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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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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.'

4. Effectiveness - In my opinion this criterion should never have actually been included in the Terms of Reference for the funding review. The effectiveness of funding is determined by how it is spent, not how it is allocated. There is very little evidence that funding architecture can influence incentives to achieve outcomes, except possibly in the form of the existing National Partnership arrangements if they were run in a more up-front manner by the Australian Government, rationalised and associated with less red tape. For much more information on why more money does not always equal better learning outcomes, refer to W. Norton Grubb's wonderful book 'The Money Myth' : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/norton-grubb/more-than-money-needed-to_b_205779.html.
Posted by Phaedrus, Thursday, 1 August 2013 12:27:06 PM
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Hi Scott,

Thanks for your very timely article.

There is only one pot of money.

The question is, how to divide it ?

At the same time as $3 billion was ripped out of the tertiary sector to fund schools, $3 billion extra spending was announced for road infrastructure investment in NSW, due to population growth.

The reality check is that we are selling assets on a massive scale, borrowing on a massive scale , collapsing university funding and sacking scientists...and we still can't provide for our existing population .

Time to stablise our population growth rate of an extra 1.2 million people every 3 years .

"Better not Bigger" and become a role model for the rest of the world, which must stablise rapidly , in order to stop the destruction of the
environment and design out poverty.

No more wishful thinking and worse , lies. Vote for the Stable Population Party (google) in the Senate and selected lower house seats and send a message .

Catholics are waking-up to the growth stupidity . For example your "Paul Collins" is a saint on this one .

Best,

Ralph
Posted by Ralph Bennett, Thursday, 1 August 2013 7:45:42 PM
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Not bazaar Scott, it should read bizarre.

Car repairs and servicing don’t get better because of the garage or the tools; it’s because of better trained mechanics. Sure the facilities help but are never a primary cause.

Until and unless we get better trained teachers we won’t get better education outcomes.

It’s not rocket science, and the solution is very cheap. Just set aside the Uni degrees for a moment, put teachers through a “student” competency test, then make decisions about funding priorities.

The reason we won’t do this is because we already know the answer. Gonski is just a distraction from the main game, another Unicorn
Posted by spindoc, Friday, 2 August 2013 9:35:41 AM
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Coalition says it will honour Gonski for the next four years.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-02/coalition-to-support-gonski-school-funding/4861102

Chris Pyne wasn't aware of that yesterday.

"Just yesterday, Opposition Education spokesman Christopher Pyne told ABC News 24 the Coalition would only honour the deal for one year.

"What we will do is give schools certainty for 2014 then undo the damage that the Government has done, by negotiation with the states and the territories [for a] new model for 2015," he said."

Ya gotta laugh.....
Posted by Poirot, Friday, 2 August 2013 12:09:23 PM
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Another way to correct the headline, spindoc, is this...

"Gonski is just a bazaar"
Posted by WmTrevor, Friday, 2 August 2013 1:01:21 PM
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‘Morning Poirot,

I’m sure the Pyne/Abbott double act will be good for a few laughs as the campaign develops, especially if the chuckles are valued as ammunition to snipe at the opposition.

It might however, be worth paying attention to the politics rather than the cheap giggles.

There is no doubt that should the coalition win a majority that all bets will be off. The excuse they desperately need for this has been gift wrapped and presented to them by the government in the form of record debt, deficit, shrinking employment/growth and a raft of unfunded future commitments.

Forget the string of failed policies; it is the economy that will bring the government down, just how far down is yet to be seen.

Abbott and the electorates know that whoever wins will have a monumental task to repair the economy, few believe the ALP can do it and many will be concerned that the coalition will “slash and burn” back to surplus. Either way or with either party, things will be very different after the election.

I don’t think the coalition will acknowledge this as Peter Garrett did with his pre-election quote. “When we get into power we will change all that”.

And guess what? Garrett was right, they did.

