ALP's schools zeal will have to wait until 2525

FOLLOWING Craig Emerson's rendition of the Skyhooks' 1975 hit Horror Movie, I am always on the lookout for songs to accompany government policy.

I think the perfect song - simple tune, strong beat, apt words - for the government's response to the Gonski report is American duo Zager and Evans's 1969 classic In the Year 2525 because that is pretty much the timeframe in which the Gonski "reforms" will be fully implemented. Not that it matters much, because unless the states come on board, it is pretty much all talk.

After all, the states have responsibility for funding and running government schools.

There is some merit to the idea of funding schools on the basis of an average resource cost per student, with loadings for various factors such as students' socio-economic background; the degree of poverty and disability of the students; and the location and size of schools. In fact, some states effectively use this approach already to fund government schools.

But here's a note to Peter Garrett, the Schools Minister. Everyone cannot be above average. (My guess is that maths was not his strong suit.) And smart, education-oriented parents have smart, education-oriented children. There is nothing that governments can do to change this; nor should they try.

At the other end of the spectrum, there is only so much schools can do for students whose parents do not care about, and are not engaged in, the education of their children.

The insistence of the Gonski report that spending on school education be increased significantly has no evidentiary basis. It is completely at odds with the lack of a relationship between the very substantial increase in real-per-student spending that has occurred over the past decade - more than 40 per cent - and the relative slide in student performance in Australia.

Rather than throw more money at school education - money that neither the federal nor state governments actually have - consideration should be given to experimenting with different approaches to lifting student performance.

Examples include: raising the cut-off score required for entry to university teaching courses; providing schools with greater autonomy, including the right to hire and fire; and the innovative use of technology and alternative teaching methods.

And don't forget the golden rule: Canberra does not know best. Australia is well-served by being a federation and the states should continue to fund and run government schools without having a one-size-fits-all formula imposed on them.

How the government funding of non-government schools, which is mainly met by the federal government, will change is still unclear. To be sure, there will be fewer dollars for these schools in terms of the loadings for disadvantage given the composition of their student bodies.

On the original proposals of the Gonski report, however, a number of elite schools would receive significantly more money. This flowed from the advice that there be a minimum of 20 to 25 per cent grant of the average resource level to all non-government schools.

Such an outcome would be inequitable, ineffective and politically unattractive.

For those who think that cutting the funding entirely of elite schools - Melbourne Grammar, Prince Alfred College, Shore and the like - would release oceans of dollars to fund other schools, think again. There are just not enough of them really to make a jot of difference to the overall funding effort.

By the same token, Canberra must acknowledge that some non-government schools receive too much government funding, including many Catholic schools and others that have had their funding maintained. The transition for these schools to the funding arrangement that applies to most non-government schools based on the SES (socio-economic status) of their students should start now - not 2525.