As I have said in response to various articles in The Age this week (e.g., http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbotts-school-reform-paper-proposes-cutting-federal-funding-20150621-ghtkkz.html), this is exactly what I warned would be a consequence of the Gonski report on the day that report was released. I quote from my unpublished letter to the editor of The Age from that day:
‘21/2/2012

The Gonski report is, overall, a magnificent and meticulous plan for the future funding our schools (“A historic chance to fix education funding”, 21/2), but it contains two daggers – one pointing at the hearts of all our teachers and one pointing at the hearts of low-fee private schools….

‘To ignore school resources and determine funding for private schools based on the capacity of parents to pay is both discriminatory and inequitable. It is discriminatory because there is no suggestion that public schools be funded in the same way - though this recommendation will give impetus to that idea. It is inequitable because it will force the most inclusive private schools to put up their fees and thus become more exclusive.’

The public education lobby, including the AEU, failed to recommend any funding model at all to the Gonski review and must therefore take some responsibility for the panel’s keeping the Howard government’s socio-economic status funding model in place (recommendations 2, 3 and 21), which it renamed ‘capacity to contribute’. As I have been saying for three and a half years, if ‘capacity to contribute’ becomes the principle for funding private schools, it will become the principle for funding government schools.

So, while many will rail against the Abbott government for countenancing means-tested fees in government schools, their anger should be directed at the public education lobby whose monumental failure to read the Gonski process correctly led to this point.

I have tried to make similar points on The Drum, but almost everything I have submitted this year has been refused publication.

Here is one example of what The Drum refused to publish:

‘The Drum 2015 05 01 1
(Picking winners and losers among Indigenous kids)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-01/caro-picking-winners-and-losers-among-indigenous-kids/6436212

‘The Gonski report did not develop “a very good, sector blind formula”. It extended the Howard government’s socio-economic status funding model to all schools currently protected from it.

‘The Gonski plan does not give more money to “needy kids”. It adjusts the funding for students with special needs in accordance with how well off the neighbours of all the students in the school are.

‘The suggestion that the Victorian Labor government wants to bin Gonski is misleading. It already has a funding model that implements the stated Gonski principless, something the Gonski plan itself fails to do.

‘The Gonski plan gives three times the funding to non-government schools that the Victorian model does. The Gonski plan determines cost on the basis of an adjusted average of all schools, while the Victorian model uses the adjusted costs of government schools. The Gonski plan completely ignores school fees, other school income and school assets, while the Victorian model does not. The Gonski plan funds schools on the basis of how well off the students’ neighbours are, while the Victorian model funds them on the basis of their actual resources via the financial questionnaire. The Gonski plan forces all schools onto the SES model, including those currently protected from it by being left on Labor’s old educational resources index model, while the Victorian model does not. The Gonski plan punishes the most inclusive non-government schools, the low-fee ones that take poorer students from middle class areas, by reducing their comparative funding and thus pushing their fees up and the poorer children out of them into the local government school, while the Victorian model supports those schools and is thus better for socially integrated education. The Gonski plan reduces not only funding for mainstream students on the basis of how well off their neighbours are but also the funding for disadvantaged students according to how well of the neighbours of all the students in the school are….’

Here is another:
“The Drum 2015 06 22 1
(Fees for state schools: don't jump to conclusions)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-22/buckingham-fees-for-state-schools-dont-jump-to-conclusions/6563606

“aussie too,

“It might be permissible for me to comment on this topic now, though it has not been for most of the year. Perhaps a different moderator is on duty.

“The idea of means-tested fees in government schools is exactly what I warned would be a consequence of the Gonski report on the day that report was released:
‘21/2/2012

“‘…To ignore school resources and determine funding for private schools based on the capacity of parents to pay is both discriminatory and inequitable. It is discriminatory because there is no suggestion that public schools be funded in the same way - though this recommendation will give impetus to that idea. It is inequitable because it will force the most inclusive private schools to put up their fees and thus become more exclusive.’

“The public education lobby failed to recommend any funding model at all to the Gonski review, thus the panel’s keeping the Howard government’s socio-economic status funding model in place (recommendations 2, 3 and 21), which it renamed “capacity to contribute”. If “capacity to contribute” becomes the principle for funding private schools, it will become the principle for funding government schools.”

Education is not the only area The Drum refuses to publish my views, but I will leave examples from other areas to a more suitable occasion

I have a view that education should be the principle concern of the parents; regardless of what school their kids attend. And to assist that outcome I would raise the tax free threshold to $76,000.00 P.A.

And then provide an education supplement as a child endowment, which would be regarded as income for the purpose of the tax act.

This in essence would allow the federal government to fund education rather than schools per se.

Which would then be encouraged to compete for student enrollments on the back of published results and best practice.

Given this same finite bucket of education money would no longer be funneled through various state governments, and therefore no longer subject to the skimming by them of so called admin fees, as much as 30% more would actually be available for actual education outcomes!

This in turn would oblige the state governments who control state based education to grant complete autonomy to the individual school or school district!

And given the right to virtually clean out the dross which holds back performance numbers/results; schools would be finally free to compete for numbers and through them, the education dollar.

And then allow the cream to rise to the top?

And for the government to exercise a degree of control over funding, the student would need to be enrolled and a good attendee to be eligible for this education endowment?

Which could be given in the form of a bankbook, and needing to be stamped weekly or monthly by several school officials, with say a 95%+ attendance rate to qualify for the money/the stamp. With a substantial reward in play, to expose any cheating or rorting by the parent/school official!?

The endowment could be higher in remote communities, to help with the naturally higher education costs.

There seems to be a fundamental objection to means testing, which this model would effectively eliminate, but nonetheless, make reasonably fair and equitable; and actually affordable, by making the money part of the taxable income, the way pensions or part pensions do now!?
Rhrosty.