The more things change, the more they stay the same so don’t miss the main game Poirot
Posted by spindoc, Saturday, 3 August 2013 10:23:51 AM
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Phaedrus,

Thank you for your detailed reply. I need some time to consider it and will do so in the next two days.
Posted by Chris C, Saturday, 3 August 2013 5:50:40 PM
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Phaedrus,

I take your point re transparency. I guess it depends on what the author meant by “education package”. The education package in the legislation itself is very clear, setting out the SRS for both primary and secondary, the specific amounts for loadings, the different indexation rates, etc. However, we do not know what arrangements have been made with the various states. The 95 per cent of the SRS was mentioned in some reporting on the Victorian deal, but no explanation as to why the figure is 95 per cent and not 100 per cent was given. It does not matter if arrangements are different paths to the same end, but I would like some clarity in this.

The fact that larger schools get more additional funding than smaller schools do is not evidence of unfairness. They may be underfunded and therefore need more additional funding. I know that in the Victorian government system larger schools are penalised by the withdrawal of base funding, so if that withdrawal were to end, they would gain funds but they would deserve to fain them.

If I understand you correctly, the schools restricted to a minimum level of indexation are those being forced off Labor’s ERI model onto the Coalition’s SES model. I certainly agree that this is unfair, and I have been saying so since the day the Gonski report was released.

It is clear in the Australian Education Act that the government’s intention, as recommended by the Gonski report, is to allow the systems to allocate funding to individual schools according to their own methods as long as these are needs-based and transparent.

I will return tomorrow.
Posted by Chris C, Monday, 5 August 2013 8:23:50 PM
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Chris C,

1. Re 'arrangements have been made with the various states' - yes, the most recent being the 95% by 2022 with Victoria. For NSW and all other deal-makers it's 95% by 2019. So for most systems, including the non-govs, their biggest increases in annual funding are pushed to the 2017-2019 period, whereas for Victoria's state schools, the Gonski-money flow doesn't even start to begin until after 2020 when they start to get around 92-93% of the way there, reaching 95% in 2022 and 100% in the whenever (since none of the deals even mention this nirvana). I'm amazed that NSW isn't jumping up and down about it - Vic held out and got a way better deal. Queensland directly asked for the same deal but Rudd thought it would be more politically expedient not to offer it to them. All the while the Australian Government is announcing Vic's figures in 'indexation plus additionality' so as not to be comparable with all other announcements based on additionality alone, and so that people think Victoria is putting in lots more money rather than committing to something similar to their status quo funding trajectory. AND they get to keep their existing funding models, so exactly what was the point of the 'funding review' if neither the quantum nor the allocation method changes?? The only change is a much more complicated Federal funding model which pumps money into city schools. (see my next point to follow)
Posted by Phaedrus, Monday, 5 August 2013 8:58:45 PM
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Chris C,

2. Re "The fact that larger schools get more additional funding than smaller schools do is not evidence of unfairness". Sorry, but it definitely is because (a) it's not just occasional, the SRS model is built to pump money into large schools with economies of scale because the base per student amounts are so high compared to existing arrangements and (b) much more importantly, because there are moderate to strong positive correlations between large schools and schools which have high academic results and low proportions of disadvantaged students. This is an important premise in the argument, the exclusion of which leads to much confusion in media reporting and with the public generally.

(PS The entire Gonski model approach is based on regression analysis, from which the resulting parameter estimates are dubious due to the presence of multicollinearity as described above. I don't believe this limitation was ever pointed out by the consultants to the Gonski Panel. The entire affair is a case of the emperor not actually having any clothes).
Posted by Phaedrus, Monday, 5 August 2013 8:59:12 PM
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Phaedrus,

I am not going to be able to comment on every point you make for reasons of time and the word limit.

It may be that Ashgrove is allegedly getting millions more because it has lots of disabled students or lots of ESL students or because it currently has lots of teachers who are at the lower end of the pay scale, something the SRS concept takes no notice of. If the reason is the last, the money may not actually flow to Ashgrove at all.

