National Convenor of Save Our Schools, Trevor Cobbold, presented a paper on achievement gaps and school funding in Australia to the Annual Conference of the Independent Scholars Association of Australia in Canberra on 14 October.
The paper discusses the extent of achievement gaps between different groups of students, why equity in education matters and shows that the vast majority of educationally disadvantaged students are enrolled in government schools. Given these challenges, government schools are severely under-resourced compared to private schools. Yet, the largest increases in government funding have gone to private schools over the past decade.
A massive increase in funding for government schools is needed to close achievement gaps in Australia and turn its high quality, low equity school system into a high quality, high equity system.