print this pageLowlights of the federal audit report
On 1 May, the National Commission of Audit report was finally made public – less than a fortnight before the federal budget is announced on 13 May. While the budget will reveal the government’s precise intentions, the audit report paints a grim picture for Australian students, professional educators and workers.
School funding
The report is highly critical of the new funding model (known as Gonski-lite by many QTU members), calling it complex, inconsistent and lacking in transparency. The Gonski model of a per-student resource standard with loadings for disadvantage is dropped into the too-hard basket. The benefits of such a funding model are dismissed with a few carefully chosen pieces of evidence, despite the Gonski review being led by an expert panel over 18 months, considering more than 7000 submissions, undertaking school visits by the expert panel, meeting with hundreds of education stakeholders and practitioners across the country, and drawing on evidence-based research from across the world.
The report’s key recommendations about schools funding are as follows.
- Abandon the current funding model from 2018 (after the current four-year agreements with the “Gonski sign-up states” expire).
- Replace it with a system where the Federal Government delivers three “pools” of funding to each state and territory government for allocation to the three education sectors - state, independent and Catholic – with the state or territory administering the funds for the first two sectors.
- Quoting from the report, “to ensure adequate and ongoing funding in the non-government sector, there would be no capacity to reallocate funding between the pools”.
- From 2018, funding for all sectors would be based on a per-student amount indexed against inflation and wage rates.
- There would be no obligation for states and territories to maintain, let alone increase, their levels of funding, though obligations to publish data “on a consistent basis” would remain.
- There would be a requirement for state and territories to develop their own needs-based formula for allocating funding, but it is a passing, theoretical mention in the report.
VET
Predictably, the report vigorously defends the current agenda of contestability, requiring public providers to compete with the private sector.
Recommended funding arrangements, like those in the schools sector, move towards more state control. Specifically:
“The Commission recommends that the Government wind back its involvement in the vocational education and training sector by:
a. transferring policy and funding responsibility for vocational education and training to the States, with Commonwealth funding to be provided either as:
i. a single annual lump sum with minimum requirements for national reporting and quality assurance; or
ii. as part of a broader reform of federal financial relations;
b. abolishing all Commonwealth vocational education and training programmes including the National Workforce Development Fund and Commonwealth support for apprentices; and
c. requiring the States to continue reforms to achieve demand-driven vocational education and training outcomes and improve occupational licensing arrangements.”
Federal/state control
In line with transferring funding responsibilities to states and territories, the report recommends “streamlining” education roles and responsibilities and significantly reducing the role of the federal Department of Education. It also recommends abolishing the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership[AITSL]. It is difficult to see how AITSL’s work on national professional standards could continue, or how federal initiatives such as the national curriculum could be maintained.
Minimum wage
One of the most ominous aspects of the report is its recommendation to reduce the minimum wage every year for 10 years, until it falls to 44% of average weekly earnings – down from the current 56.3%.
Further, the report recommends giving control of minimum wage decisions to the federal government of the day, instead of the Fair Work Commission which considers a broad range of factors including relative living standards and the needs of low-paid workers.
Finally, the report recommends that by 2023 the minimum wage is varied by state, to either the national minimum wage or 44% of the state’s average wage, whichever is lower.
The ACTU has produced an in-depth report on the impacts of these recommendations.
The Federal Government has recently claimed that it would not fully follow the report’s recommendation – with that decision apparently “based on the laws as they stand now”. However, the current government has a record for turning back on pre-election promises, and it remains unclear what its long-term commitments are on the minimum wage.
The QTU will continue to closely watch developments, because moves against the lowest paid Australian workers may entrench generational disadvantage, and create a new generation of Australian working poor. This is clearly an issue for the QTU’s 43,000 members who are educating students today in schools and TAFE institutes who will be the workers in this bleak future.
