The following is a slightly revised versions of a speech by Trevor Cobbold to the Schools Funding Conference, Why Money Matters in Education, held in Sydney on 18 February 20122. It can also be downloaded below. Please note that the figures on the over-funding of private schools were updated on 27 February.
Good morning, it is a privilege to be able to contribute to the 10th anniversary of the pathbreaking Gonski report. It was a watershed in the history of school funding in Australia because it made equity in education the centrepiece of education policy. Its legacy is enduring as its guiding principles provide the foundation to build an education system to improve equity in education.
As a point of departure, you will all remember that last year the currently suspended Minister for Education, Alan Tudge, announced that “the school funding wars are now over”. A few months later, the Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, who played a central role in the war, said that Catholic schools “has never had it so good” in terms of funding. As I will show, the same is also true for Independent schools, but they are more careful to keep quiet about it.
This is the outcome of the war that was declared on the Gonski report at the outset by the Liberal and National parties. Tudge has long opposed the model. He told the House of Representatives in February 2013 that the Gonski plan “will penalise schools, particularly Catholic and Independent ones.”. As the journalist, Paul Kelly, observed: “Abbott and Pyne refused to endorse Gonski…They tried to suffocate the policy at birth”.
Once in office, their priority was to trash the model and deliver to private schools, especially Catholic schools, and they succeeded. In this, they were aided by own goals by Labor. But the war is not over for public schools as the current state of school funding clearly demonstrates.
Continue reading “Get Gonski Back on Track”
