Private schools get 100% of needs from Gonski 2.0

Catholic and independent private schools are set to get more than 100 per cent of their needs from governments under the Turnbull government's new 'Gonski 2.0' plan, official documents released under freedom of information show.

Obtained by the Australian Education Union and processed by the convenor of the Save Our Schools campaign, Trevor Cobbold, the Education Department documents spell out the the amount of government funding expected for each school sector in each state in 2018.

In the ACT, Gonski 2.0 will see ACT public schools funded at 117 per cent of the so-called schools resourcing standard from governments, the highest rate in Australia and making the territory one of only two jurisdictions receiving more than 100 per cent. 

Independent schools will receive 113 per cent of the standard, while Catholic schools will receive 102 per cent. 

Currently nine private schools in the ACT receive more than 100 per cent of the standard from the Commonwealth and territory governments, dropping to 14 schools in 2018. 

 By 2027 when the Gonski arrangements are fully implemented the total will be 15 schools. 

In NSW 110 private schools are expected to receive more than 100 per cent of the so-called schools resourcing standard from governments, up from 65 schools in 2017. By 2027 when the Gonski arrangements are fully implements, 212 private schools will receive more than their total needs from governments.

In Victoria, 38 private schools will receive more than the resourcing standard from governments, up from 33 in 2017. When Gonski 2.0 is fully implemented 74 will receive more than all their needs from governments.

The Gonski 2.0 package will eventually give each private school 80 per cent of the resourcing standard in Commonwealth grants. It will give public schools 20 per cent of the standard.

Since the creation of the freedom of information documents, South Australia has promised to boost funding for the entire Catholic and independent school sectors from 19.7 per cent to 22 per cent of the resourcing standard.

The Gonski 2.0 formula will result in a loss of income for some very well funded private schools, but will increase the number of overfunded private schools.

In most states public schools are funded at less than 80 per cent of the resources standard by the governments that operate them, meaning that Gonski 2.0 lifts Commonwealth funding to 20 per cent they will continue to get less than 100 per cent of the standard. NSW public schools would get 91 of the standard, Victorian schools would get 86 per cent.

The private sector would get 107 per cent of the standard in NSW and about 100 per cent in Victoria, according to Mr Cobbold's calculations.

"Gonski 2.0 is the best special deal that private schools have ever had," he said. "The overfunding will cost taxpayers many millions of dollars over the next decade and will divert funds from where they are most needed."

"No funding model that increases the number of overfunded private schools while failing to adequately support public schools can be considered fair. Public schools enrol the bulk of disadvantaged students."

Education Minister Simon Birmingham said states were free to boost funding to their own schools and cut funding to private schools.

"Our reforms are a line in the sand for the cost-shifting and blame game," he said.

"Our plan means every student will get their fair and consistently calculated share of federal support. The new independent National School Resourcing Board will ensure education authorities are held to account for the way they administer federal taxpayer investment."

Gonski 2.0 increases Commonwealth funding for both public and private schools. The legislation sets an "ambition" that state and territory governments fund at least 75 per cent of the resource standard of their own schools, taking the total funding under Gonski 2.0 to at least 95 per cent.

In The Age and Sydney Morning Herald

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What kind of govt funds private schools better than its own?

Something is seriously wrong when private school students get more in government support than the government's own students. Just as it is when private superannuants get more in government support than the government's own pensioners.

Yet it's happening, and neither side of politics wants to talk about it.

You can check out examples in your own suburb by scouring the MySchool website.

In Balwyn, the government-run Balwyn Primary gets $7214 of government funds per student, while down the road the privately run St Bede's Parish Primary gets $7974, plus what it charges parents.

In Preston, Newlands Primary gets $10,362 but Sacred Heart gets $11,488. In Spotswood, Spotswood Primary gets $8008 while St Margaret Mary's gets $11397. In Ballarat, Ballarat North Primary gets $8158 while St Patrick's gets $8499.

That's by no means a complete list, and the schools I have mentioned are roughly matched for size and socio-economic status.

Right now, on average, Catholic and independent private schools get less per student than government schools, but if present trends continue they'll overtake government schools in four years. An analysis by a former president of the NSW Secondary Principals Council, Chris Bonnor, and education researcher Bernie Shepherd entitled Private School, Public Cost finds that by 2020 the typical Catholic student will receive $850 more than the typical government student, and the typical independent student $100 more.

 

 

It'll lend an entirely different meaning to the word "independent" and bury for good the argument that parents who pay extra to send their children to private schools are doing other taxpayers a favour.

So dependent are private schools already that 95 per cent get more in government grants than they spend on teachers' salaries. They either raise very little extra from parents (typically the case for Catholic schools) or raise a lot more and use it for facilities that are the envy of their public school neighbours.

It began quietly. For more than 100 years until the mid-1960s Australia treated private schools the same way as did other developed countries. It didn't fund them. Then prime minister Menzies broke the ice with grants for science labs and prime minister Whitlam with general grants linked to the achievement of targets. Prime Minister Howard turbocharged the process with a new formula that took no account of the money private schools got from other sources and a new kind of grant – for the establishment of new private schools.

In the space of a decade Australia gained an extra 127 private schools, some very small, and all entitled to establishment grants and ongoing public support.

