PM prepares education election

Eric Lobbecke

DESPITE the chaotic decision-making around the Gonski report, a re-elected Julia Gillard will batter and cajole the premiers to win a partial victory next month on new school funding that will be marketed as a singular political triumph.

For Gillard, success on the Gonski agenda is essential. She will do whatever it takes. The elements for an "in-principle" deal between the independent school sector and Gillard have been identified. The PM now needs a deal with the Catholic sector, and that will come at a high price.

Then she faces the premiers at the Council of Australian Governments meeting on April 19, when the Gonski deal will be finalised. Queensland and Western Australia are holding out. Victoria is still reluctant.

But the pressure on the premiers will be immense. This is now at the top of Gillard's re-election priorities. With the new ministry unveiled, Gillard sent the message from Perth yesterday -- she wants an education election. The schools plan will be front and centre.

If Queensland and Western Australia refuse to sign up to Gonski, then Gillard's track record shows she will exploit such refusal to discredit Tony Abbott and the Coalition side of politics.

School Education Minister Peter Garrett told The Australian yesterday he was optimistic the government would conclude agreements with the Catholic and independent sectors before the COAG meeting.

The Gonski agenda is core business to rebuild Gillard's personal profile. During the next month she has the chance to alter the atmospherics with the Easter break, an official visit to China and the Gonski deal. There is one certainty -- a Gillard media onslaught next month focused on her ability to deliver. If she cannot do a street walk she can still attend plenty of schools.

Gillard's remarks yesterday betrayed her huge reliance on the Gonski agenda to salvage her fortunes. She comes with buckets of hope and swinging a big stick. Gillard told the premiers they must "stop the cutbacks" on school funds, demanded they apply an annual indexation factor for schools of at least 3 per cent, tied Gonski to her Asian Century plan of expanded opportunity and repeated her aim that Australia by 2025 penetrate the top five school systems in the world.

Gillard sees education as her strength. Her record, however, is far more dubious. It is vital that this debate be focused on results, not just financial inputs. Gillard must be forced to explain how her policies and funds will change classroom culture and arrest the documented Australian decline in standards when significant funding increases in past years have been linked with falling quality.

The timetable facing Gillard is tight in the extreme. Legislation for new school funding must be passed in June and the new funding model operative by January 1 next year. The Gonski agenda will be funded in the coming May budget. The rough rule of thumb is that across six years the annual increase in funding will reach about $6.5 billion but in the initial year the funding increase is modest and in the vicinity of $1bn. The repeated message from Canberra is that "we won't be writing the states any blank cheques".

Gillard's strategy can be described as a grand bargain. It reflects the central idea in the Gonski report -- offer enough funds for a "winners all around" school compact. She will seek to "buy off" the independent and Catholic sectors by ensuring no school is a loser. It is a variation on the Howard technique. It has been Gillard's preferred technique since she was appointed education minister in late 2007.

Such guarantees are pivotal because Labor's plan means government schools get the lion's share of the extra Gonski funds. This is the entrenched expectation of the government school lobby and the Australian Teachers Union. It flows from a policy heavily geared to address disadvantage with a funding model based on a school resource standard plus loadings for disability, location, English proficiency, indigenous standards and school size. Such loadings are extremely hard to quantify.

There are 6743 government schools, 1708 Catholic schools and 1017 independent schools, with the public sector educating 66 per cent of schoolchildren. The growth is overwhelming in the two private school sectors. Gillard has made clear the autonomy and integrity of each sector will be preserved.

The Independent Schools Council of Australia will circulate its schools next week with the details of the proposed Gillard model for its sector. Its initial estimates showed 226 schools, about a quarter, would be net losers. That was unacceptable and in conflict with Gillard's "no losers" pledge. The upshot is that Gillard offered the independent sector a 3 per cent annual indexation factor, and that is now the subject of further assessment.

Aware the Coalition is ready to pounce if any private school is a net loser, Gillard wants to deny such attack. Labor's approach is to have different indexation systems, a high figure for schools in the new model and a lower figure for schools being "funding protected" while they transition over years into the model.

Contrary to early expectations, the new model for private school funding is really a rebadged SES (socioeconomic status) model, despite denials. The SES model was devised under John Howard and is beloved by Abbott.

The premiers and Gillard face a range of critical decisions. What are the respective Gonski funding shares between Canberra and the states? What is the total extra money? Will the states fold their private school funding into the new model? And will the states meet Gillard's utopian desire to have funding for all government schools identified on a school-by-school basis?

Have no doubt Gillard's stamp will be on these negotiations from her fingerprints to her elbows.

Opposition spokesman Christopher Pyne says Labor "has left its decisions far too late in another example of its lack of competence and process".

Pyne delivers two lethal warnings. First, "that this model hardly bears any resemblance to Gonski" and constitutes a major blow to stakeholders such as teacher unions, which will be dismayed when they read the fine print. Second, he warns it would be grand folly for the private schools to accept any deal with only 3 per cent indexation, as this could not properly cover their costs. Coalition policy is to offer indexation based on the average across the past 10 years, which is about 6 per cent.

In short, Abbott and Pyne will offer the private schools a better deal in an effort to wedge Gillard. That raises the same inevitable question: where is their money coming from?