Birmingham got school funding issue wrong
The political take-out from the report into non-government school funding is clear.
Simon Birmingham is kicking the can down the road, vowing to fix this problem well after the next election.
This is not entirely surprising and in some senses understandable given the enormously complex task of analysing school funding and getting the system right.
Birmingham, the Chaney report shows, got the school funding issue horribly wrong.
His statement appears to sheet home the blame for his political problems to the Howard government, which introduced the initial funding model.
But what he should have conceded in the statement is that he was warned three months before the Gonski 2.0 funding model was delivered that the SES measure had run its race.
He absolutely knew it didn’t work for the Catholic sector and many low-fee-paying independents.
Yet he willingly picked a brawl with a large slab of the country, which educates more than one in five of the nation’s children.
Same goes with his cabinet colleague Christopher Pyne.
The Chaney report confirms what Birmingham should have known: the system was deeply flawed and needed an overhaul.
Having broken the trust with the Catholic sector, he is now asking the system to buy his declaration that the Coalition will overhaul funding in 2020.
Good luck with that one.
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