It intrigues me that the same old people pushing the same old myths get published again and again in the same old forums.

Labor did not “made much about introducing laptops into schools”. It promised and implemented on time a promise to provide access to computers, not laptops, for all year 9-12 students over a four-year period.

The Gonksi review did not “recommend” an increase of $5billion in education spending. It recommended a new method for spending money and “estimated” that it would cost $5billion.

Education spending did not increase by “40 percent over a decade” in any real sense. The National Reports on Schooling in Australia show that government spending per student in Australia was $8,115 in 1999-2000 ($11,731 in 2012 dollars) and $13,544 in 2008-09 ($14,637 in 2012 dollars). That is a real increase of only 24.7 per cent.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports a real increase in per capita GDP over the ten years from 1998-99 to 2008-09 of 24.4 per cent. The relevance of this is that the salaries of teachers have to keep up to some extent with the general living standards of the population as a whole. Does anyone really think we would attract able people to teaching and retain them if that 24.7 per cent increase in education spending had not occurred and, as a consequence, the top Victorian teacher salary last year was only $67,406 and the beginning salary was only $45,696?

“Classrooms” didn’t get smaller at all, and class sizes (which I think is what the author is trying to say) did not decrease by anything like 40 per cent over a decade. The average Victorian primary class went from 25.4 students in 1999 to 22.1 students in 2012 (a decline of 13 per cent, not 40, nothing like 40). The average Victorian secondary class went from 22.7 students in 1999 to 21.4 students in 2012 (a decline of 6 per cent, not 40, nothing like 40). It had been 20 in 1999.

The Gonksi review was funding review, not a review of every aspect of education.

There are two serious flaws in the current funding system.

The Australian Government Schools Recurrent Costs formula for funding private schools is absurd because it includes the cost of base funding that any school must have, which it is inefficient to duplicate by having two schools in the same locality when one will do, and the extra costs of students with special needs (e.g., ESL, disability, low family income) even when they do not attend the school being funded.

The SES funding model is absurd. It pays schools on the basis of the wealth of the other people who live in the streets where their students come from. It thus underfunds the majority of low-fee Catholic schools, which is why they need top-up funding to achieve the same level of resources as applied under the Hawke government.

The Gonski plan fixes the first problem by separating the cost of educating a mainstream student from the cost of educating a student with additional needs.

The Gonski plan fails to fix the second problem. In fact, it entrenches the Howard government’s SES funding model, though you wouldn’t know it from the reporting. We now have a Labor government forcing schools still protected from the injustice of the SES model by being left on Labor’s more rational education resources index model onto the Coalition’s bizarre SES model. The Gonksi panel renamed the SES model “capacity to pay”, so just about every journalist in the country thinks it is different.

Chris C: "The National Reports on Schooling in Australia show that government spending per student in Australia was $8,115 in 1999-2000 ($11,731 in 2012 dollars) and $13,544 in 2008-09 ($14,637 in 2012 dollars). That is a real increase of only 24.7 per cent. ... The average Victorian primary class went from 25.4 students in 1999 to 22.1 students in 2012 (a decline of 13 per cent, not 40, nothing like 40). The average Victorian secondary class went from 22.7 students in 1999 to 21.4 students in 2012 (a decline of 6 per cent, not 40, nothing like 40). It had been 20 in 1999."

Given the supposed 24.7% real increase in government spending per student over those 9 years, undeniably quite a significant increase, and the accompanying significant decline in average class sizes, it would be reasonable to expect a measurable improvement in the quality of education. Sadly, this has not been the case.

This is clear indication that what is required is not increased funding in real terms as Chris C implies, but increased focus on improving the quality of education. It is disappointing that the Rudd and Gillard governments failed to appreciate this.

Chris your hair splitting arguments in your posts has done a lot to convince me that most of what Scott suggests is correct.

If you have a reasonable argument for not consigning Gonski to the trash heap of wasted taxpayer funds please present it.

The best outcome would be to sack the bottom 20% of teachers judged by their results, spilt their students & their wages among the better teachers.

Continue sacking the bottom 5% of teachers annually, until we get down to a reasonable quality of teacher. We have no hope of getting anywhere even with three times the budget, while we continue to employ so many dead heads in teaching.

The Government has shown it can not manage the money they have with any competence. Now they want more.Gonski is just a smokescreen for a Government that has squandered Australian taxpayers money.

Good article which I largely agree with.

The Gonski report, however, ducked the real issues by pushing for yet more increased spending on school education. Good public policy is about getting better value with existing resources, especially in times like these where tax revenue is weakening. Have parents of kids in government schools considered putting their hands in their pockets to help their local school in the same way as those with kids in non-government schools do?

What is a Gonski ? Animal, vegetable, or mineral ? Gee I wish we could speak in plain, unadorned English, that's bereft of peculiar sobriquets or epithets ? Perhaps then, dullards like me might well be able to understand the full import of a 'Gonski' ?

'Have parents of kids in government schools considered putting their hands in their pockets to help their local school in the same way as those with kids in non-government schools do?

brilliant question Bren.

Raycom,

As I said, “The relevance of this is that the salaries of teachers have to keep up to some extent with the general living standards of the population as a whole. Does anyone really think we would attract able people to teaching and retain them if that 24.7 per cent increase in education spending had not occurred and, as a consequence, the top Victorian teacher salary last year was only $67,406 and the beginning salary was only $45,696?”

