Gonski's $5bn blueprint to arrest student decline

JULIA Gillard yesterday described the independent Gonski review only as "a good insight" and failed to endorse its approach.

Alec O'Connell

THE Gillard government's commitment to overhaul school funding was thrown into doubt yesterday after Julia Gillard described the independent Gonski review only as "a good insight" and failed to endorse its approach.

The Prime Minister refused to back key recommendations of the Gonski report, released yesterday, including the need to boost government funding for schools by at least $5 billion a year.

The report says that on the basis of the current share of school funding, the commonwealth would bear about 30 per cent of the increase, implying the states would have to find an extra $3.5bn.

The funding model proposed by the review, the most comprehensive since the Whitlam government of the early 1970s, is to base school funding on the cost of lifting student performance in a fundamental shift away from the historical situation of funding based on teachers' salaries.

When asked if she accepted the review recommendations in principle, Ms Gillard said: "We think this is a good insight into a new approach to school funding."

Ms Gillard, who held the education portfolio before becoming Prime Minister, said the government still aimed to introduce legislation for a new funding model in parliament by the end of the year and would spend the next months consulting with the states, schools and the community to work out the "nuts and bolts" of a model.

"There is a challenge in here for both the federal government and for state governments," Ms Gillard said. "We need to make sure that any new funding model is sustainable over time and fits within government budgets, that we can make the right choices for Australian schools.

"I'm not going to make financial commitments for forthcoming government budgets until we've done all of that work."

The Gonski review makes 41 recommendations for a new funding model to prioritise spending on the education of disadvantaged and low-performing students and pool all government funding.

It says "significant additional investment" is urgently required, with the bulk flowing to government schools, because of the federal government's commitment that no school would lose a dollar and the slipping performance of Australian students in international and national tests.

"The new funding arrangements must be aspirational and reverse the slippage evidence in our overall schooling performance over the past decade," it says.

Review chairman David Gonski described the report's recommendations as providing a roadmap for a long-term partnership involving all levels of government and across school sectors. While the review had undertaken considerable work in developing a new funding model, further work and information not available to the review were required to set dollar amounts for school funding, he noted.

"The report proposes arrangements we believe will deliver a funding system that is transparent, equitable and financially sustainable, and is also effective in providing an excellent education for all Australian students," Mr Gonski said. "Differences in educational outcomes must not be the result of differences in wealth, income, power or possessions."

State and territory governments and school, teacher and parent representatives were disappointed yesterday by the Gillard government's failure to put forward a draft model for consultation.

Instead, Ms Gillard will take a series of funding principles to the next COAG meeting for approval with the states and territories, and School Education Minister Peter Garrett will establish a ministerial reference group comprising key school groups and governments, and working groups to test the recommended model.

State governments, which run public school systems, yesterday found elements to praise in the Gonski report but attacked the federal government for its lack of consultation and limp response.

Victorian Education Minister Martin Dixon called for greater clarity and consultation from the Gillard government and said he was concerned at the lack of detail in its official response.

"We know the Prime Minister read the Gonski report over the Christmas break, but the states and territories, which run the school systems, were forced to wait another two months, while all attempts to see and debate the report earlier were rejected," Mr Dixon said.

Associations representing government school teachers, the Catholic system and independent schools criticised a lack of detail on how the proposed system would work and a lack of commitment from the government.

Independent Schools Victoria chief executive Michelle Green said the government had not responded to any of the review's recommendations. "We are none the wiser," she said. "I actually don't know now, after all of these words and all of this consultation, what we are going to do."

Angelo Gavrielatos, federal president of the Australian Education Union, representing public school teachers and principals, urged the government to move immediately on the recommendations.

"It is time to invest the funds that are urgently required," he said.

National Catholic Education Commission chairwoman Therese Temby agreed the report was a "roadmap" but said it was unclear what the implications of the recommendations were.

"It provides a theoretical framework," she said.

"There is not the detail in the report to say this is what it means for Catholic education."

Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne, who does not agree with Mr Gonski's recommendations and believes the current private school funding system is a better option, said the government had "set up this review to fail".

"They've sat on the report for three months and the first COAG meeting to discuss this is not due until at least April, and yet all of this must apparently be put in place by the end of this year to start on the first of January 2014," Mr Pyne said.