Tristan,

Your enthusiasm for the implementation of the Gonski report is understandable, but the report as is has some flaws that a smart government needs to correct.

Most troubling is the report’s endorsement of the “inputs don’t matter – only outcomes count” mantra of the Institute of Public Affairs. This philosophy so damaged Victorian schools in the 1990s that no Labor government should have anything to do with it. The SRS should be based on a staffing formula.

More specifically, the report recommends that schools be given loadings for small size. This has the effect of spending more money than necessary by giving extra subsidies to two small schools near each other when only one larger school is necessary. The Victorian Labor government already showed how to deal with this problem in 2005 with its provision of base funding per school.

A base funding factor would not provide public support to two small schools near each other because the public authority would make (ideally) rational decisions about the locations of its schools as it would be the body paying the base funding for each one, whereas private school authorities wishing to establish a small school would be responsible for their own base funding. If they decided to establish another small school, they, not the taxpayer, ought to be responsible for the extra costs incurred by virtue of its small size. Schools in both systems would still be eligible for the SRS.

The report recommends the continuation of the SES system, which is so bad for private schools that it underfunds half of them, requiring them to get compensation to be as well-off as they were under Labor.

Many of the problems with the Gonski report get no coverage in the MSM. I have submitted 25 letters to the editor of The Age on the matter. None has been published.

A detailed discussion of these points is in my paper, Implementing Gonski, which appears at http://community.tes.co.uk/forums/t/576719.aspx. I recommend everyone read it carefully and follow up by contacting their local Labor or independent MP and their Labor, independent or DLP senator.

*The number of medical students is limited by the number of university places the government is prepared to offer, not by the number of qualified people who apply.*

Divergence, given that country areas are short by around 1000 doctors
and that we are having to steal them from places such as
Bangaladesh and Nigeria, just so that country people can have the
luxury of seeing a doctor, perhaps its high time that we trained
a few more doctors and a few less arts graduates with the funding
available.

Did you say carbon tax? Isn't it supposed to be carbon price?

Arts - including humanities ans social sciences - are grossly undervalued generally. To begin Arts students learn practical research, reasoning and writing skills; as well as knowledge that is of use in areas as diverse as teaching, journalism, librarianship, publishing and any number of cultural industries. If anything we need more emphasis in humanities and social sciences - and at a secondary level as well. And humanities and social sciences are core to developing an informed values perspective - which is central to promoting active citizenship and participatory democracy. Devaluing humanities and social sciences generally goes hand in hand with devaluing democracy.

*To begin Arts students learn practical research, reasoning and writing skills;*

Sheesh Tristan, one would think that 12 years of schooling would
have taught the little darlings, the basics of all that.

Fact is that all the arts graduates in the world are pretty useless,
if some Australians can't even source an Australian doctor and have to
turn to Bangaladesh and Nigeria. Its about priorities and I remind
you that it is country Australia which generates wealth, so that
you city slickers can exist. Without us you would be living in
a banana republic. Stop being so frigging selfish.