Are you as confused as I am about exactly what is being proposed regarding schools funding?

I have laboured mightily to understand how what is being called Gonski 2.0 works and who will win and who will lose. My focus is on how it will play for our most disadvantaged kids, most of whom, for perfectly obvious reasons, attend public ( non-fee charging) schools.

Such a focus makes perfect sense when you consider all three iterations of Gonski have been presented as needs-based and sector-blind. If each version of Gonski lives up to that claim, then public schools should be the biggest winners, regardless of anything else.

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But before we get into that, allow me to introduce to you the three Gonskis.

The first was what I call the original Gonski, recommended by the Gonski review panel, headed by David Gonski (hence the name of all three). The major components of the original Gonski included instituting a School Resource Standard (SRS) that all schools would be funded to reach. The review recommended an independent body be created to manage and define the SRS. Gonski the First recommended that a combination of federal and state funding (and in the case of non-government schools, private funding) be used to bring all schools up to the SRS. The review said that the traditional model of the state government taking primary responsibility for funding state schools, while feds primarily funded private ones was “out of date, confusing, misleading, unbalanced and undesirable”. The report authors suggested a split of 70% state funding with 30% federal funding, moving closer to a 50/50 split of all recurrent funding for all schools over time.

This Gonski also included loadings for disadvantage that would go to any school, regardless of sector, enrolling students who qualified. Such students might be disabled, Indigenous, rural, remote, from a non-English speaking background or just plain poor. Because public schools (again for perfectly obvious reasons) enrol over 80% of such kids, the major beneficiaries of such loadings would be public schools.

So far, so reasonable, it seemed to me, but that Gonski never existed beyond a set of recommendations. If it had, the kids in need of the most support would have been the biggest winners. The original Gonski certainly passed the needs-based, sector-blind test.

Immediately (well after a year or more), the Gillard government announced Gonski 1.0. The idea of an independent body in charge of the SRS was scrapped and the funding split became 65% federal money and 35% state. The loadings remained and the Gillard government adopted a transition period of six years for all schools to reach the SRS.

OK, not quite as sensible as the original Gonski – the continued over-funding of some schools that were no longer enrolling many disadvantaged kids and were already above the SRS was a waste of money. Ditching the plan of setting up the independent body was worrying, but making the commonwealth pick up more of the additional cost was sensible. Most importantly, the kids who needed the most help would still get it. Gonski the Second was also, therefore, mostly needs based and mostly sector blind.

Now we get to Gonski 2.0. In its original form, there were things that I liked about it. I liked the fact that some schools above the SRS would lose some funding. I liked that the old special deals were to go. This was sensible and fiscally responsible. The loadings remained and the concept of the SRS – a standard of resources for all schools so they were properly equipped to do their job – was retained, plus 2.0 took a proper approach to indexation. All well and good.

What I didn’t like was that now our most disadvantaged schools would have to wait 10 years to reach the SRS. Given that a child’s school life only lasts 13 years in total, that did not bode well for our poorest five year olds.

What worried me the most, however, was whether Gonski 2.0 could really be described as either needs-based or sector blind. You see, everything described above was in one or other of the previous Gonskis, but 2.0 contained something very new and it sent a cold shiver down my spine. It was also directly contrary to the spirit of the original review recommendations.

Gonski the Third wants to legislate that the federal government would provide 80% of the total public funding required to bring private schools to the SRS – in perpetuity, one imagines, no matter what happens.

For public schools, the federal government would provide a measly 20% of the total public funding required to bring public schools to the standard with the remaining 80% to be provided by the states. (What happened to it being “out of date, confusing, misleading” etc, one wonders?)

As the Gonski review acknowledged, there is nothing new about this. Federal governments have usually provided only 15-18% of their funding to state schools, but the split has never been enshrined in legislation before. Which begs the question, given that the legislation is predicated entirely on which sector gets what, can Gonski 2.0 really claim to be sector blind?

What frightens me most about this is that we will be enshrining in law that our poorest kids must rely almost totally on the most cash-strapped level of government for the majority of their funding, while our more fortunate kids would rely on the richest. Maybe it’s just me, but this doesn’t seem sensible, logical or needs-based.

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Worse, once again for perfectly obvious reasons, many of the poorest kids tend to live in the poorest states like Tasmania and the Northern Territory. Those state governments earn even less revenue than the others. If we have legislated an 80/20 split, and a state government can’t meet its obligations or cuts or freezes its funding (it happens all the time), there is nowhere for those kids to turn. Fee-charging schools can always raise their fees or engage in tax-deductible fundraising. For public schools it’s government funding or nothing, especially for the schools serving our poorest communities. If this funding split is passed, it gives the federal government no flexibility to step in and help no matter how badly needed.

Pardon me for asking, but how can this be considered a needs-based funding scheme?

Maybe the Greens amendments can make Gonski 2.0 more acceptable, but as it stands, it strikes me that while Gonski the Third has been dressed up as needs-based and sector-blind, as far as I can see, that’s exactly what’s been stripped away.