We have been told for years that the Gonski funding model is “sector-blind” and “needs-based”. It is neither.
Imagine that when you catch the train to work in the money your fare is tripled because the other passengers in your carriage have wealthy neighbours. You would regard that as outrageous. Yet that is how the Gonski school funding model operates.
LEARN MOREThe Turnbull Variation on the Gonski Variation on the Howard School Funding Model
Chris Curtis
The Turnbull government has decided to endorse the Gonski funding model for schools but do it more cheaply than Labor intended. This not surprising because the Gonski funding model is the Coalition’s 2001 socio-economic status funding model under a new name, “capacity to contribute”, and saving money is a necessary budget strategy. This move has outraged Catholic education authorities because of what it will do to their schools. Other schools will be equally damaged, but the Catholic system is by far the biggest and the most organised in the non-government sector, so it is the one we hear most from.
LEARN MORE1. Doom and Gloom
Education has often suffered from a climate of doom. Victoria had a particularly awful government between 1992 and 1999.
Vouchers are often touted as the solution to all sorts of educational problems. After all, what could be simpler than working out what it costs to educate a child, handing over that amount to the parents of each child either directly or notionally for them to pass to a school of their choice, allowing them to add their own money and then letting the free market rip (à la the private vocational educational providers about which so much has been revealed in the past year)?
LEARN MOREThere is a long tradition of claiming that education spending has increased by various dramatic amounts in Australia, but any careful examination of these claims shows that they are either false or meaningless.
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