Long on ideas but short on details, says Perth's Scotch College head Alec O'Connell

ALEC O'Connell supports the principle that all schools should receive more money, especially those with disadvantaged students.

Alec O'Connell

AS head of the elite Scotch College in Perth's leafy western suburbs, Alec O'Connell supports the principle that all schools should receive more money, especially those with disadvantaged students.

Like so many others, however, he's still not clear what the impact on his school and its 1351 students would be under the new funding arrangements proposed by businessman David Gonski.

He is adamant, though, that any assessment of his school's capacity to pay for its own educational needs should be kept separate from its capacity to raise money for new buildings and other capital works.

"Anything that would decrease our recurrent funding in real terms would be unacceptable," Dr O'Connell said. "(But) I can't work that out from the review."

Asked directly yesterday about her promise that no school would lose a dollar in real terms, Julia Gillard replied: "We've said indexation will be a feature of the system and no school will lose a dollar."

Dr O'Connell wants a more definite answer.

"Until somebody uses the words real terms, I'm not interested in that bottom line," he said.

"At Scotch, we're not asking for any great increase. We're happy to work in the framework as we have."

The Gonski review recommended government funding for non-government schools, such as Scotch, should be based on the school community's wealth and capacity to pay for their students' education.

The government would put in a minimum of 20-25 per cent per student for the richest schools. Year 1 students at Scotch pay almost $16,000 a year, with fees increasing to just over $21,000 in senior school.

Dr O'Connell agreed private school parents should contribute to their children's ongoing education costs through fees, but said they should not be penalised for their capacity to raise extra money for infrastructure projects. "Obviously, I think government schools should be fully funded," Dr O'Connell said.

"That's fine. But it's that (word) 'capacity' . . . what does that mean? The capacity for us to try and raise money for capital projects? We don't want that being used to determine our capacity to pay for the recurrent operation. That's a major cost our parents bear that government doesn't have to."

He fully supported the idea of extra loadings for disadvantaged and low-performing students above the proposed new benchmark cost of educating students, called the schooling resource standard.

"That encourages schools to offer a broad-based education, which we do at Scotch."