industry & reform
Ten years gone
Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard and David Gonski at the launch of the report in Canberra in February 2012 . Photo : Ray Strange
A look at the legacy of the Gonski report .
Tom Greenwell and Chris Bonner interviewed by Eleanor Campbell
It ’ s been over a decade since the release of the Gonski report , the most significant school funding review in Australia ’ s recent history .
The report , handed down in late 2011 , proposed a fairer funding model to give children a high-quality education , no matter where they came from .
It contained 41 recommendations and allocated $ 5 billion per year to school funding .
Ten years later experts say that private school fees have increased by 4.5 per cent , state government funding to public schools has been cut , and national school results have declined .
A new book Waiting for Gonski : How Australia failed its schools traces the string of policy decisions and events that led us to this point .
Education Review spoke with the book ’ s authors , Canberra-based teacher and writer Tom Greenwell and former secondary school principal and writer Chris Bonner AM .
ER : What insights did the Gonski Report give us into the gaps in our education system ? TG : I guess the first big one is the gap in resourcing , given the educational path that different schools face . Money wasn ’ t being allocated according to need ; and Gonski found that the best resourced school sector , the independent sector , enrolled fewer disadvantaged students .
Overall , the Gonski Report concluded that our funding system was illogical , inconsistent and opaque . And in doing that , it really confirmed a large range of existing research . But then there was a second big gap that I think it revealed , which was more original and less well-known . And that concerned the gaps between schools in terms of the students they enrolled .
One of the most important achievements of the Gonski Report , I believe , was that it identified how concentrating disadvantaged children together was having a very negative impact on their learning outcome . The phenomenon education researchers call peer effect . And Gonski even pointed to research which indicated that student achievement was actually more affected by the social background of a child ’ s peers , than that of their parents .
Gonski reported that the overwhelming majority of disadvantaged students – low income , indigenous , low English proficiency , disabled , and kids from the country as well – were in public schools . So our schools were operating with very different obligations , and serving very , very different student populations , and that was really having a big impact on student outcomes .
Chris , from your perspective , what were the greatest findings of the original report ? CB : It ’ s almost like a joining of dots between things like resources and the impact of peers , because the review revealed that disadvantaged students , with three years of learning , were behind their more privileged peers . And he certainly put that on the table .
Disadvantaged young people were all starting school behind their peers , and they were falling further behind . Gonski drew very clear attention to that .
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