Education experts tell Simon Birmingham that changes could lead states to back out of Gonski 2.0

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Education minister Simon Birmingham should refuse to bow to the Catholic school sector’s demands over funding reform to avoid giving ammunition to state governments eager for an excuse to back out of Gonski 2.0 commitments, education experts have warned.

Advocates have warned any concession to the non-government sector could have implications when the commonwealth sits down to negotiate a long-term funding deal with state governments later this year.

“If special deals get done for one group or sector of schools, everyone will want one,” said Peter Goss, of the the Grattan Institute.

“In fact, each stakeholder’s incentive becomes to argue for the best special deal they can get, rather than living within the system and using the money they’ve got to best effect.

“If Birmingham blinks, all bets are off.”

The government’s stoush with the private school sector over funding has played out virtually uninterrupted since the education minister stared down opposition from the Catholic sector to pass his Gonski 2.0 funding deal through the Senate last year.

The new deal introduced a needs-based model that calculated private school funding based on a school’s socioeconomic status, and the capacity of parents at individual schools to pay fees.

Quick guide Education funding Australia Show Hide What are the education funding wars? Since the Whitlam government introduced ongoing federal government funding for public and private schools in the 1970s, debates around equity in Australian education funding have continued uninterrupted. In 2011 the Gillard government sought to make school funding fairer through the Gonski model, which recommended a schooling resource standard based on a “needs-based” formula. But the original Gonski model was undermined by Labor’s promise that "no school will lose a dollar" under the reforms, locking in over-funding of some private schools. The Gillard government also signed a number of special deals to pass the reforms. What happened next? In 2017 education minister Simon Birmingham passed the Gonski 2.0 reforms. They sought to unwind the complicated “special deals” so funding could be allocated more fairly. It meant some over-funded independent and Catholic schools would lose funding over the next decade. Who’s unhappy with the deal? Pretty much everyone. Birmingham’s reforms unwound the complicated funding deals that formalised inequity in Australian education, but he’s faced significant pushback at every turn. The states didn’t like the deal because it required them to raise their funding to public schools, and many only signed up after the commonwealth threatened to withhold funding. But the main game has been the Catholic sector, who have fought tooth and nail to win concessions. Gonski 2.0 recalculated the way private schools were funded based on parents capacity to pay fees. The Catholic sector argues this formula unfairly targets them and would force them to raise fees.

It replaced the previous system-weighted funding model that allocated money to systematic Catholic schools on a fixed statewide basis, and meant some Catholic schools in middle and high-income areas would lose funding.

The government agreed to review the SES formula after lobbying from the Catholic sector. The review was handed down in June and recommended using data on parents’ income and family size to recalculate government payments.

It was a win for the Catholic sector, with recommendations that stakeholders believe would trigger a redistribution of up to $100m a year from independent to Catholic schools.

But despite that, the sector has only beat the drum louder. Catholic education officials flexed their lobbying muscle by writing to parents on the eve of the Longman byelection claiming a $40m “disadvantage” to Brisbane Catholic schools under the new funding model.

At the heart of the Catholic argument is that it should be able to offer a low-fee alternative to independent private schools, and Goss speculates that means the review of the SES won’t satisfy hardliners within the sector.

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“Some Catholic leaders feel that low fees for all Catholic primary schools are an essential part of Catholic education and that factor overrides how much the parents could pay,” he said. “People with that view will never be satisfied by an SES score that genuinely tries to estimate how much families can contribute.”

Either way, it has placed pressure on Birmingham and the Turnbull government from MPs within the Liberal party room worried about the effect of a campaign from the Catholic sector at the next election.

Since then both the prime minister and Birmingham have been in negotiations with the sector in an attempt to reach a compromise – so far unsuccessfully.

The unrest from the Catholic sector has also prompted the independent school sector to weigh into the debate, writing to the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, to warn that striking a “special deal” with Catholic schools could see a return of “funding wars” between the sectors.

Public schools advocates have watched the three-pronged battle play out on the sidelines. Government school funding was essentially dealt with after the Gonski 2.0 funding deal was struck last year, and public schools are not impacted by the make-up of the SES.

But if the government does renegotiate its deal with the Catholic or independent sector, some argue it would embolden state governments to push back against the funding arrangements.

While no state minister would comment on the record for this story, officials within state governments have told the Guardian it would “definitely” lead to a push back by some of the states.

The Gonski 2.0 deal was unpopular with states such as Victoria and South Australia partly because it required them to lift their overall school funding contributions while lowering the projected overall commonwealth funding from what the previous Labor government had committed to.

The former SA education minister Susan Close had threatened not to sign the deal until the commonwealth threatened to withhold funding from the state.

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Close, now the opposition education spokeswoman in SA, said the campaign from the Catholic sector was evidence that state governments should “stand up [and] demand fair funding from their federal colleagues” and fight a long-term funding deal.

“The impending deal with the Catholic sector is proof that standing up to this white flag prime minister is the only road to fairer funding for schools in South Australia,” she said.

“Minister Birmingham has said that the reason he cut school funding was to end the so-called ‘special deals’ put in place by the former Labor government, yet he is now capitulating to pressure from the Catholic sector.”

The government’s negotiations with the Catholic sector relate to the data underpinning the SES model. The government argues that if it did alter the data it would not constitute a “special deal” outside of the existing funding agreement.

At a speech in Canberra this week he said the government “won’t be doing side deals with one or another” sector.

On Tuesday he told the Guardian the government’s commitments had not changed.

“The commitment we made last year was that, over a six to 10-year transition horizon, every Australian non-government school would receive 80% of its schooling resource standard from the federal government, consistently, according to the same needs-based formula,” he said.