Impossible to guarantee no school will be worse off under Coalition funding arrangements

Updated

In the last of a spectacular series of backflips, on December 2 Prime Minister Tony Abbott agreed to honour agreements Labor had made with four states and the ACT to introduce school funding reforms recommended by the Gonski review over the next four years.

Mr Abbott also pledged an extra $1.2 billion in school funding for the Northern Territory and the two states that had not signed agreements with Labor.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten says the Government is still breaking an election promise.

"There's one question which Tony Abbott refuses to answer, there's one promise that he's clearly not keeping," Mr Shorten said. "The Coalition Government just need to say now to Australians what they said before the election: that no school will be worse off."

The claim: Opposition Leader Bill Shorten says the Coalition has broken its election promise that no school will be worse off than it would have been under Labor's Gonski funding plans.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten says the Coalition has broken its election promise that no school will be worse off than it would have been under Labor's Gonski funding plans. The verdict: Under the new arrangements it is impossible for the Commonwealth to guarantee no school will be worse off. Mr Shorten is correct.

The Gonksi agreements signed by Labor

The Gonski education reforms aim to place Australia in the top five countries internationally in reading, mathematics and science by 2025.

They are based on a needs-based funding model called the "schooling resource standard". This gives a base level of funding for each student with provisions for extra funding for disadvantaged students.

This may include a loading for students with a disability, low socio-economic status, or limited English language proficiency. Former prime minister Julia Gillard said in April the base payments would be $9,271 per primary school student and $12,193 per high school student.

New South Wales was the first state to sign an agreement in April. Subsequent agreements with Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT required the states to maintain existing levels of funding and commit to increasing it by 3 per cent a year. The Commonwealth committed to a 4.7 per cent rise in school funding. The federal government required the states to provide 35 per cent of the additional funding.

The Coalition changes its election policy

After Labor committed to the Gonski model in April, Coalition education spokesman Christopher Pyne spent months calling Labor's needs-based funding model a "conski not a Gonski". He said it was a "massive grab for power by Canberra" and predicted no states would sign agreements.

On August 2, with an election announcement imminent and several states signed up to the Gonski model, Mr Abbott changed the Coalition's rhetoric and announced it was on a "unity ticket" with Labor on school funding.

"As far as I am concerned, as far as Christopher Pyne is concerned, as far as the Coalition is concerned, we want to end the uncertainty by guaranteeing that no school will be worse off over the forward estimates," he said.

"So, we will honour the agreements that Labor has entered into. We will match the offers that Labor has made. We will make sure that no school is worse off."

A statement issued the same day said the Coalition would "dismantle all 'command and control' features imposed by Labor on the states, territories and non-government schools and any new funding will not be conditional upon a deal which reduces their authority over schools or creates unnecessary red tape".

A fresh tack in Government

After the Coalition won the election, Mr Pyne said on November 24 he was going back to the drawing board on school funding.

Under pressure to repeat the election promise that no school would be worse off, Mr Pyne said his Government would remove "command and control from Canberra" and treat state and territory governments like adults.

"We will have exactly the same funding envelope as Labor, but each state and territory applies the model the way they see fit," he said on November 27. "That's the way Labor set it up. That's the Shorten shambles that I am facing. So it's impossible to ask the federal minister for education to make a commitment that no school will be worse off because the federal minister doesn't decide that."

The Coalition's change of direction provoked strong criticism from the states that had signed agreements with Labor, and fears that funding earmarked for them would be transferred to other states.

On December 2, Mr Abbott announced "in principle" agreements with Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia. He placated the other states by confirming the funding that Labor had pledged them for four years and by committing an extra $1.2 billion under the three new in-principle agreements. The new federal funding would have "no strings attached," he said.

The unconditional agreements with Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia have raised concerns that with extra federal funding on the way, state funding might be moved out of schools and spent elsewhere, leaving schools with the same or lower funding.

The opposition spokeswoman for education, Kate Ellis, says the "no strings attached" funding means the Government can no longer pledge every school will get the same amount of funding as it would have under Labor.

"They cannot reassure the parents and students of schools right around Australia they will honour their word. Now unless in the latest agreements that they've made, they have guaranteed that state governments cannot cut education budgets, they cannot make that promise," she said.

But Mr Abbott says he doesn't want to run schools from Canberra. "We would certainly regard it as very poor form for the states to reduce their funding because they are getting extra funding from the Commonwealth, but what we don't want is to... try to run public schools out of Canberra and that was the problem with the original deal that the former government did," he said on December 2. "There were inspectors from Canberra, there was a whole lot of extra data gathering from Canberra."

Mr Pyne said the same day: "Every school in Australia will get more funding and will not be worse off because of anything that the Commonwealth does. As you would know the states in the end apply the model, but what the Commonwealth is doing means that no school, state or territory, can be worse off because of the Commonwealth’s actions."

Professor Richard Teese, director of the University of Melbourne's Centre for Research on Education Systems, told Fact Check removing command and control is "just relaxing the obligations the state governments have to the national 'schooling resource standard' and that's really worrying".

Professor Teese, whose research was used by the Gonski review, says the Gonski model is national and that's the whole point. It didn't differ with the different jurisdictions; it didn't differ with respect to public and private systems.

The Coalition Government has also not committed to honouring the Gonski agreements for years five and six when the majority of the $14.5 billion funding falls.

The verdict

Correct. During the election campaign Mr Abbott promised that no school would be worse off and that the Coalition would honour the agreements that Labor had entered into and match the offers Labor had made.

The Coalition has since refused to promise that no school will be worse off than it would have been under Labor's Gonski school funding plans.

Without requiring states to contribute state funds, to increase them over time, and to commit to funding up to the schooling resource standard, it is impossible for the Commonwealth to guarantee that no school will be worse off than under Labor.

Sources

Topics: schools, educational-resources, education, federal-government, alp, bill-shorten, australia

First posted