



Gonski reforms: what would your school receive?


Jewel Topsfield, Craig Butt and Henrietta Cook


















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  • I would like to see a similar table for independant schools and understand why more people aren't voting in support. It seems like such an obviously sensible and fair system. I think the primeminister is doing a great job of trying to get this through in Victoria. I applaud it!

    Date and time
    June 17, 2013, 8:03AM
    • Well said Miss.

      Date and time
      June 17, 2013, 9:15AM
    • You applaud the fact that many schools will become more disadvantaged under this plan? Back to school for you!

      spin baby spin
      Date and time
      June 17, 2013, 9:19AM
    • Too true. I had an interesting conversation with a person who's children are going to on of the top private schools and it was very enlightening. The school has a budget (annual i.e. every year) for their Rugby union teams of $7million! It has built a stadium that would fit right in with the SCG. If the government did publish the tables on the funding to private schools like this there would be a lot more debate on the allocation of those funds because yes, every child should have access to adequate schooling for education purposes but if it is being used to subsidise non educational resources like massive stadiums the funding should not be provided. Yes, sport is an important part of a childs development however until all children have the same access to educational (i.e. the gaining of knowledge) resources the government should not be supporting it. This isn't a anti private school argument but a equitable distribution of resources argument which is what Gonski is trying to achieve and should be supported. Australia used to be a country of a fair go to all and Gonski is trying to achieve that.

      Date and time
      June 17, 2013, 9:25AM
    • appletree,

      It’s not “an obviously sensible and fair system” at all. It’s an improvement on what we have now, but with a dreadful consequence that apparently I am the only person in the country to see.

      By adopting the Gonksi plan, Labor is gradually moving schools off its own socially just education resources index model of the 1990s and onto the Coalition’s socially segregating socio-economic status funding model of the 2000s.

      Private schools are currently funded according to the average government school recurrent costs formula, which is illogical because it includes the extra costs of students with special needs even if they are not enrolled in the school being funded. The Gonski model fixes this problem by separating the funding of the mainstream student from the extra funding for students with additional needs.


      The SES funding model changed all that. It ignored school fees. It ignored school income. It funded schools on the basis of how well off the students’ neighbours were. It used census collector districts to determine how well off the neighbours were. This immediately penalised low-fee schools in well-off areas. No longer could they be accessible to poorer families.

      Chris Curtis
      Date and time
      June 17, 2013, 9:31AM
    • The result was the funding guaranteed promise. The public education lobby calls this ‘over-funding’. It looks at what a school would get under the absurd SES model, declares that to be the fair amount and condemns any extra. Yet the extra is compensation for the failings of the SES model. The ‘extra’ simply restores the school’s level of support to what it would have been if the SES model had never been introduced, to what it would have been if the school’s fees and other income were taken into account, to what it would have been under the previous Labor government.

      The Gonski panel wants to keep the SES model and then use a smaller number of neighbours, which makes as much sense as charging patients a particular fee in hospital according to how well of their neighbours are. In the long run, it wants government support to be based on the income of each parent whose child is at a private school. This changes the principle under which education is funded everywhere. If ‘capacity to pay’ becomes the principle for private school funding, it will become the principle for public school funding.

      The Gonksi model will socially stratify our schools because it says the more you earn the less your child gets. Thus, the wealthy, the middle and the poor all have to concentrate in their own schools because the funding system segregates them. A school that wants to take both middle class and poor students will not be able to because the presence of middle class students will cut its government funding and thus push up its fees and thus drive out the poor, who will end up at the public school. There is no better way to create public school ghettos than this Gonksi proposal.

      Chris Curtis
      Date and time
      June 17, 2013, 9:36AM
    • All school teachers applaud it. Now, can they tell us how much the kids education will improve for all the money?

      Date and time
      June 17, 2013, 10:13AM
    • I agree. But sadly, in Sydney at least, the whole attitude is that parents of private school students WANT to "buy an advantage" for their kids: they do not want all kids to have an equal opportunity, because it means that then they cannot effectively buy their kid a place at uni. I have actually had parents say to me that they feel it's fair that because they have more (lots) of money, they should be able to buy it ahead of others. They have a sense of entitlement because they've "worked hard & earned it, so why not". The fact that not all kids are lucky enough to have rich parents, who actually became that way mostly through inheritance rather then hard work or brains at all, doesn't occur to them, they just think "bad luck". It's vile.

      Everyone attacks Julia Gillard, this is a monumental change for the better.

      Date and time
      June 17, 2013, 10:25AM
    • Well said Lance.

      Date and time
      June 17, 2013, 10:33AM
    • Why aren't people voting in support? Because lots of people send their kids to independent and catholic schools, many of which will be worse off. And the system only includes more funding than the current system in NSW, Vic and Qld over the forward estimates. All other states are worse off than under the current arrangements (including national partnerships).

      Date and time
      June 17, 2013, 12:56PM

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