Perhaps some long-term figures might get the point across. Economist Andrew Leigh has estimated an increase of 333 per cent in real expenditure per student between 1964 and 2003 using the consumer price index (http://people.anu.edu.au/andrew.leigh/pdf/SchoolProductivity.pdf).

Those who say this increase is unjustified should do the exercise in reverse. We can do that by cutting teacher salaries by 77 per cent (i.e., to around $19,700 for the new top level in Victoria) or by increasing the maximum class size by 333 per cent (i.e., to 108 students in a secondary school), or by increasing teaching loads by 333 per cent (i.e., to 97 hours a week in a primary school), or by some combination.

Education spending has to grow in real terms for education achievement just stand still because teaching has to be a reasonably attractive job for able people to become and remain teachers.

There has not been a significant decline in class sizes. As I said, Victorian secondary class sizes are larger today than they were 20 years ago.

The quality of education to the money spent on it.

Hasbeen,

My “hairsplitting” is giving specific facts that shows Scott Prasser is wrong on each matter I have referred to, and this convinces you that he must be right. What can I say?

I have already presented “reasonable argument for not consigning Gonski to the trash”, but I will repeat it for you:
“The Australian Government Schools Recurrent Costs formula for funding private schools is absurd because it includes the cost of base funding that any school must have, which it is inefficient to duplicate by having two schools in the same locality when one will do, and the extra costs of students with special needs (e.g., ESL, disability, low family income) even when they do not attend the school being funded….

“The Gonski plan fixes [this] problem by separating the cost of educating a mainstream student from the cost of educating a student with additional needs.”

As I have been saying since the report was released, it does not fix the second problem and needs to be changed so that it does. The second problem exists because the systemic school authorities foolishly did a deal with the Howard government to accept the SES model in return for a “no losers” guarantee. They could now get rid of the SES model if they put their minds to it. I have advised all nine Catholic Education Commissions to do so, but officials from only three even replied to me.

This is the letter I wrote the day the Gonksi report was released:

‘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 determine the school resource standard by looking at what so-called “high-performing” reference schools cost is both bizarre and dangerous. It is bizarre because some differences in expenditure have nothing do with education (e.g., the different WorkCover levies in different states) and nothing meaningful is to be learnt by averaging out the costs of a $30,000-fee private school and a $10,000-a head public school that just happen to have the same student results. It is dangerous because it adopts the “inputs don’t matter” philosophy that so damaged Victorian schools in the 1990s.

‘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.

‘More than 80 per cent of the recurrent costs of a school are teacher employment, and there is little scope for variation in the remaining less than 20 per cent. The AEU, the IEU and the low-fee private school authorities ought to combine to pressure the government into adopting an explicit staffing formula as the basis for the school resource standard and the schools’ own resources as the basis for the funding phase-down. The model adopted by the Victorian Labor government in 2005 is conceptually rational though financially inadequate.’

It was not published. Since the report’s release, The Age has never published an article revealing how the current funding system works and how the Gonksi report has endorsed it.

Chris perhaps my thinking on teachers is slanted a bit by experience.

I was treasurer of a primary school when Goss gave teachers a huge unfunded pay rise. It did not attract any better teachers, although it did get ALP promotional banners hung over the school gate. It also meant the P&C had to raise an additional $17,000 in a 70 kid school, just to maintain a supply of essentials no longer supplied by the education department.

I was also treasure of a large high school [1700 kids] through most of the 90s & 0s. With my wife, & a very few other P&C members, we established a school text book hire scheme, that not only saved the parents money, but put $170,000 a year into the school.

You would think teachers would be glad, & try to help, but we rarely heard from any, except to complain.

Heads of departments in particular would complain when a book they wanted was not available in class sets. Strangely they would never accept responsibility for these shortages.

We would have to chase these top teachers for weeks to try to get a list of what books they wanted for next years.

We had to order in September to be sure of having books for next year. There is a hell of a lot of work for volunteers after the books to arrive, they don't cover themselves you know, [or perhapss you don't].

We really started to loose interest when 2 of these heads of departments finally supplied said lists a couple of days before end of year. One even then complained when these books were not available at the beginning of the next year.

I could go on, but my experience is that teachers are the most unprofessional mob I have ever encounter.

Over educated, over qualified over paid, & under worked is my take on teachers. When we see them around school during some of their huge holidays it will be time to talk more money, right now it should be less, much less

Hasbeen,

I’m not going to challenge your experience of individual teachers. I worked in education for 33 years. There are good and bad in every walk of life. My experience was of hard-working, dedicated and caring people. My criticism is that they tended to be naïve and industrially weak, ready to complain about their workload but not understanding that it was the result of decisions they themselves had made at both the collective and individual level. Victorian teachers had their working conditions stolen from them by the use of retrospective legislation in 1992. They have just voted overwhelmingly for a deal that will not restore what was stolen, but they will continue to complain.

The teacher pay issue is a long-term one. The declines in pay and entry scores, that went together, did not happen quickly, but over many years. To attract more able people to teaching will also take many years, but restoring pay is one of the necessary strategies.

Paying teacher less than they get now will drain the profession of the most able people in it. This really should be obvious.

I wrote about the 'Gonski' myself yesterday, and while I agree with much of Scott Prasser's perspective on it, I have gone rather further in one area:

http://donaitkin.com/education-needs-much-more-than-a-gonski/