Independent schools question the PM's sums

WAYNE Swan's sixth budget has unleashed pent-up frustration within the non-government school sector about the Gillard government's education funding changes, which amount to the biggest challenge to Labor's chances of legislating its single most important re-election strategy.

For months there has been unease within the non-government school sector about the real effect of the government's implementation of the Gonski reforms, which aim to create national equity in school funding and assist disadvantaged students. Wishing to keep faith with Labor, the non-government school sector has kept its concerns behind closed doors and restricted to a swish of silk in the corridors.

That is no longer the case. In the past two days The Australian has revealed that the national bodies representing Catholic and independent schools, as well as state representatives, are no longer hiding their concerns and are challenging not only the veracity and precision of the budget funding forecasts but also Julia Gillard's personal campaign claims about private schools and the opposition's plans.

The Prime Minister has made the national education reforms her personal crusade and Labor has locked in the education debate as its key remaining positive point of differentiation from a Tony Abbott-led Coalition.

Putting a price on carbon is Labor's greatest negative differentiation from the opposition and the Opposition Leader has neutralised Gillard's other grand initiative of a national disability insurance scheme. Education funding is the last ace in the hole.

To succeed in her crusade Gillard must get a majority of the states and territories to sign her $14.5 billion a year education funding changes by June 30 and legislate those changes before the election. Western Australia is unlikely ever to agree; the Northern Territory is likely to hold out and the Labor jurisdictions of South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT are likelier to accept the Labor deal. But so far only NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell has signed the agreement because he sees the greatest advantage of all the states going to NSW with minimum political pain for his Coalition administration. One of the key factors in O'Farrell's decision to sign was that the Catholic and independent school systems seemed "comfortable" with the plans and were guaranteed at least funding maintenance.

The non-government sector's views will carry enormous weight with Victoria and Queensland as well as the Labor states.

Gillard is using O'Farrell's acquiescence to pressure the other Liberal premiers and split the federal and NSW Coalition forces. In an increasingly bitter intra-Liberal exchange, O'Farrell is lining up with Gillard and facing more barbs and threats from federal opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne.

But the internal Liberal rivalries, although a political boost for Gillard, are nowhere near as significant as the challenges from the National Catholic Education Commission and the Independent Schools Association to imprecise, incomplete and hypothetical budget figures, which Gillard and School Education Minister Peter Garrett cannot seem to explain.

The budget has broken the wall of silence from the independent schools because it offers no certainty for funding next year, the appearance that school funding will be cut on Labor's plans across the next two years, and no credibility in the forecasts beyond next year, let alone out to 2019 - three federal elections away.

Once again, Labor's deal with the Greens, which dictated that the first two years of Labor's term would be dominated by introducing a faith-busting, unpopular and costly carbon tax, has meant an important and positive Labor policy has been produced in too little time with too little money.

Failure of implementation, lack of attention to detail and the use of inflated and dodgy numbers now threatens Gillard's education "legacy" and re-election strategy.

Abbott is essentially opposing Labor's Gonski education changes and taking a political risk but, even if most of the states sign on, the government's chicanery on funding for non-government schools and fiddles to inflate the impact of its plan has marred the strategy.

The breaking of the non-government school sector's silence is doubly bitter because earlier, discreet complaints have gone unaddressed and the budget has provided even more grounds for concern. Before the budget, the National Catholic Education Commission "strongly expressed" its dissatisfaction to the Gillard government over "an unsatisfactory situation" on funding, which "still drags on and now threatens to become a political football for several more months".

NSW head of the Catholic Education Commission, Anthony Fisher, said the process and calculations for non-government school funding for next year and beyond were uncertain, imprecise, complex and annually variable.

"What funding schools can expect from the commonwealth government in 2014 is still not clear," the bishop wrote to all schools in Australia's biggest Catholic education system. In a call to arms, Fisher also challenged Gillard's campaigning claims that all non-government schools would be "$800,000 worse off " under the Coalition as part of her disputed claim schools would lose $16.2bn across 10 years if Abbott is elected.

Today The Australian has revealed that the Independent Schools Council of Australia has similar concerns about the budget figures and believes the projections actually are a cut in 2014-15, with "no additional funding in the foreseeable future".

The Independent Schools Council told Gillard: "The sector is having difficulty reconciling the figures in the budget documentation with the government's public commitments to independent schools."

The unease of the non-government sector behind the scenes for months is now busted wide open because time has run out, education priorities have become an election strategy and Labor continues to inflate or deflate funding forecasts for a political edge that only serves to undermine its cause.

Gillard's Gonski reforms may yet prevail but Labor has done itself no favours by mixing politics and policy.