Enough bickering over Gonski, show us numbers

IT is clear that the federal government's Gonski reforms of school funding will not have bipartisan support, nor will they have the support of all states-territories.

For independent schools the jury is still out, with the lack of clarity over implementation and actual funding to be delivered making it near impossible to form a view.

This is a disappointing outcome given the three years of hard work and analysis of the Gonski panel and education sectors. However, it is not surprising given the political climate in the lead-up to the federal election.

Views on Gonski are not helped by the recent federal budget, which has failed to convince educators that sufficient funding is being provided to implement the reforms. The budget also confirmed that most of the additional funding for schools for Gonski flows from 2018 onwards, hardly providing any certainty, given this is outside of the forward estimates and at least two federal elections away.

Time is running out and there is an urgent need to resolve the political bickering on Gonski. Political pressure being applied to schools, as evidenced by Julia Gillard's direct email to principals yesterday, with an implied request to lobby premiers, generates significant unease and puts schools in an unacceptable position with their communities and state governments.

Before the legislation to enshrine Gonski is introduced into parliament next month, there should be stronger support for the reforms and more certainty about their implementation.

This could be easily achieved by the government providing the actual funding figures for each school in Australia for next year, 2015 and 2016. To provide such figures, certain estimates will have to be made, and these must be clearly stated and, ideally, independently verified.

With just more than six months to schools receiving their first 2014 grants from governments, schools are entitled to this information and surely the government must be in a position to provide it.

To provide this information, with an iron-clad guarantee about delivery would address one of the significant deficiencies in the Gonski proposals.

The federal government has never actually provided its list of funding for individual schools but has left it up to the education sectors to do estimates and interpretations.

It is perfectly understandable that principals are concerned about the lack of precise funding figures for their schools.

Schools start planning for the new academic year well ahead of time and many principals have expressed their frustration at being unable to complete their proposed 2014 budgets.

The Coalition should join in by providing the actual funding figures for schools under its alternative proposal of maintaining the existing arrangements for the next two years. Again, the indexation and estimates used to derive the figures should be independently audited.

Let's publish both sets of figures, so that all can see the position of schools across all sectors across the next three years. While there are more than 10,000 schools in Australia, this shouldn't be a difficult task to make such figures, and the assumptions behind them, available to all.

Failing this, consideration should be given to making 2014 a year of validation and trialling for the Gonski model. Given the complexity of the model and some unresolved issues, this would give the opportunity to test the Gonski model based on actual data. A sound and objective evaluation could be made about the benefits for schools and the students they educate.

Independent Schools Queensland has recommended this approach to Premier Campbell Newman in terms of his considerations about the Gonski model.

Taking pause for validation does not need to push out the timeframe for implementation of the Gonski reforms. After all, we know that full implementation will occur somewhere beyond 2019. A delay of one year in 2014 will hardly influence the longer-term implementation schedule.

A circuit-breaker is required before the Gonski legislation is enacted. To proceed with the legislation would not only signal that we are prepared to use students as part of a political game but would also lock in a National Plan for School Improvement that clearly does not have overwhelming support support that it is going to need to succeed.

David Robertson is executive director of Independent Schools Queensland.