Fatal flaw in school funding ignored

Simon Birmingham was warned of profound flaws with his $24.5bn schools funding model six weeks before it was announced.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham. Picture: AAP

Education Minister Simon Birmingham was warned of profound flaws with his $24.5 billion schools funding model six weeks before it was announced.

Senator Birmingham’s department also did not refer the warnings by the Catholic education sector to the nation’s statisticians for advice until 11 days after the Gonski 2.0 model was detailed.

The National Catholic Education Commission wrote to the minister on March 14 last year with a 39-page document outlining concerns with the socio-economic status funding system that is about to be torn apart.

The document, which was prepared by the Catholic Education Commission of Victoria, showed that the SES model was unworkable, inaccurate and biased against the church’s schools.

Despite this, Senator Birmingham and his cabinet colleague Christopher Pyne went to war with the Catholic sector, accusing it of dishonesty when complaining about the SES system.

Less than three weeks after the government’s funding model was released, Mr Pyne declared: ``“I am quite disappointed in the Catholic education system nationally for running a campaign, using their parents’ money, that is dishonest and is trying to keep in place a system which is not fair to all Australians.”

But weeks earlier, the Coalition government had been sent a copy of the church’s analysis of the SES system, which contained a series of anomalies, including rating rich independent schools as being poorer than inner city Catholic primary schools. The CECV paper, sent by executive director Stephen Elder and policy adviser Bruce Phillips, questioned the use of the SES system as a measure of parents’ capacity to contribute.

Senator Birmingham, however, told Senate estimates on June 1 last year that while there was criticism of the SES system, no sector had provided a proper alternative.

In a statement issued yesterday he said: “As the government and the department have made clear for the last year, we accepted there were some criticisms of the SES data, which is why we commissioned an independent inquiry into it and are providing additional funding while it was being undertaken.

“The government is set to receive an independent report that’s involved extensive consultation and investigation since last year, and we will give that independent analysis thorough consideration when we receive it.”

The current SES system estimates what people can afford to pay in school fees based on the neighbourhood where they live.

Each family is assigned to a neighbourhood of about 200 households, and judged to have the average characteristics of that neighbourhood but that means an elite boarding school can be judged to be poorer than an inner-city Catholic school.

The CECV report found: “major limitations in the way SES scores are calculated’’.

There is “no consideration of family and household wealth”.

Michael Chaney, who is conducting a review of the SES system, will today tell stakeholders that the system is broken and extra money will have to be handed to the Catholic sector.