Julia Gillard's 2011 Gonski review found a mess. "When considered holistically, the current funding arrangements for schooling are unnecessarily complex, lack coherence and transparency, and involve a duplication of funding," it reported. It recommended instead a "colourblind" approach. Every student would be entitled to the same amount of money, adjusted for need.

In public schools it would all be provided by governments, state and federal. Private schools attended by students from poor socio-economic backgrounds would be told to find 10 per cent themselves. Private schools attended by students from good backgrounds would have to find 75 to 85 per cent.

The one big problem was that Gillard had decreed that "no school will lose a dollar". It made Gonski expensive.

But after initially causing mischief (his education spokesman Christopher Pyne labelled the idea "Conski") Tony Abbott promised a "unity ticket". He would honour Labor's agreements with the states for at least four years, even though they lasted for six years.

After his election it was quickly forgotten. The money was forthcoming, for four years only, but the requirement for the states to put in their share and divide it in accordance with Gonski formula was dropped.

Labor had made it hard for him, even if he had had the best will in the world. First it had insisted that no school be worse off, hugely inflating the Gonski's cost, and then, because it couldn't work out how to fund that cost, it pushed all but $3 billion of the $9.7 billion out into the final two years of the agreements, where it wouldn't show up in the budget's forward estimates.

Uncertain of what to do as those final two years approached, Malcolm Turnbull at first suggested the Commonwealth abandon schools funding, leaving it all to the states, which would raise their own income tax, except for private schools, which for some reason he would continue to fund. Then he threw them an extra bag of money to buy a few years more time.

As the election approaches, Labor is talking again about funding the full Gonski, the expensive one where private schools don't lose a dollar. I'd hoped for more, but then I've yet to meet a Labor MP whose children aren't in private schools.

The Coalition seems not to have a policy at all, at least not yet.

Unless one of the parties develops a policy that's actually thought through, we're likely to drift into the next election with private schools more heavily government-funded than government schools and no-one thinking its at all unusual.

In The Age and Sydney Morning Herald

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What's not to like about Gonski? Pyne edition.

I get that Christopher Pyne likes private schools. But what I don't get (or didn't get until this week) is that he could possibly want to take money away from poor schools to give to richer ones. I couldn't understand how anyone would want to do that.

Of course, Pyne says that's not what he wants to do. As Australia's new education minister he merely wants ''a new model that is national, that is fair to everyone and that is needs-based''.

But note his use of the word ''new''.

The Gonski panel spent two years examining everything about the funding of Australian schools and built a new model from the ground up. It's so new, it's not due to start until next year.

Every student would attract a base amount of funding, the amount needed to provide a good education. It would follow them from school to school. The panel suggested about $8000 a primary student, around $10,500 a secondary student.

Students at government schools would receive the full amount. Students at private schools would receive a scaled-down amount, depending on the school's ability to charge fees.

On top of the base funding would be extra loadings for measures of disadvantage, such as the number of disabled students in the school, the number of them from low socioeconomic backgrounds, the number of indigenous students, the number from non-English speaking backgrounds and so on.

The loadings would be paid in full to all schools, public and private. So generous would they be that some private schools serving heavily disadvantaged students would have all of their costs met by the public.

What on earth is there not to like about such a scheme?

Why in heavens does Pyne want to go back to the drawing board?

He isn't saying, but on Tuesday he dropped a hint. He said the scheme introduced by the Howard government a decade ago was ''a good starting point for a school-funding model'', a comment he spent the rest of the week backing away from.

It is a scheme that saw funding for the wealthiest schools increase at a far faster rate than funding for the poorest ones.

At its heart were two tricks: it no longer took account of a school's ability to raise its own income, so it blindly piled public money into exquisitely appointed private schools in way that hadn't happened before.

And it doled out the money on the basis of a con. Funds were allocated in accordance with the ''socioeconomic status'' of the postcode in which each student lived - not on the basis of each student's actual socioeconomic status, but on the basis of the status of those who lived in the same postcode, most of whom would never go near the school and couldn't afford it.

It meant good schools in poor areas cleaned up, even though they didn't take poor students. It meant schools taking in boarders from poor rural areas cleaned up, when the boarders themselves came from Australia's richest families.

This is the system Pyne said directed funds ''to the schools that were most in need''. This is the system he said was ''a good starting point for a school-funding model''. It's the system Gonski found ''lacks coherence''.

So why would someone like Pyne yearn for it? I didn't have a clue, until I found myself listening to Lars Osberg, a Canadian economist who specialises in the widening income gap between the rich and the poor. He has been travelling around Australia delivering a talk titled What's so bad about more inequality? Osberg says while some inequality mightn't be so bad, a self-perpetuating process is under way that is continually widening the gap, with private schools an important part of the machine.

When incomes were more equal, he said, it didn't much matter whether their children went to a public or a private school. Their success in life would be pretty much the same.

But as the gap widens, affluent families find ''the greater is the gap between their own incomes and those of the masses, the further there is to fall in the next generation''.

It becomes ''ever more important'' for them to give their own children every possible advantage.

''More inequality of incomes thus implies more incentives for upper-income families to reduce their support for public expenditure on the human capital of all children'' - to reduce support for public education.

It calls to mind images of well-heeled passengers clambering onto rescue boats throwing the less well-heeled off. It isn't nice, but it would be rational if you knew only some could survive. And I sincerely hope it is not what's driving Christopher Pyne.

In The Age and Sydney Morning Herald

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