Australian Government funding for schools

Image source: UK Government

There is much anticipation about the future of school funding with the Australian Government’s proposed new arrangements for school funding expected to be presented to the Council of Australian Governments’ meeting in April this year. The proposed changes will follow on from the recommendations of the final report of the Review of Funding for Schooling (the Gonski Review).

Australia’s performance in international student achievement tests – another perspective

Image source: Boston College

There has been considerable public discussion about Australia’s relatively poor performance in recently released international student achievement tests, with one newspaper describing the results as ‘Australia’s disaster in education’. These results have also called into question the Government’s aim to be in the top five countries on reading, mathematics and science by 2025. But just how bad are these results?

Australia in the Asian Century: Asian studies in schools



Image source: Australian Government

The White Paper, Australia in the Asian Century, commits all governments to improving access to Asian studies in schools through the Australian Government’s National Plan for School Improvement. The Prime Minister has announced that Asian studies will be embedded across the Australian Curriculum, students will have access to at least one priority language (Mandarin, Hindi, Indonesian and Japanese), and all schools will ‘engage with’ at least one school in Asia to support teaching of a priority Asian language.

PISA – more than just league tables?

Image source: Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development 

In announcing the Government’s response to the Gonski Review, Prime Minister Gillard stated that the aim of the new National Plan for School Improvement ‘is to ensure that by 2025 Australia is ranked as a top 5 country in the world for the performance of our students in Reading, Science, Mathematics’.

Much of the discussion about the Australian school system has focussed on the relative (and absolute) decline of Australia in the results from the triennial Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) over the period 2000 to 2009 despite an increase in real expenditure on school education of 44 per cent over the period. In considering how the school system can be improved, commentators have often looked to the current ‘top 5’ in the PISA rankings—Finland and the four East Asian jurisdictions included in the 2009 survey (Hong Kong, Shanghai, Korea and Singapore).

However, closer analysis of the PISA data suggests that using the PISA assessment league tables may not be the best measure of the quality of school systems.

‘Better schools’ – the Government responds to Gonski

Image source: Australian Government

The Australian Government through its National Plan for School Improvement, under the banner of Better Schools, has accepted the core recurrent funding recommendations of the Review of Funding for Schooling (the Gonski Review).

The National Plan outlines a new funding model that will have a Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) for all school students supported by various loadings for disadvantage. This funding model will take place alongside an improvement framework for schools and teaching, with an overarching goal of ensuring that by 2025 Australia is ranked amongst the top five countries in the world for student performance in reading, science and mathematics. In total, the Government expects the National Plan when fully implemented (by 2020) will see an additional $6.5 billion spent on schools each year, in line with the estimates ($5 billion in 2009 prices) in the Gonski Report.

More funding for all schools—an update on Gonski

Image source: Victorian Government

The Government’s previous commitment that no school would lose a dollar in funding per student has been extended. The Prime Minister and the Minister for School Education, Peter Garrett, have announced that all schools will receive increased funding under the Government’s new plans for school funding. Peter Garrett has also confirmed that funding will be increased in real terms.

This newly announced commitment follows the release on the News Limited website of a list of 3254 schools (about one-third of all schools) that would lose funding. State governments and non-government education authorities used data provided by the Australian Government for their modelling to calculate funding for individual schools under the Gonski proposals. According to the list, the significant majority of schools (72 per cent) that would lose funding are government schools, and the list includes schools in rural areas and special schools. The 2010 funding data referred to in the list is total government recurrent funding (federal and state and territory) as published on the My School website.

Staying on at school is not just a matter of money



Image: Victorian Government

 There is considerable evidence about the correlation between socio-economic status (SES)–particularly parental income, education and occupation–and educational attainment. Hence the inclusion of a measure of SES on the Myschool website, which allows for the comparison of ‘SES-equivalent’ schools, and higher education institutions receiving funding on the basis of meeting targets for the representation of students from low SES backgrounds.

