Phaedrus,

Thank you for your detailed reply. I need some time to consider it and will do so in the next two days.

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.

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)

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).

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.

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.