High hopes of real reform at education coalface

MERRYLANDS High School principal Lila Mularczyk was starting her 30-year career the last time education funding got such an overhaul.

Lila Mularczyk

MERRYLANDS High School principal Lila Mularczyk was a teacher at the beginning of her 30-year career the last time education funding was so comprehensively reconstructed.

It's been a long time between those seismic shifts at the federal level but she believes the government's response to the Gonski school funding review hits a fair note. "We're happy that this has finally been put on the table and we'll be even happier in 2014," she said, referring to the first year the individual student-focused funding kicks in.

"School funding is a moral issue but it's also our responsibility to be looking after the future of our country and our communities."

Ms Mularczyk described the funding debate as a showdown between public and private schools missed the point of the review.

"It is not a public/private debate," she said. "One would hope that whatever the election outcome is that the government of the day would recognise the absolute need and responsibility to meet all the student needs despite what system they attend and what particular support they need."

Merrylands High School captain Chala Olca, 18, said any funding that focused on students could be deployed more effectively where it is needed.

"We have students from more than 50 different cultural backgrounds," she said of the western Sydney school. "So funding can be used for more English as a Second Language teachers, or more support for those teachers.

"The more support students get the more involvement you'll see in the school and learning."

There's no guarantee the new funding model will be preserved under a Coalition government, and if it is it won't directly affect students finishing high school now.

That was a small concern for Year 11 student Phoenix Docker, 16, who said students like him were excited for those still to come through the system.

"For future generations this is the start of something big. It's a first step but it's a step."

Mularczyk said she hoped the new model would last in successive governments. "There are so many ways we can use the money under the new model and one thing it would do is add certainty for schools in the planning they do, for the support staff they hire," she said.

"It'll help students at one end of the spectrum who need the help and students at the other end who can use freed up resources to excel, especially in extension programs.

"At the moment some schools are either black and white on or black and white off in terms of what funding they can access and this new system will change that and immediately help to bridge the gaps in learning which spring up for a multitude of reasons."