I did not say that all the increase in spending went into teacher’s salary levels. I pointed out that if a consequence of that increase not occurring was salaries of from $46,696 to $67,406, able people would leave teaching. It is possible that some of the increase went into other areas.

I don’t have national figures on teachers’ salaries. A beginning Victorian teacher was paid $35,665 in January 2000 (the mid-point of the 1999-2000 financial year) and $52,571 in January 2009. A teacher on the top of the range was paid $49,159 in January 2000 (the mid-point of the 199-200 financial year) and $77,546 in January 2009. That is a nominal increase of 47-48 per cent. Most of the primary staffing cuts and some of the secondary staffing cuts made in the 1990s were reversed in those years, so they explain another part of the increase in per student expenditure. It is beyond my resources to get figures for every state and territory. The argument is the same. If we did not reverse some of the decline in teachers’ working conditions that occurred in the 1990s, we would have seen able people leave teaching.

Chris,

The problem is that your analysis is flawed. You love to quote Judith Sloane who at the end of 2012 said that funding had increase per capita by 40% over the past decade (2003 to 2012) Given your analysis is for 9 years ending 2008 and as discussed earlier 6 months baseline shift in the real value of money gave a 3% difference.

For an analysis to be even vaguely accurate, you need to use the same time period and terms of reference, none of which applies to your work.

If I have to choose between a professor of economics and you, especially given above, the choice is clear.

The point that I made earlier that the increase in funding per student has increased substantially over the past decade, even more than average salaries, yet the outcomes have fallen.

There is no historical evidence that Gonski is going to have any positive impact on schooling, and looks like labor's standard response to a problem of simply throwing more taxpayer's money at it.

A lot of money has gone into more layered administration, especially into making teachers more accountable in ways that take time away from their core interest, teaching students.

Teachers have become alienated from the administrative hierarchy over the last decade, being told how to do their jobs by people who couldn't teach pigs to be dirty. Every stupid fad (declared as world'd best practice)is held up to teachers as the great new way forward. When it all falls in a heap the teachers are pilloried while the administrative hierarchy are awarded medals. History is rewritten and the (failed) administrators then join in an armchair ride on the next gravy-train of non-evidence based change.

That's how more money is spent with poorer outcomes. Gonski will have no effect without addressing this and the need for parents to have a stronger supportive role in children's education rather than being teacher-bashers and apologists for children's low effort and poor behaviour. Some money spent educating parents will produce better outcomes than spending it on schools, IMO.

Shadow,

My apologies for not replying sooner. I have been busy and a couple of attempts were met with an error message. I also feel that we are just going around in circles, each of us saying what we have already said.

The Grattan Institute claimed that there had been a 44 per cent increase in real government education spending between 1999/2000 and 2008/09. This claim is both false and irrelevant. It is false because the reference given to the claim did not show such an increase. It is irrelevant because what matters is the spending per student.

Subsequent to the Grattan Institute claim a number of claims based on it were made. Some of these claims changed the percentage increase. Others changed the period. Others did both. Some of them even claimed an increased for a period for which figures are still not available. None of them quoted a source different from the Grattan Institute.

Judith Sloan decided that that there had been “a more than 40 per cent” “increase in real-per-student spending” “over the past decade”. The figures for the “past decade” don’t even exist, so the claim is obviously wrong. The real increase per student in the period given by the Grattan Institute was 24.7 per cent. Choosing Dr Sloan’s claim over my facts just because she is an economist is illogical. She gave no source for her claim. I gave a source for my facts. She chose a period of time for which figures do not even exist. I used a period of time for which figures do exist, the period chosen by the Grattan Institute.

You say, “For an analysis to be even vaguely accurate, you need to use the same time period and terms of reference, none of which applies to your work.” That is exactly the point. There is a time period, 1998/99 to 2008/09, for which figures are available and for which comparisons have been calculated, but sloppy commentators insist on making up their own time periods. My original point is that people believe what they are told - even when what they are told is wrong - because they are told it again and again and corrections are refused publication.

I’ll give another set of examples from outside of education.

The Age Green Guide falsely claimed that the 1967 referendum gave Aborigines citizenship (“The story of black Australia”, 9/10/2008) when they gained citizenship in 1949 along with all other Australians.

The Age falsely claimed that the 1967 referendum gave Aborigines voting rights (“Rose’s champion style went way beyond the boxing ring”, 10/5/2011) when they had voting rights in Victoria continuously from the nineteenth century while voting rights in federal elections, which they had in 1901 and then had taken from them, were restored in 1962.

The Age falsely claimed that the 1967 referendum gave the Commonwealth the power to “count [Aborigines] in the population statistics” (“Hopes high for unity on indigenous referendum”, 20/1/2012) when Aborigines were counted in every Commonwealth census, since the first one in 1911 recorded 19,939 of them.

The Age falsely claimed that the 1967 referendum “enabled the Commonwealth to …count [Aboriginal people] in census” (“Australia Day”, 30/1/2012).

The Age published the false claim that 1967 referendum overturned "the exclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from the census" (Letters, 5/6/2012)

The Age claimed that the Australian Constitution includes “a section that effectively permits decisions by state parliaments to disqualify people on the basis of race from voting at elections” (“PM’s captain’s pick may end a sorry chapter in Labor history”, 26/1) when in fact it includes a section that punishes any state that does so by reducing that state’s number of seats in the House of Representatives in proportion to the number of people excluded from voting.

The Age Green Guide published a letter of correction from me. The Age refused to publish any correction to any of the five false claims it made, so it is no wonder that large numbers of Australians have no idea what the 1967 referendum actually did.

I will return later.