Get Real Election 2013

School Education needs Gonski

Some voters might think that Labor and the Liberal Coalition have become too alike, however there is one policy area where Labor really stands out, and that is school education. On June 26, 2013, the Gonksi reforms were passed in the Senate. The National Plan for Schools Improvement will be implemented in participating schools from 1 January 2014. The model promises a fairer school funding model, structured through a new nationally consistent School Resourcing Standard. This involves a base amount per student plus extra loadings to address school and student disadvantage aimed to help direct funds to students who are Indigenous, from low SES backgrounds, have a disability, have limited English language skills and to schools in remote and regional areas. Labor's Better Schools Plan (renamed by Rudd to differentiate from Gillard), provides $14.5 billion over six years from 2014 and is designed to help students and schools that need it most. All Independent and Catholic schools will come under the new funding model, even in the conservative-led states which have not signed up to the reforms. This will widen the resource gap between non-government and public schools in states with no funding agreement. The Greens are backing Better Schools, but want an extra $2 billion for public schools to speed up implementing the reforms. Abbott: Gonski not needed The Coalition has long held the view that our school funding arrangements are not broken, do not need serious reform and that public education in Australia does not warrant extra investment. However, in the lead up to the federal election, the Coalition, which had previously discouraged states from signing up to the Gonski reform agreements, has said it will match Labors education funding. This is the Coalitions attempt to neutralise Labors momentum on education reform but it is cynically misleading, as it will only match Labors funding for the first 4 years of the planned 6 years, and will not require the states to distribute the additional funding according to need Abbott: Cut $10 billion from Gonski Maurie Mulheron, NSW Teachers Federation President, said this would be detrimental to schools because two-thirds of the $14.5 billion Gonski funding, $10 billion of which is from the federal government, comes in the last two years of the reforms. These additional resources, which would come on board from 2017, will particularly impact on students from low SES (socio-economic status) backgrounds. New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT have already signed six year funding agreements with the Federal Government. Negotiations were suspended with Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory during the caretaker mode of the election campaign period. The Australian Education Union claims that the Coalition is being dishonest about saying they will match Commonwealth funding committed under Labor. The Coalition is not being transparent about schools funding plans for Queensland, NT and WA where there is no Gonski agreement. Abbott: Privatise public schools The cornerstone of the Coalitions Policy for Schools: Students First, announced just 10 days out from the election, is for public schools to operate more like private schools. The Coalition will: encourage 25 per cent of existing public schools to become Independent Public Schools establish a $70 million Independent Public Schools Fund. This Fund will provide grants directly to a school to assistant (sic) them in becoming independent. (Coalitions Policy for Schools: Students First)

The Coalition is basing this approach on a WA model implemented in about one third of WA schools, which they are claiming is a clear success. However, several evaluations have found that WAs IPS

scheme has not led to better student outcomes. The 2012 Naplan Summary shows that out of 20 measures including Reading, Spelling, Grammar and Numeracy, WA students are below the Australian average on 18 and above the Australian average on just 2. There are also serious concerns regarding the impact of the IPS scheme on the teaching and education support workforce. The Western Australian Teachers Union believes they will be worse off under the Coalitions education plan and want the longer term funding model proposed by Labor. They are concerned this model makes for a bigger differentiation between higher and lower SES schools as there is little incentive for independent schools to offer a lot of programs for students with very high needs. The NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli has rejected the Coalitions proposal citing lack of evidence about improving student performance. Research on several decades of devolved schools in Victoria has been unable to establish that it has improved equity or improved educational outcomes, although there is evidence of widening equity and outcome gaps between Victorian schools. Abbott: Punish public education The Coalition argues that increasing school autonomy and improving teacher quality will improve student performance in our OECD rankings. However, the Australian Council for Education Research found that the main reason for the growing gap in international comparisons was how disadvantaged students were performing. So improving education performance requires emphasis on improvements in equity and narrowing the achievement gap between our more and less advantaged schools and students. Not only does the Coalitions policy fail to address this, but it will entrench existing disadvantage through its failure to commit to funding Better Schools from 2018. Principal autonomy will not help attract teachers to disadvantaged or remote schools where they are needed most. In a further blow, the Coalition will also cut the SchoolKids Bonus which will effect about one million families eligible for the Family Tax Benefit Part A. The Coalition is no champion of public education and neither is Tony Abbott. In his address to the Independent Schools Council of Australia National Forum last year, Abbott said he was a proud to be a product of the independent school system. He claimed that he had seen nothing that would be an improvement on the SES model that the Howard Government put in place, and that it is an injustice that only 21 per cent of government funding goes to independent schools.
Authorised by Peter Murphy, 128 Chalmers Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010