We don't need a funding education revolution

THE long-awaited and lengthy Gonski review of school funding will not meet the expectations of many stakeholders in the education world who have been keenly awaiting its launch.

While the 250-plus pages of the report will need to be carefully scanned for the rationale and detailed analysis behind its proposals for a complete overhaul of school funding, the main proposals hold little hope for any immediate reform of school funding arrangements.

To this extent, the two-year inquiry is a lost opportunity. The report's findings are sound in calling attention to the need for greater coherence and consistency in school funding responsibilities. At present these responsibilities are a partnership between the commonwealth and state governments, and, in the non-government sector, they involve parents as well.

The complexity of these shared funding arrangements has indeed been the fodder for the constant stream of claims and counter-claims in the highly politicised arena of government and non-government school funding.

But rather than being a circuit-breaker for this acrimonious debate by increasing our understanding of the complexities and directly addressing some of the inconsistencies, the Gonski review has proposed what can only be a far more complex model, needing a realignment of commonwealth and state responsibilities and an ongoing functioning partnership between different levels of government -- a goal not likely to be achievable in any near future.

The proposed new arrangements are to be devised in detail by various commonwealth-state working groups and committees, under the oversight of the intensely bureaucratic and cumbersome processes of the Council of Australian Governments, which is not exactly renowned for its effectiveness in good policy-making or sound policy implementation.

Rather the opposite, the COAG behemoth moves at glacial pace and good policy falls victim to deal-making and compromise. If COAG were to agree to the new arrangements proposed, new bureaucratic structures and new layers of decision-making would be added in all jurisdictions: an expensive option not likely to bring about the desired change to funding fairness.

Some of the basic concepts supported by the review -- a minimum base grant from government for all students; the allocation of funding based on educational need; and consistent funding for students with a disability irrespective of school sector -- could readily be incorporated in an adjustment of current funding arrangements.

The rationale for a complete funding revolution is not convincing. The need for additional funding to support reform, especially given the commonwealth's guarantee that no school will lose funding as a result of the review, is unambiguous, but there is scope for wider recognition of the limitations of extra dollars to change educational outcomes.

As a wealth of research shows, including most recently the study by Ben Jensen at the Grattan Institute of the four high-achieving school systems of Hong Kong, South Korea, Shanghai and Singapore, it is not large increases in expenditure that make the difference.

It is, above all else, a strong focus on teacher quality, a focus that may require governments to make difficult trade-offs to achieve the goal of education excellence. The funding reforms recommended by the Gonski panel, even if they could be implemented within the next decade, are not likely to have an impact where it matters.

Not only is the process envisaged by government for responding to the report likely to be lengthy and tortuous, the fact the government itself is now planning an extensive public consultation process belies the effectiveness of the Gonski review. After two years of extensive public consultation, voluminous submissions and costly research, the government is embarking on a new round of consultation, discussion and opinion-gathering.

What value is an independent, objective and balanced assessment of the issues if they are then left to the vagaries of populism and intergovernmental bureaucratic wrangling?

Scott Prasser is executive director of the Public Policy Institute, Australian Catholic University.