Herald editorial on Gonski
I guess all school leaders have become cynical over the past ten years. The shenanigans of the various Teachers Federations during the period have been more than unedifying, and the unwillingness of the elite schools to acknowledge inequities in schools is just plain greedy.
Most disappointing has been the focus on school funding to the exclusion of questions of quality. Spending $5 billion will achieve nothing if development and accountability is not built into the funding arrangements for every school and every system. Getting rid of layers of bureaucracy – death to the DET – would also be helpful. Why not federalise all funding? Fund and staff every school independently, and let schools accept tenders from service and admin providers.
This clipping is from the February 21 issue of The Sydney Morning Herald Digital Edition. To subscribe for $4.50 a week, visit http://smh.com.au/digitaledition.
Copyright © 2012 The Sydney Morning Herald
Gonski was hamstrung from the start.
LABOR does not talk about its program much any more. Since Gough Whitlam the word is out of favour. But Labor does have a program and, bit by bit it is getting through it, though from the noise and smoke surrounding the leadership an observer might wonder.
The review of school funding chaired by David Gonski can be seen as central to the program of both the Rudd and Gillard governments. School funding lies at the intersection of two policy currents fundamental to modern Labor: the economy and the efficient management of public finance, and universal education as a vehicle to deliver social progress. Though one may legitimately debate how well the Rudd and Gillard governments have managed public finances in other areas, the school funding problems Gonski tackles are largely not of their making. His review was asked to find a way to fix school funding, state and federal, which has grown piecemeal over decades into a Heath Robinson-like contraption – a fundamentally unfair one, a product of temporary fixes and vote-buying . It is therefore deeply unfortunate that, because it has been delivered at a time of Labor’s parliamentary and organisational weakness, this thorough, praiseworthy attempt to bring fairness to a complex and sensitive field is likely to fall by the wayside.
Gonski was hamstrung from the start by the requirement that any change produce no losers. Inevitably, it had to recommend that the government spend a lot more on schools to bring the disadvantaged up to the level the privileged attained long ago. Given the tight federal budget and the promise of an early return to surplus, the government cannot contemplate Gonski’s recommended $5 billion-a-year funding boost – never mind that Australia’s school performance is slipping, according to international comparisons. It is not surprising the government has responded to the report by saying it will now consult widely before doing anything. Labor lacks the budgetary means and the political strength to address this issue. So like a child asking for the impossible, Gonski has been told: “We’ll see.”
Given the circumstances, probably the best way forward from here is to build a national consensus that school funding remains a problem to be solved – and an urgent one. If Canberra’s consultations with the states and others can elicit consensus about measures of funding and disadvantage and ways to reduce the latter, then something positive – not a lot, but something – can be salvaged from this well-intended , thoughtfully produced, much-anticipated lost opportunity.
Copyright © 2012 The Sydney Morning Herald
Chris
Gonski has tried IMHO to come up with a model that balances a needs approach with a choice approach.
What the Gonski report suggests is what we all have known is needed for almost 50 years – a voucher system.
Cleverly (& David Gonski is nothing if not clever), he has come up with a variant of vouchers that doesn’t create an actual voucher.
The problem with the solution that Gonski has suggested is that the terms of reference said that no school could receive less than it gets under the present “system”. That’s why he suggests an extra $5 bn pa – that’s the amount of the inefficiency of the current system’s allocations.
If the ALP hadn’t wasted many billions on BER , and if the budget hadn’t been blown on bloating the APS, and if Gonski could have recommended reallocations of current funding, the solution would be budget-neutral. Those constraints (or errors) mean that the sensible suggestions will be lost in the manic desire to balance a budget which is being thrown out of whack by the holy cows of this & other misguided policies (this misguided policy is no loss of funding to any school; other misguided policies – take your pick, but I can find more than $5bn pa before I break the top off tomorrow’s boiled egg :))
I agree with much of what you say except for the comment on the BER, which – for all except NSW government schools – was a howling success and a godsend, particularly for more needy schools (we got nuffin, but that was OK). The Digital Revolution similarly saved each school something in the order of a million dollars. Trying to save that money for next time is pretty challenging, and I promise you that without Federal Funding, the state sector will fall behind because the improvidence of the DET. I’d like to get rid of the inefficiencies, on social justice grounds, and I believe that the area of greatest need lies mostly in the public sector, which is essential to our national life and values. I just don’t think state systems as we currently have them can compete with the (subsidised) non-gov sector. Vouchers have merit, but they will be the nail in the coffin of equity if nothing is done about school governance, accountability and teacher quality.
I bet you an egg I can find the $5 billion before you can, though! Cheers