Education minister backs away from pre-election pledge to stick with reforms implemented by Labor

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

The education minister, Christopher Pyne, has not given himself enough time to create a fair and equal new school funding model and will come up with something “quick and dirty”, says Carmen Lawrence, a member of the committee that reviewed school funding and helped come up with the Gonski model.

Pyne's announcement that he would scrap the Gonski agreements with states, a territory and the independent and Catholic school sectors made under the previous government met with a chorus of criticism on Tuesday, including from his own side of politics.

The NSW premier, Barry O'Farrell, said "any reasonable minister" in Pyne's position would "pick up the phone and explain what the hell is going on" rather than making announcements through the media.

The NSW education minister, Adrian Piccoli, said Pyne must be "the only person in Australia" who believed in the model created by the Howard government, which seems likely to form the template for Pyne's new model, to be implemented in 2015.

Lawrence's fellow Gonski panel member Kathryn Greiner warned against a return to the "unaccountable, opaque, confusing" system the committee had wrestled to reform.

Before the election the Coalition said it was on a “unity ticket” with Labor over school funding, but in a media conference on Tuesday Pyne declined to commit to a needs-based funding model, or to promise that no school would be worse off.

“I will propose a new school funding model from the commonwealth which will be flatter, simpler, fairer to all the states and territories and equitable between students,” he said.

Lawrence, a former Western Australia Labor premier, was on the panel that reviewed school funding and delivered the report under its chairman, David Gonski. She said Pyne had not given himself enough time come up with a replacement model.

“It’s hard to anticipate the direction he is going in but if by a ‘flatter’ funding model he means the same amount of money going to schools regardless of need then it is a step backwards,” she said.

“It is not clear what he is proposing other than ‘if Labor did it then it must be bad’.”

Greiner said Pyne's thinking on the federal government's role was out of date.

"We're in a different paradigm now, we are not in that late 19th-century, early 20th-century thinking any more where states look after one thing and the commonwealth looks after another," she said. "The states and the commonwealth have to work together."

Greiner said the committee had been confronted with an inequitable school funding system in which the most disadvantaged child usually received the least help. She did not think Pyne would be able to come up with a funding model to address that in the timeframe he had given himself.

Asked whether Pyne understood how bad the social inequality in Australia's school system was, Greiner said: "I'm beginning to think he doesn't".

"The critical issue is the old funding was unaccountable, opaque, confusing and a mish-mash of commonwealth and state funding," she said.

Greiner said she hoped the change in policy on Gonski funding was not political. "I think our children's future is much more important than that," she said.

Lawrence said if the decision was made to “junk” the entire Gonski funding model then political motives had to be involved.

She said the Gonski panel was made up of people from different backgrounds and political values, and the panel was unanimous in recognising the inequality problem.

“Pyne has said nothing which says he understands how serious the social inequality problem is in schools,” Lawrence said.

“The funding model he comes up with will be quick and dirty, he can’t possibly create a proper schools funding model in that time.

“He can build on material we have collected but reaching a fair outline in three months seems impossible – but I don’t think that is his objective anyway.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Christopher Pyne says Labor has left the Coalition with a shambles and a $1.2bn shortfall.

Pyne said he had found a $1.2bn black hole in Labor’s school funding commitments.

"The implications for the new schools funding model are that the funding envelope is now $1.6bn as opposed to $2.8bn that Labor promised in the budget last year," Pyne told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday. "The cupboard is very bare."

The hole he was referring to was reported in August when the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook was released. It listed $1.2bn put aside for Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland as savings because they had not signed up for Gonski funding.

Pyne rejected suggestions he was breaking a pre-election promise, saying he was still committed to the same amount of funding, just not the Gonski model.

“We said before the election we would have a no-strings attached school funding model in time, the commonwealth would put the money it wanted to put in and whether the states and territories put the money they wanted to put in would be a matter for them. I never supported – and said so many times – the Labor party’s attempt to essentially insert the commonwealth in state and territory schools,” he said.

Pyne indicated the Coalition government might return to the Howard government school funding model and said he would not use any kind of committee, panel or review to help develop the new funding model.

O'Farrell said Pyne was acting like someone in opposition.

"In all my years in politics I have worked out that it is best to have respectful discussions and consultation in private, not through the media," O'Farrell told reporters in Sydney on Tuesday.

"Secondly, when you move into government you have to stop behaving like an opposition.

"This issue has escalated because of the poor way in which it has been handled and that is not acceptable when we are talking about the education of future generations of Australians."

O'Farrell said he had written to the prime minister, Tony Abbott, on Monday expressing his concerns and seeking assurances, but he had not heard back.

"I continue to be concerned in the way in which the federal education minister ... is dictating this debate through the media and not doing what any other reasonable minister, state or federal would do, which is pick up the phone and explain what the hell is going on."

Piccoli said Pyne had called him before the federal election, describing the coalition's stance on Labor's schools funding policy as a "unity ticket".

"I understand that is: you keep the model the same, the funding the same," Piccoli told reporters. "I expect him to honour that promise."

While next year's funding was safe, he said Pyne had placed into question future budgets.

Describing it as a "body-blow for education", Piccoli said the school sector was unanimous in its support for a needs-based funding model.

"He [Pyne] must be the only person in Australia who thinks the SES [Socio-Economic Status] model is a good model. The Gonski panel said no; if you walk into any school in NSW every teacher and principal would say no."

NSW and South Australia warned the federal government against walking away from the Gonski funding model on Monday and their calls to keep the funding arrangements were backed by Tasmania, Victoria and the Catholic schools sector.

Queensland joined the chorus on Tuesday, with treasurer Tim Nicholls saying he expected the commonwealth to deliver on promised funding.

"It's about $1.9bn over the forward forecasts and we're continuing to negotiate with them about the best way to get that money and get it into the schools," he told ABC radio.

"What we really want to talk about now is making sure we can get as much of that money into the schools and not into administration."

Before the 7 September election, Pyne said: “Schools need the certainty and states need the certainty to know that whether they vote Liberal or Labor they will get exactly the same amount of money.”

The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said the Coalition had broken an election promise.

"This is a very nasty surprise," Shorten said.

Assurances before the election that no school would be worse off under the Coalition were "designed to shut down a damaging political debate".

"It is now time for Mr Pyne to rule out that any schools would be worse off," Shorten said.

The Greens leader, Christine Milne, said the issue was a test of Abbott's trustworthiness.

"He's now essentially going back to the old scheme of the Howard years which led to huge levels of disadvantage in public education, and where those schools who already had lots got more, and those who had nothing, got very little," she said.

The executive director of the National Catholic Education Commission, Ross Fox, called for reassurance that Catholic education systems would not be worse off under the Coalition's new model.

“The minister has said today that the ‘funding envelope’ for school education over the next four years will remain the same," he said.

“Catholic education systems need certainty that overall funding levels for Catholic education will at least remain at currently projected levels under any new funding model."

Fox said the Catholic sector operated on a needs-based system.

Australian Education Union federal president Angelo Gavrielatos said Friday's meeting of the Ministerial Council for Education was a chance for states and territories to ensure funding was maintained.

"Mr Pyne has manufactured a crisis to suit the government's needs," Gavrielatos said.

"Education ministers must make clear on Friday that the Gonski agreements must be honoured in full, and the laws kept in place."