Speech to Christian schools Australia national policy forum

Christian Schools Australia National Policy Forum
21 May, 2012, Canberra
Hon Christopher Pyne MP
Federal Member for Sturt
Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training
Manager of Opposition Business in the House

The long-awaited Review of Funding for Schooling has finally been handed down. What a wait it has been!

Promised by Labor since 2007, the review process has taken nearly two years.

When David Gonski first released the report in February it was a highly anticipated affair.

The main recommendation is that Governments should work together to introduce a new national School Resource Standard (SRS), with additional loadings for disadvantaged students.

While the SRS has been welcomed by many areas of the school sector as a sound theoretical funding model, it’s also become clear that it will never be implemented in the form suggested by the Panel by 2014.

Why?

The Gonski model’s price tag is an extraordinarily unrealistic ask of Governments. Planning school funding around another $113 billion[i] in Government spending over twelve years is like planning the family budget around winning powerball.

As David Gonski has suggested himself, this expenditure roughly equates to a 15% increase to each Government’s school education Budget.

The States would have to collectively find 70% of the $5 billion (in 2009 dollars terms)[ii] each year under the Gonski model. And already some State Governments have already ruled out additional spending.

This was made clear at Ministerial Council in April where Government’s suggested that any proposed change to school funding should not assume additional state and territory investment.

For example the South Australian Treasurer has said of the Gonski Review “The feds have to realise the states just don’t have the fiscal capacity to undertake these sorts of reforms, certainly not at the moment.[iii]”

At Budget time two weeks ago it was confirmed that the Gillard Government did not set aside any additional Commonwealth funding needed to transition to the new model from 2014.

All that has been provided in response to the Gonski review is $5 million for some additional research and technical work[iv].
So where does this leave the schools sector? Put simply if there is no money, there is no model.

If any of you here think that the Gillard Government is serious about implementing this model from 2014, then where is the money?

Of concern is that as a result of this Review, some schools are actually beginning to believe the new money is suddenly going to be flowing from 2014!

The truth is the Gonski Review could well turn out to be nothing more than a cruel hoax.

The current funding agreement expires in 18 months time. The Schools Minister Peter Garrett keeps repeating he wants to legislate this year.

Nobody seems to know what he is planning to legislate[v] given there is no money to implement the model.

So in the absence of funding Governments announcing that they will commit to the additional spending needed to implement the new model, we remain firmly committed to the current funding model for schools.

Our position on school funding is very clear. We simply do not accept that the current funding model for schools is broken. It does need improvement but we believe it is certainly not broken beyond repair.

The Coalition also has some questions marks hanging over some of the Gonski Panel’s recommendations.

We are genuinely concerned that the Government may respond by cherry-picking some the elements it likes from the Gonski Review that could harm non-government schools.

I will outline some of our concerns and unanswered questions measured against the Coalition’s ten principles that I released prior to the publication of the Gonski Review that continue to guide us in our approach to student funding.

The First Principle
Families must have the right to choose a school that meets their needs, values and beliefs.
Parents select a school for their child for a myriad of reasons, and many make personal sacrifices in order to send their child to a non-government school of their choice.
While it’s thought that most schools could theoretically make gains under the Gonski model, early modelling on the data provided by the Department of Education has revealed that many schools would lose funding.
For example it’s been reported there are 86 NSW Independent schools that would lose between $65,000 and $3.9 million of funding under the model per year[vi]. Similar reports have emerged in Queensland[vii].
Funding cuts of this magnitude would see some schools forced to increase fees.
At a time when cost of living is increasing, fees increases between $280-$1300[viii] could see some families no longer be able to afford the school of their choice.
And the Coalition will not support a funding model that would restrict choice.

The Second Principle
All children must have the opportunity to secure a quality education.
The rationale that underpins the funding model and thus how it will improve the quality of our education system appears ideologically flawed.
The rationale is that all Government’s should work towards reaching common funding benchmarks as to allow all students the best opportunity to reach ‘minimum standards’.
The underlying logic is that increased funding alone will lead to improved educational outcomes.
The SRS is to be set at the level thought to be required to educate children, defined as where 80 per cent of students have achieved above the minimum standard in national numeracy and literacy (NAPLAN) tests for the past three years[ix].
This amount is estimated to be $8000 per primary school student and $10,500 per secondary school student[x].
Even if Governments accept the recommendation to fund all students to the benchmark amounts with additional loadings, would this result in most schools meeting the minimum benchmarks?
I am not convinced it would, because although education spending has increased in Australia by 44% over the last decade, we have still managed to fall behind by international standards in comparison to our OECD peers[xi].
The best evidence tells us improved student outcomes are far more dependent on factors such as the quality of the teachers, school and principal autonomy, a robust curriculum and strong parental involvement.
The Coalition believes a far better way to ensure that all children have the opportunity to access a quality education is to focus on these areas, and these must be the focus of any new funding reforms.

