By AMY STOCKWELL
Today, in this country, not every child can expect the same standard of education.
Students living in disadvantaged areas are up to three years behind kids of the same age who live in wealthy areas. By their third year of school, almost 90 per cent of children from the poorest Australian homes are below-average readers. Only half of kids with a disability are expected to complete their schooling. One in seven 15 year olds do not have basic reading skills. And every year, 40,000 kids are dropping out of school without going on to work or training.
How is this possible? In a country that over the past decade has benefited from a financial boom and largely avoided the global bust, why are so many kids ending up with so little?
And why does it not boil the blood of every Australian adult that the once clever country is a cruel country for so many kids?
In February 2012, the Review of Funding for Schooling chaired by David Gonski (the Gonski Review) found that Australia is investing far too little in schools and too many students are missing out on the resources they need – and the education they deserve.
The Gonski Review recommended an urgent shift to a funding system that better meets the needs of students. The new funding formula proposed by Gonski is quite straightforward. Schools should be funded on a per student basis, plus extra money to take into account factors like socio-economic background, whether the student lives somewhere remote, is indigenous or living with a disability.
It’s a simple idea: more money per student for education. And more help for those who need it.
Based on this formula, Gonski recommended $5 billion should be injected into public and private schools every year.
What bang do you get for this buck? Smaller class sizes, more specialist teachers in literacy and numeracy, greater support for students with higher needs and additional classroom support for teachers. In short, close to an extra $500,000 for an average school every year.
Where does the money come from? At the moment, the majority of funding for government schools comes from the state governments (some state government money also goes to private schools). The majority of Federal Government funding goes directly to private schools.
Gonski proposes a rebalancing of this funding, with one third of all funds to come from the Federal Government. How the remaining two thirds is covered needs to be discussed and negotiated with the States.
Unsurprisingly, it is in this political space where things have come unstuck.
As it stands, the Federal Government supports the reforms proposed by the Gonski Review and has committed to finding the money to pay their increased share of school funding – but where that money will come from has not yet turned up in the Federal Budget.
The Federal Opposition has rejected the Gonski reforms as too expensive, claiming the current education funding arrangements are working well and should be extended.
The States have shown reluctance to embrace the Gonski reforms, worried that the Federal Government is intruding into a traditional area of State responsibility. The Queensland Minister for Education told a conference of school principals in February that the Federal Government should “give up on Gonski” and “butt out of education”. The WA Premier, Colin Barnett, has said that WA isn’t going to “sit back and suddenly let the Commonwealth take over the running of our schools.” The Victorian Government announced it would go its own way on reforms to school funding (although the new Premier is flagging a new openness on this issue) and NSW maintains it supports the Gonski reforms in principle, although it and other States are calling for greater detail about what their funding share will be.
The upshot? In Gonski, we have a powerful road-map for how to substantially improve education outcomes in this country, but all of this argy-bargy and political posturing is putting it at risk.
Frankly, Australian kids should be able to expect more than this churlish time-wasting.
They should be able to expect that regardless of how wealthy their parents are or where they go to school, they will get an education that they can be proud of.
They should be able to expect that their government is doing everything that it can to make sure that schools in this country are the best that they can be.
And kids in this country should be able to expect that every Australian citizen is prepared to demand change so that they can achieve their dreams.
This year, when someone asks you whether you Give a Gonski, they are asking you whether you think that every child should have access to the best possible education, regardless of where they live, how much their parents earn and the school they attend. They are asking whether you think that kids should be able to expect more from their education, their government and their future.
Well, do you?
Set up by the Federal Government in 2010, the Gonski Review was the most comprehensive review of the way schools are funded in Australia in almost 40 years. It was conducted by an expert panel headed by senior businessman David Gonski. The final report was released in February 2012. The review examined the adequacy of the way schools are funded and what was required to ensure Australia has a school system which is among the best in the world for quality and equity. It’s recommendations give us a once in a generation opportunity to ensure all students are receiving a high quality education. With just a few weeks to go until politicians are due to make a decision on schools funding, it’s a critical time for the Gonski campaign. We’re about to take it up a notch, with a national Gonski Week of Action. Show your support at the I Give A Gonski website.
This post is sponsored by I Give a Gonski. Comments on this post are just for this post. If you want to talk about the IDEA of sponsored posts or the choice of advertisers please click here. We will be reading all those comments too for feedback.
Do you think the funding of Australia’s education system needs to change?
Top Comments
As a parent of a very social child with moderate physical disabilities (sight, mobility and hearing) who successfully progressed through a mainstream primary school, it was extremely distressing to find that the local highschool 500 metres from our us could simply say "we cannot support your child" despite her needs not being very high. She could not physically push her wheelchair around their campus in the time needed between bells, but they refused to provide an aide. Their solution - buy an powered chair, as if I have $15k just sitting around spare. They "couldn't guarantee" to provide an aide to help her access the toilets safely. They "couldn't guarantee" to provide sufficient resources so that she could access the curriculum equally with her able bodied friends, despite it being a legal requirement.
The only option pushed by Education Department staff to us was a "special school" where they could provide support for helping her go to the toilet, and have a aide available in the classroom. I am not here to "bash" the special school system as it is wonderful for MANY children. Problem is, being stuck in a room with only 5 or 6 other kids with varying disabilities (mostly intellectual) all day every day is hardly equipping students like my daughter to cope with the reality of commmunity life. Similarly when the majority of the teachers time is taken by students with significant behavioural issues, my child and a couple of the other students basically get no educational program delivered at all. I cannot honestly say that she has learnt anything in her equivalent first term as a "grade 8" student. Hardly acceptable in 2013. But there is no middle ground for our daughter... our options - a more intellectually stimulating environment, but one without appropriate support to keep her safe, and having equal access to learning unless we wage a significant stressful battle to ensure she is appropriately supported... OR an environment where we know she can get to to the toilet, but to quote her "is SO boring" that the highlight of her day is the bus ride, and that she is scared of the other students. So what am I supposed to do?
one of the problems is and this is a known fact that was published by the state teachers union last year is that private schools particularly in the eastern states were substantially overpaid per student which ran into the hundreds and thousands of dollars.... money which should have gone into public schools... I'm a firm believer that if you want your child to have private schooling then you should pay for it. not the government. why the federal government should be supporting private schooling still is beyond me when originally it was a free service funded by the churches they were affilliated with before public schooling was invented... I have had both types of education both public and private... they both have their upsides and their downsides... but even public schools arent created equal amongst themselves.... some have fantastic teachers and terrible resources and horrendous p and c's... with shocking community support whilst another can be in the same suburb a hundred metres down the road and be excellent. with a fantastic P&C, fantastic teachers, awsome family and community involvement and stretch their resources so that ALL kids dont get left behind no matter whether they paid their $50 dollar contribution or not... I love public schools and they get a raw deal and so do their kids... because the bad funding means they have to sacrifice things that are important or that could help encourage those 'bad' parents to become more proactive, or that would allow those dissadvataged children be on the same level as those in more affluent areas especially since many of them need specialist services (that they are on huge wait lists for), and specialist teachers including ESL just to name a few... and the ridiculous criteria a child has to meet before they are allowed to have extra funding for school because they have special needs but cant be placed in any particular category is just ridiculous... and i should know... both my children have special needs and dont meet the criteria not for school and not for centrelink even though they need and see 8 different medical and allied health specialties and that is just for starters...