Prior to 2004, Victorian schools had a staffing formula, as I believe other states still do. It was then changed to a funding formula. There are objections raised to this because the salary bill in some schools is higher than that in others even with the same number of teachers on staff.

Imagine two schools with a 1,000 students. Leafy Suburbs High has 70 teachers, mostly highly experienced, and thus a salary bill of, say, $6 million. Western Suburbs Secondary College also has 70 teachers, mostly inexperienced, and thus a salary bill, of say, $5 million. An extra million dollars is going to the students in Leafy Suburbs High. The taxpayer is giving greater financial support to one group of students than to another purely because one schools manages to keep experienced teachers while other cannot. A global budget approach gives both schools the same amount of money and allows Western Suburbs Secondary College to use the million it has saved through having inexperienced staff to employ additional staff or provide other resources.

When we pay experienced teachers more than inexperienced teachers, we are saying that the extra experience is adding something to the education of students taught by the former. Otherwise, there is no justification for paying more. We are therefore also saying that students who have inexperienced teachers are comparatively disadvantaged. This disadvantage must be made up in some way. Thus, the SRS concept will compensate (“advantage” in some people’s minds) schools that currently have lots of inexperienced teachers.
Posted by Chris C, Tuesday, 6 August 2013 2:37:04 PM
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I agree that money can be well spent or badly spent. What I object to is the dodgy reasoning so common in Australia that money makes no difference, reasoning that is backed by dodgy figures arising form the Grattan Institute’s report.

The current funding model has three serious problems – the disproportionate federal spending on private schools, the AGSRC formula and the SES model. The new system fixes two of these three problems and entrenches the third.
Posted by Chris C, Tuesday, 6 August 2013 2:38:00 PM
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In response to yesterday’s posts:
1. The Gonski recommendations are the existing Victorian funding model (as I said they would be before they were made - http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=13226&page=0), so I am not surprised that Victoria gets to keep its existing funding models.

The funding totals have not made sense to me since the government announced them at the start of the negotiation process. After all, if the Gonski SRS of $8,000 per primary student and $10,500 per secondary student was estimated to cost $5 billion, how can the government’s decision to choose a $9,271 per primary student SRS and $12,193 per student SRS cost only $4-5 billion in the last of the six years? It should cost substantially more.
Posted by Chris C, Tuesday, 6 August 2013 2:38:35 PM
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2. Whenever the government grants tax cuts, higher income earners get larger amounts and people complain, but higher income earners pay more tax in the first place so the fact that their cuts are larger than those of lower income earners is neither here nor there. The same applies with funding changes in relation to school size. The mere fact that schools of one size get a bigger change than schools of another is neither here nor there. Larger schools in Victoria have been financially penalised since the phasing out of base funding was introduced in 2005. Were that phasing out to end, larger schools would benefit, and it would be perfectly just that they did so.

That’s is not to say that the particular schools in your example are treated justly, just that the difference in funding due to size does not of itself mean anything. My own submission provided a base of around $250,000 for all but the very smallest primary schools and almost $1million for all secondary schools.

The method for determining the SRS was nonsense, and I said so in my response (http://foi.deewr.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/curtis_chris20110524.pdf) to the Emerging Issues paper. However the resultant figures were very good, and I have concentrated my current campaign on one matter only - the continuation of the SES model) in the belief that it will be the hardest mistake to correct in the future..

In summary, the Gonski plan is better than what we have now, but not as good as it should be. I remain convinced that the scheme I proposed is far superior to the one that the Gonski panel recommended, but a retired school teacher does not have the political power of the various interest groups in the country. Nor can he even get published in a media dominated by the likes of Kevin Donnelly, Scott Prasser, Judith Sloan and the rest.
Posted by Chris C, Wednesday, 7 August 2013 8:38:03 AM
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