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The Forum > Article Comments > Gonski is just bazaar > Comments

Gonski is just bazaar : Comments

By Scott Prasser, published 1/8/2013

Genuine debate has been lost in pseudo consultation – headlines at a thousand paces, you show me your figures I’ll show you mine.

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The agreement of the non-government sector is an issue. The fact that the Australian Education Act 2013 binds it to the new arrangements is politically irrelevant as the non-government sector has the power to cause political damage to the government if it dislikes being bound by that act.

Of course the Gonski review “failed to address many key issues in Australian schooling”. Of course “the report’s overwhelming focus was on money…”. It was a funding review, not a review into everything to do with education. It was called the Review of Funding for Australian Schooling. Complaining that it was what is was supposed to be instead of something else is like complaining that the most recent drama you saw was not a comedy.

Perhaps Scott Prasser could say how the “education package … fails tests of transparency, fairness, financial sustainability and effectiveness in promoting excellent educational outcomes” rather than just claiming that it does. Its key fault is that it keeps the Howard government’s SES funding model in place, a fact obvious the day the report was released but not mentioned once in any article I have read on the web or in any newspaper other than The Australian, which has mentioned it once only in the last 17 months.

There will be no “glimmer of hope is if the Coalition wins government” because the Coalition, like Labor will keep the SES model in place.

The Gonski plan fixes two of the three serious problems in education funding – the AGSRC formula and the disproportionate federal spending on private schools. It makes the third problem – the SES model – worse because it forces all those schools protected from it onto it.

I have provided a much longer discussion of the issues at http://community.tes.co.uk/tes_opinion/f/31/t/576719.aspx?PageIndex=1.
Posted by Chris C, Thursday, 1 August 2013 10:46:52 AM
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So Gonski is some kind of Oriental trading place?
Posted by Kevo, Thursday, 1 August 2013 11:08:25 AM
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I suggest that the author, and those who take the trouble to read the article, make the effort to watch the address by Dr Pasi Sahlberg to a full house of the Dean's lecture series at Melbourne University during September last year.

Pause the video and have a good look at the charts, maybe even take a page photo of the best.

Pasi Sahlberg is the Executive Director of the Education Department of Finland, the country with the best country wide education system in the world. It took Finland 30 years to get from an also ran to best.

The video is at;
http://events.unimelb.edu.au/recordings/68-how-finland-remains-immune-to-the-global-educational-reform-movement
Posted by Foyle, Thursday, 1 August 2013 12:17:10 PM
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Chris C - re 'Perhaps Scott Prasser could say how the “education package … fails tests of transparency, fairness, financial sustainability and effectiveness in promoting excellent educational outcomes” rather than just claiming that it does.'

I can help with that explanation, although the word limit means I'll have to do it in installments....

The four criteria listed by Prof Prasser are from the Terms of Reference of the Gonski Review. With regard to each:

1. Transparency - as far as I'm aware, only a handful of analysts in education departments around the country (and DEEWR itself) have actually been privy to the very large, very complex Excel spreadsheet that represents that funding calculator. I doubt very much that the new PM or Federal Education Minister have even been presented with a thorough analysis of the model's outputs, let alone seeing the spreadsheet itself and understanding how unworkable and open to question it is. Due to the many variables, assumptions, projections, estimates and also the 'tweaks' that have been negotiated into the model, including 'implicit' assumptions (e.g. getting to 95% of the SRS was in the former PM's speech notes after announcing her NSW win but the 95% figure does not appear anywhere in the legislation, regulations, NERA or NPSI), it is basically impossible for anyone to comprehend. It is certainly not simple - especially compared to the AGSRC/SES model which can be explained fairly well in a single paragraph using only around five parameters/amounts.
Posted by Phaedrus, Thursday, 1 August 2013 12:24:35 PM
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Chris C - re 'Perhaps Scott Prasser could say how the “education package … fails tests of transparency, fairness, financial sustainability and effectiveness in promoting excellent educational outcomes” rather than just claiming that it does.'

2. Fairness - As I've demonstrated previously using publicly released figures on the proposed increased 2013-2019 per student per school public funding amounts (%) - online and publicly available courtesy of the former PM and Education Minister - the SRS model attracts the largest amounts of additional funding toward large schools which can achieve economies of scale; whereas a substantial number of smaller, remote and more disadvantaged schools throughout Australia would be fixed to a minimum level of funding indexation for at least the next six years regardless of what happens to their cost indexation because the Australian Government deems these disadvantaged schools to be 'over-resourced'.
Posted by Phaedrus, Thursday, 1 August 2013 12:25:41 PM
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Chris C - re 'Perhaps Scott Prasser could say how the “education package … fails tests of transparency, fairness, financial sustainability and effectiveness in promoting excellent educational outcomes” rather than just claiming that it does.'

3. Financial sustainability - (a) At least two states and one territory government say they can't afford to stump up their 'share' as determined by the Australian Government, and others such as NSW may be overly-optimistic about their ability to afford 100% of their SRS recurrent funding level post-2019 (given that 2020 onwards doesn't seem to have factored into any discussions). (2) Apart from the quantum of taxpayer funding at stake, the fact that most of the additional funding is attracted to larger and typically more high-achieving schools (as described above and easily testable by yourself or anyone else using online figures courtesy of the Australian Government) would suggest that a sizeable amount of public funding is to be essentially wasted rather than targeted toward socio-educational disadvantage. In Queensland, the Teachers Union was recently spouting on about how good the funding model is because Ashgrove - one of the highest SES suburbs in Brisbane - would get millions of extra dollars - now that's definitely 'bazaaar' (though not less bizarre than other nonsense spouted by the QTU in the past few years). The untargetted nature of the SRS funding is highlighted by (i) the very loose association between the proposed SRS national funding model and the NPSI (National Plan for School Improvement) and also (ii) the mixed messages coming from the Australian Government as to whether the SRS is in fact meant to determine a school-level funding amount or if this level of allocation is to be left to systems, as seems to be the position negotiated by the NSW Government and the national Catholic system.
Posted by Phaedrus, Thursday, 1 August 2013 12:26:35 PM
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