While traditional SES measures may allow for comparisons or targets, they provide little guidance to policy makers on how to overcome such disadvantage–it is generally not possible to change the education level of a student’s parent for example. However a new study has emphasised the role of student characteristics–aspirations, poor school experience and participation in activities such as smoking and alcohol consumption–which may prove more amenable to direct policy interventions.

'Brave new world'? The Gonski Review of Funding for Schooling

Image source: Australian Government

The report of the Review of Funding for Schooling (the Gonski Review) is a blueprint for a major overhaul of federal and state funding for school education. It has proposed a fundamental realignment of the historic funding roles of the Australian and state and territory governments that would see both levels of government provide more balanced funding to government and non-government schools. Significantly, the Gonski Review believes that its proposals will meet the Australian Government’s commitment that ‘no school would lose a dollar per student’.

Through its initial response, the Australian Government has set itself an ambitious agenda for change, with the Prime Minister aiming to introduce legislation for a new school funding system before the end of the year.

Changes to the National School Chaplaincy Program

Image source: Victorian Government

As foreshadowed in a previous FlagPost, the Minister for School Education, Peter Garrett has announced changes to the National School Chaplaincy Program (NSCP). From 2012, the NSCP will be transformed into the National School Chaplaincy and Student Welfare Program. Schools will be able to employ ‘either a chaplain or a secular student welfare worker’ and tighter administrative controls will be introduced. This announcement appears to have appeased some of the NCSP’s proponents and addressed some of the concerns raised by its critics.

School chaplains

Image source: Queensland Government

In August, the High Court will hear Queensland parent Ron Williams’ constitutional challenge to the validity of the National School Chaplaincy Program (NSCP). The Commonwealth Ombudsman is also investigating the NSCP as a result of a recommendation made by the Northern Territory Ombudsman in her report on the NSCP’s operation in the Northern Territory (NT).

New government report on non-government school funding

A new Department of Employment, Education and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) report shows that in 2009 the Australian Government provided $6.3 billion to non-government schools. Of this funding, $5.8 billion was made available as recurrent per capita grants under the SES system of funding for non-government schools, which is currently under review as part of the Government’s wider Review of Funding for Schooling. On average, this equated to $4963 per non-government school student.

How do school systems improve?

A new report, which so far does not appear to have received much attention but is certainly deserving of more consideration, is How the World’s Most Improved School Systems Keep Getting Better. This report from McKinsey & Co. builds on the work of an earlier report, How the World’s Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top (2007), which examined the common attributes of ‘excellent’ school systems.

This time 20 significantly ‘improving’ school systems, as measured by national and international standards of assessment, and which are at different stages across a performance spectrum (from poor to excellent), were examined to see what reform interventions are working—in all some 575 reform interventions were investigated.

Australian Government funding for schools

A recently published Background Note from the Parliamentary Library shows that Australian Government funding for schools will increase in real terms (in 2008–09 dollars) from $6.9 billion in 1999–00 to $11.5 billion in 2011–12. This means that funding for government schools will increase from $2.8 billion to $4.4 billion and, for non-government schools, from $4.2 billion to $7.1 billion.

Building the Education Revolution – Private Member’s Bill

The Opposition has introduced a Private Member’s Bill to establish a judicial Commission of Inquiry into the Building the Education Revolution (BER). The Bill is the result of ongoing complaints and concerns about the BER’s administration and implementation. It also comes amidst a number of other BER inquiries and reports into various aspects of the BER’s operation, the chief focus of which has been the Primary Schools for the 21st Century (P21) element of the BER. If the Bill is passed, the Commission of Inquiry would become the fifth BER inquiry or report at the national level.

Building the Education Revolution

The Building the Education Revolution (BER) Implementation Taskforce today released its interim report, finding that while quality infrastructure has been delivered within the required timeframes, project costs in some areas have been substantially higher than would have been the case before the BER.