Schools to lose in hold-out states

PUBLIC schools in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory will miss out on funding worth about $1.2 billion.

Christopher Pyne

PUBLIC schools in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory will miss out under a Coalition government on extra funding, worth about $1.2 billion, that will flow to government schools in states that have signed a deal for Labor's new funding model.

In an interview with The Australian yesterday, the Coalition's education spokesman, Christopher Pyne, confirmed government schools in states that have not signed up for the new funding arrangements will not receive any extra money envisaged under the Gonski reforms.

"We will match exactly the (Labor) government's funding envelope," he said. "The funding the government is offering is the funding the Coalition is offering.

"Whatever the government is funding the states and territories, we are funding in the same way."

The budget update released by the Treasury and Finance departments 10 days into the campaign removed the $1.2bn over the next four years that had been set aside to boost schools funding in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory had their governments reached agreement with the federal government.

But Catholic and independent schools across the nation are covered by the new funding arrangements and non-government schools in the three non-participating states will receive the boost in funding allocated under the new model.

Mr Pyne and Coalition leader Tony Abbott unveiled their education policy at an independent school in western Sydney yesterday, committing to one-quarter of the nation's government schools being granted more independence within four years under reforms based on the West Australian model of independent public schools.

Mr Pyne later told The Australian he did not believe private schools did a better job than public schools but the fact that Australia had the highest penetration of non-government schools in the OECD group of industrialised nations suggested the sector offered something government schools did not.

"If there's a group of people who are prepared to pay their after-tax income, in many cases a large percent of their after-tax incomes, for a product they could ostensibly get for nothing, you have to ask the question, why is that so?" he said.

"I think the answer is because of the non-government school characteristics of their principals and their leadership team being able to make decisions for that school . . . one of the reasons is obviously because they think their child will achieve better outcomes.

"I would rather parents choose their school without having to worry about the quality of their education as a consideration. "

The promotion of school autonomy giving local communities more control over their own financial management, staff recruitment and strategic priorities formed a cornerstone of the Coalition's education policy, which aims to have 40 per cent of Year 12 students studying a foreign language within a decade and to "depoliticise" the national curriculum.

The policy embraces "flexible literacy learning" with $22 million to improve reading and writing for students in remote primary schools, citing the success of programs such as the Direct Instruction method in Cape York, led by indigenous leader Noel Pearson and Cape York Partnerships.

It also calls for improved teacher training courses, a 12-week turnaround for NAPLAN test results, down from five months, and it will review the publishing of school-by-school test results on the MySchool website.

Mr Abbott said the Coalition wanted to give every school the opportunity to "make more of the money that it gets".

A Coalition government will establish a $70m fund to encourage 1500 government schools, about 25 per cent of the nation's total, to become independent public schools along the lines of the program pioneered by the West Australian government.

Mr Pyne said that the Coalition would allow states to pursue their own version of school autonomy.