David Gonski denies fees will increase

FEARS that a new school funding model would force private schools to raise fees were dismissed yesterday.

FEARS that a new school funding model would force private schools to raise fees and introduce a means test for parents were dismissed yesterday by the chairman of the independent review, David Gonski, who said he failed to understand how that message could be construed from the report.

Mr Gonski said he was not disappointed by the federal government's response after it failed to endorse the report, instead commissioning further consultation and work to refine the proposed funding model.

"We advised there should be further work done," Mr Gonski said. "I would be disappointed if the work isn't done, but the government has said it will be done.

"We've had a very nice and acceptable response to the report. There's no disappointment required; let's get on with it."

The opposition's education spokesman, Christopher Pyne, and some education commentators have criticised the proposed funding model, arguing it creates a "hit list" of private schools that will lose money, contains no indexation and will means-test parents' income to determine the level of government funding a school receives, all of which will force fees to rise.

Businessman Mr Gonski, who chaired the review panel, pointed out that representatives of the independent and Catholic school sectors had agreed there was no reason for fees to rise based on the funding system proposed in the report.

Mr Gonski said the report had been written under instructions from the federal government that no school would lose any money on a per student basis.

"We wrote the report on that basis, and suggested that resulted in a need for more money, so I have difficulty in understanding why fees would rise," he told The Australian. "I've read that report so many times I can almost recite it. If there's a hit list in there, I still haven't found it. There was no intention to have a hit list. What we want to do is to lift all the boats."

Mr Gonski also dismissed claims by Mr Pyne that measuring parents' "anticipated capacity to pay" school fees as the basis for setting the level of government funding for a non-government school amounted to a means test. He said the report recommended using the existing system measuring students' socio-economic status as the basis for determining capacity to pay until a more accurate measure could be developed.