industry & reform
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big loophole , which means the states don ’ t actually have to get kids all the way up to that resourcing standard .
The other problem for public schools is that in large parts , because of the ‘ No school loses a dollar ’ commitment , increased Commonwealth funding to public schools has been delayed , and delayed again . So it just hasn ’ t come in the volume to really lift public schools up to where Gonski said they have to be in order to preserve the students they enrolled .
In fact , on the current trajectory , public schools in most jurisdictions will only reach about 90 per cent of the needs-based funding allocation by 2030 .
Then on the flip side , with private schools the starting point was that the overwhelming majority of their funding came from the Commonwealth Government . And the ‘ No school loses a dollar ’ promise meant that even overfunded schools ended up receiving annual indexation above the rate of inflation . So real increases in real terms , and private schools have been benefiting from that every year .
Private schools , at the school resource standard , are receiving real funding increases every year . So that ’ s why private schools have benefited so much , and in conjunction with special deals with State Governments which have also maintained higher levels of State Government funding to private schools .
What future implications do you think we ’ ll start to see , particularly with students , if we continue to see this sort of inequity continue ? CB : We can actually plot the trends over the last 10 years , using My School data , which shows trends that aren ’ t diminishing . We are seeing high SES schools , the ones enrolled with advantaged kids , are getting bigger , and they ’ re accumulating more advantaged students .
At the other end of the scale low SES schools , mainly in the government sector , but not entirely , are not growing , and they ’ re accumulating a larger proportion of the most disadvantaged students . To see that over just eight or so years , came as a real shock to us , and there ’ s no indication that this is changing .
If we continue to do that we ’ re going to just accumulate the deficits , the large numbers of strugglers in the same school , precisely because of those peer effects and the difficulties that staff have with large numbers . We can parachute the very best teachers into the struggling school , but at the same time the more advantaged students in those schools are heading out the back door .
Until we solve the problems that we ’ ve created by dividing up kids into advantaged schools and disadvantaged schools our overall achievement rates in Australia are going to shit . To me , that ’ s the biggest concern , the one that ’ s very , very measurable , and the one that ’ s going to create real deficits , not only for schools and for kids , but for the whole country .
TG : The Gonski Report concluded that about half a million Australian kids were leaving school each year without the basic skills they need to succeed in life . And since that point , our results in international PISA tests have continued to decline , to the point that Australian 15 year olds are now about a year of learning behind where they were in 2000 .
It really means we are sending off a whole lot of young people into our community , into their adult lives , without equipping them with the skills they need to succeed . And that affects us all . Even in the narrowest economic terms , the price of investing in success is so much less than the cost of failure .
What realistic adjustments we can make to create a more inclusive school system ? TG : I think it ’ s useful to start with a really concrete example . If you think about the school system in a place like Canada , all tax payer funded schools are fully tax payerfunded and free . If you go to Ontario , for instance , a Catholic school there is just as Catholic as Catholic schools in Australia . They have control over their curriculum , their ethos , their hiring , and so on , but they ’ re also free to the user . That means that for Canadian Catholics , their schools are a lot more inclusive , and poorer Catholics are able to access those schools . So there ’ s much greater equity , and Canadian students outperform Australian students very significantly , and have done consistently for the last couple of decades .
What Chris and I call for in the book is a level playing field , with common resourcing and regulations for all tax payer-funded schools , which we believe can create equity and allow for choice , and recognise that there are different
Our schools are more segregated than in countries like Russia and Tunisia .
preferences , and different religious or educational characteristics that parents want their children to get at school .
But we can do that without creating this socio-economic hierarchy at school that Australia has at the moment , which is causing so many problems .
CB : There ’ s an opportunity now that may have existed in Gonski ’ s time , but certainly exists now , and that is that governments actually provide very similar levels of funding to government schools , and also to non-government schools enrolling similar kids . And this happens all the way up and down the SES scale .
The very idea that we have public schools in Australia , and we have almost equally funded non-government schools , gives governments some potential leverage . What if they were to say : ‘ Look , we will completely fund your school but on certain conditions : that you don ’ t have the ease to discriminate against children .’ That includes some government schools that discriminate in their enrolment practice .
If we can reduce these levels of discrimination that are dividing our kids between advantaged schools and disadvantaged schools , we ’ re going to go so much further down the road towards countries like Canada that Tom was talking about . We have the leverage now , we should use it .
TG : That background assumption that private schools save the tax payer money , it ’ s one of those assumptions that forms the background of debate but is never really critically examined . When you hold it up to the light , it falls apart . And we look at it in detail in the book .
We argue there ’ s a series of assumptions like that , and it ’ s really time that we examine them thoroughly . If we don ’ t , we ’ re bound to continue on exactly the same trajectory we ’ ve been on , and to experience the continuing decline in results , and the growing gap between kids from different advantage backgrounds , and kids who are luckier in the circumstance that they ’ re born into . ■
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