Non-government schools are justified in fearing Gonski reforms

FINALLY, it appears that the ALP federal government has gathered the strength and conviction to act on school funding.

Two years after Julia Gillard, as the then education minister, established the school funding review and months after the final report was delivered late last year, the government's preferred funding model will be made public.

It is understandable that the government has dragged out the process, agreeing to extend the present socioeconomic status (SES) model for an additional year during the 2010 election campaign and refusing to respond to the Gonski report's recommendations in February this year.

As proven by the weekend's by-election in the Victorian state seat of Melbourne, school funding is a political minefield. After Catholic education authorities warned parents about the danger of schools losing funding because of the Greens' education policy, Adam Bandt, the acting leader, was forced to deny the charge in an attempt to minimise damage.

Gillard, as education minister and Prime Minister, also argues that Catholic and independent schools have nothing to fear from the Gonski report and that no school will lose a dollar in funding.

Can the Greens and the ALP be believed? And will both parties turn their backs on traditional supporters such as the Australian Education Union and guarantee non-government schools a fair and equitable share of funding, free from government intervention and control?

Based on their policy of returning the level of funding to 2003-04 levels and their commitment to deny funding to so-called wealthy non-government schools, the Greens cannot be believed.

If the Greens Party remains true to its policy then it will exert all its political muscle to ensure any new model legislated later this year cuts funding to non-government schools.

While the ALP government and David Gonksi, the head of the review, both argue that all students will be treated equally and that Catholic and independent school parents having nothing to fear, it's unlikely that non-government schools will be treated equitably and fairly.

Even non-government school critics, such as the authors of The Stupid Country, Jane Caro and Chris Bonnor, and Queensland-based academic Michael Furtado, admit that Catholic and independent schools will lose funding if the Gonski recommendations are implemented.

Earlier this year, Bonnor argued that the current SES model unfairly advantaged non-government schools. He wrote, "If the recommendations correcting this imbalance are implemented, there is no doubt that some private schools are going to become more expensive over time as their public funding reduces in real terms."

The fact that, unlike government schools, non-government schools will be forced to contribute at least 10 per cent towards what is known as the Schools Resource Standard from local funds such as school fees, is evidence that the Gonski funding model discriminates against them.

As Jennifer Buckingham from the Centre for Independent Studies points out, while the Gonski report argues that the level of government funding to Catholic and independent schools must be adjusted according to a parent's "capacity to pay", no such requirement will apply to wealthy government school parents.

The assumption is that government schools deserve priority funding, even those, such as Melbourne High and Sydney's James Ruse Agricultural College, that charge fees and have private sources of income in excess of many low-fee paying non-government schools. Yet 34 per cent of students in Australia attend non-government schools, and more than 40 per cent in years 11 and 12.

Modelling carried out by a major consulting firm also concludes that more than half of Catholic primary schools across Australia will lose funding under the Gonski report with one diocese in danger of losing $11 million. On reading the Gonski report it is obvious that those responsible for writing it are hostile towards non-government schools.

The report mirrors the critique championed by the AEU that Australia's education system is riven with inequality and that government schools deserve priority funding since only they serve disadvantaged communities and are open and free to all.

This ignores the fact that the present SES system is based on need, that the greatest growth in non-government schools has been in low-fee-paying, non-denominational schools serving low to medium SES communities and that all students, regardless of the school they attend, deserve the same level of funding.

Such hostility should not surprise. Two of the Gonski committee members, Ken Boston and Carmen Lawrence, are on the public record denigrating non-government schools and attacking the SES model as unfairly advantaging Catholic and independent schools.

Given the hefty price tag of $6.5 billion to implement Gonski's recommendations, and the fact that state and federal budgets, with one or two exceptions, are finding it impossible to meet present demands, it should not surprise that any new funding model would redirect funding from non-government schools to government.

Kevin Donnelly is director of Melbourne-based Education Standards Institute.