School funding: where to now?

The Turnbull school funding plan has been transformed into a “Frankenstein’s monster” by recent decisions of the Senate to amend the Australian Education Act.

The federal Coalition government appears to have succeeded in creating a pathway back to the future where public schools, and the vast majority of students we educate, continue to be denied the funding they deserve.

On 23 June, the Australian Parliament passed a version of the Turnbull school funding plan into law. Analysis has only just begun, and much more will be revealed in coming weeks, but what we know already is that the legislation does not reflect the recommendations of the original Gonski Review or the Turnbull plan announced in the Federal Budget.

The AEU, which has led our campaign for a fair school funding model for more than a decade, has identified the following key features.

• State and territory Gonski agreements will not be honoured.
• Public and private school funding will be set at a fixed rate. Public schools everywhere except the NT will receive 20 per cent of their required funding from the federal government (set by a schooling resource standard or SRS), and private schools will receive 80 per cent. These fixed proportions were never specified in the Gonski Review and make a lie of the government’s claim that it is delivering a “needs-based” funding system.
• State and territory governments will have to increase their funding. As part of the Gonski agreements, state and territory governments agreed to contribute one third of the funding needed to ensure public schools reached 95 per cent of the SRS in 2019 (2022 in Victoria). Now states and territories will be forced to increase their spending to 75 per cent of the SRS over six years. Even when they do contribute their share, public schools will not reach the 95 per cent point until at least 2023.
• Schools will remain woefully underfunded for students with disability. Next year, the federal government will actually cut funding to SA, WA, the ACT, Tasmania and the NT.

Queensland Government analysis provides some insights into the new elements created through Senate amendments.

• An acceleration of the extended transition period for federal funding to reach 20 per cent of a government school’s SRS in six years (by 2023), rather than the original 10 years, at an increased cost to the federal budget of $4.9 billion over the period to 2027.
• States and territories, such as Queensland, that contribute less than 75 per cent to the SRS currently must reach at least 75 per cent within the same six years, by 2023 – Queensland estimates it will need to spend as much as $1.5 billion extra on education to access 200 million dollars extra from the federal government.
• Penalties will be applied to states and territories that do not reach the threshold 75 per cent share of school funding, although the relevant amendments do allow for bilateral agreements and differentiated targets, effectively making a lie of the theme of a nationally consistent model.
• For non-government schools, Queensland already provides resources above the 20 per cent of SRS required to be achieved by 2023, and the basket nexus arrangements that automatically direct a percentage of any extra money spent on state schools by the state government to non-government schools would see Queensland’s contribution to non-government schools increase well beyond 20 per cent if they remain unchanged.
• Establishment of an independent national schools resourcing body.
• Provision of a $50 million transition package for Catholic sector and non-government schools in 2018.
• A special assistance package for Northern Territory government schools.

We do not yet know:

• what conditions are attached to the funding
• what the creation of a new national school funding body means for the future
• what the second Gonski review will mean for teachers and principals.

Numerous cross-bench Senators, many of whom had provided commitments to the AEU that they would oppose it, voted in favour of the legislation as amended. Disturbingly, the cross-bench, and Tasmanian Senator Jacquie Lambie and Queensland Senator Pauline Hanson in particular, reverted to teacher bashing to justify their change of position. Given this stance, the QTU has genuine concerns about the nature and extent of the conditions that will be imposed on all states and territories to access federal school funding.

QTU Conference determined to complete further research on the implications of the new legislation before holding workplace meetings to fully brief members, and to prepare to ballot members on questions of industrial action against the negative consequences of any conditions imposed by the amended legislation.

Kevin Bates                                                                                                                     President

Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 122 No 5, 21 July 2017, p8