what it’s worth, I’m giving the current education system a half-yearly grading of ‘F’. Just for the purposes of clarification, the ‘F’ doesn’t signify ‘Fail’. But I’m confident that you already know the answer to the obvious follow-up question.