THIS week the Federal Education Minister gave the deck chairs on the Titanic a fresh coat of varnish.

But anyone suffering under the delusion that he changed anything fundamental about our education system, or how it’s funded, needs to step away from the political spin machine.

On Tuesday Simon Birmingham and Malcolm Turnbull proudly declared their plan to ‘transform Australian Schools.’ The plan involved giving a little bit more money to public schools, accelerating the pace that some private schools were bought into line with the needs-based model and making it harder for wealthy systemic schools (such as those in the Catholic and Lutheran systems) to manipulate their funding.

The States breathed a grudging sigh of relief because it was more than the nothing they feared might be in the package for them. The independent schools didn’t mind too much because at least tax payer funding would (mostly) still increase. And the Catholics hated it because it probably meant they would no longer be able to rob Peter to pay Paul (use funding for small country schools to subsidise their flagship inner city schools).

None of these ‘reforms’ is a bad thing. They undo a lot of the special deals done for rent-seekers when Labor implemented the Gonski reforms. And, allowed to run their course, they will result in a slightly more equitable and a marginally more administrable education funding model.

The only real problem is that this clearing of the cobwebs will do absolutely nothing about the elephant sitting in the middle of the classroom. That elephant is the $12 billion a year of taxpayer subsidy being thrown at the private businesses we call non-government schools.

For the better part of a century, the Australian taxpayer contributed nothing to non-government education. This was a very intentional choice. We had decided that the taxpayer-funded, church-run system we had before was an inequitable, rolling disaster which educated only the rich and everyone else could get stuffed.

media_camera It’s no surprise Catholic schools have protested the government’s funding changes. (Pic: News Corp)

But in 1964, a generation of politicians who had not lived through the church-run division and inequity of the previous century caved into the temptation of using school funding as a vehicle for pork barrelling. Schools are a fantastic vote-buyer. A pollie who manages to squeeze a little more money into the tin at the local school can sell themselves as a hero. Nobody would look that gift horse in the mouth.

So every year since then the amount of taxpayer funds channelled to the private sector has inexorably increased. It now burns through about the same money as the ABC and SBS added together and multiplied by nine. For students following along that’s (ABC + SBS) x 9.

We remain on a very expensive freight train of government subsidy of private choices. We allow people to opt out of a government service and then send us a bill for obtaining the same service from a private provider. We are happy to buy a car for the chap who finds public transport distasteful.

We had built a high quality, public, secular system that offered a free education to everybody. It was the envy of the world. But we have allowed private interests and political expediency to drive us back towards the wreckage that was the colonial education system in the 1850s.

media_camera Rural, remote and poorer schools are the losers under the current funding model. (Pic: Naomi Jellicoe)

We have reinvented a system that embeds inequity and division. Besides the inherent discrimination in the entry fee, privately-run schools are also largely exempt from discrimination laws. They are permitted to pick and choose who they will or will not be bothered trying to educate.

Meanwhile it is government-run schools doing the heavy lifting. They teach seven times as many students classified by the ABS as living “very remotely’’ and four times as many classed as being “remote’’. They also educate 3.3 times as many children with a disability.

The only thing worse than spending a motza on making our education system inequitable is doing that, and getting a worse result. Consistent testing tells us a modern Australian student is performing at a level about a quarter of a year behind their 1964 peer. And if that’s not bad enough, that same student is now more than two years behind the highest performing school systems in the world. The rest of the world has rushed forward while we have drifted backwards.

Not only have taxpayers gained nothing for their extraordinary generosity, they have ended up with a system in deep, and accelerating, trouble. But we knew that would happen. It’s one of the reasons we stopped doing it the first time around.

So let’s worry less about which “private” schools will get slightly less government money and worry more about why they are getting any at all.

David Gillespie is a lawyer and the author of Free Schools, How to get your kids a great education without spending a fortune.