The Third Principle
Student funding needs to be based on fair, objective, and transparent criteria distributed according to socio-economic need.
As evidenced by most school sector representatives into the review process NAPLAN data is unreliable, volatile and should never be used to determine funding[xii].
We hear a lot about the increasing pressure on teachers since NAPLAN has been published on the My School website, with some now ‘teaching to the test’.
Worse still is that some students are being asked to not sit the test and stay home on NAPLAN day as to not bring down the schools result.
There is also big question marks around how need is to be defined and measured for the purpose of distributing to schools in the non-government sector. A term the Panel describes as ‘capacity to pay’.
Despite heavy objection by the Labor party and others it is obvious that the Australian Bureau of Statistics data used for SES is still the most robust and reliable in existence.
After all, nobody fills out their form on census night thinking about how it might effect their schools funding.
Even the Gonski Review concedes that the current socio-economic status funding model (SES) measure needs to be retained for now.
But it has been suggested that a new measure be developed that will measure individual parents ‘capacity to pay’.
To me this sounds like a means-test for the parents who chose to send their child to a non-government school.
The model also assumes a minimum anticipated private contribution of 10% of SRS[xiii] which equates to about $800- $1,050 per student.
I am concerned about the impact of this measure on low-fee schools. For instance there are 77 of the 292 Catholic schools in Queensland alone who have fees less than the 10% minimum anticipated private contribution.
Will low-fee schools be under pressure to increase school fees as a result of this measure in order to meet the benchmark amounts?
The reality is the Panel has not offered an alternative to SES and it’s been left to Labor to work out the next mechanism to both define and measure need.
Labor could well end up cherry-picking this recommendation and use it to introduce an intrusive new means-test on parents, much in the same way they have chosen to means-test the private health insurance rebate.

The Fourth Principle
Students with similar needs must be treated comparably throughout the course of their schooling.
The Coalition most certainly welcomes the conclusions in the report with respect to students with a disability.
That is that those students with a disability be fully funded through an additional loading regardless of school sector, based on nationally agreed definitions of disability.
This is also the Coalition’s policy on how students with a disability should be funded into the future.
We announced during the last election our plans are to introduce an education card initially for the most profoundly disabled children to the value of $20, 000 per student, but with a commitment to extend portable funding arrangements over time to all children with special needs as budgetary conditions improve.

The Fifth Principle
As many decisions as possible should be made locally by parents, communities, principals, teachers, schools and school systems.
The Coalition does not support proposals to introduce a National School Resources Body and School Planning Authorities which would determine capital funding arrangements.
We already worry about the ratio of teaching to non-teaching staff currently employed by Australia’s nine separate education authorities.
The Commonwealth employs 4,759 full-time employees and hundreds more part-time employees in regulatory and policy roles.
In NSW schools for example, between 2003 and 2010 the ratio of non-teaching staff to teachers has increased from 1 in 5 to 1 in 4[xiv].
The equivalent ratio nationally has increased from 1 in 5 in 1997 to 1 in 3.5 in 2011[xv].
Professor Brian Caldwell, former dean of Melbourne University and an expert in school autonomy in his submission to Gonski Review suggested:
“There should be higher levels of school autonomy in the public sector. The numbers of non-school-based personnel in systems of public education should be reduced to a strategic core, with additional non-school staff justified on the basis of their direct support for schools[xvi]”.
I am worried that if not carefully managed some of the Gonski proposals could to do exact opposite of what Professor Caldwell has suggested.
Would we see even more non-school based staff following the introductions of such new authorities given the task of making so many funding decisions?

The Sixth Principle
Schools, school sectors and school systems must be accountable to their community, families and students.
The Gonski review talks a lot about ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability’. It makes many references to new reporting requirements and additional information that must be published on the My School website.
Yet on the other hand it also talks about subsidiarity of schools and school systems to be responsive to local needs.
It has been proposed that schools systems that currently are able to redistribute funding according to local need would still be able to do so, but that that any deviation from the SRS would have to be reported and published[xvii].
While there is not a lot of information about what kind of information schools would have to report, or how regularly, I am concerned that there could be a risk that systems will be subject to onerous reporting requirements.
And onerous reporting requirements could well end up discouraging these systems from re-distributing funding in order to respond to their student’s needs.
There are also many more questions unanswered about just how much power Canberra might end up having over the States with respect to school funding arrangements.
Already we have the Premier of Western Australia voice his concern about a top-down approach to funding suggesting “This is the Commonwealth trying to say we want your money, we want to pool it and we now want to administer state government schools. Sorry, ain’t going to happen”[xviii].
And the Minister for Education in Victoria has already suggested that Victoria will not support a new National School Resources Body[xix].
National solutions to funding must be very carefully thought through and justified before we make the immediate conclusion that just because they are national they might be better.
State Governments have elections and people in my view should be able to judge for themselves if Governments are putting sufficient resources into their schools overall or not.

The Seventh Principle
Every Australian student must be entitled to a basic grant from the Commonwealth government.
The Coalition is pleased that ultimately the Panel has suggested there should be a basic entitlement per non-government student that is roughly equivalent to the minimum under the SES system.
However it has recently been pointed out in an analysis of the Gonski Review by the Public Policy Institute at the Australian Catholic University that no policy rationale seems to have made by for a basic entitlement[xx].
In the Coalition, we believe that there needs to be a basic entitlement as parents pay taxes and thus are entitled to at least a degree of government support.
We also explicitly recognise the role and the value of the non-government sector – given its saves governments approximately $8 billion per year[xxi].
Without a sound policy rationale for a basic entitlement embedded in funding principles, is there a risk that the basic entitlement could be cherry picked out of the model if there isn’t enough money to meet all requirements?

The Eighth Principle
Schools and parents must have a high degree of certainty about school funding so they can effectively plan for the future.
There is no clear information available on how much indexation schools could expect to meet rising costs.
This is essential information in order for schools to be able to plan effectively for the future.
I am of the understanding that potentially the indexation based on the ‘NAPLAN reference schools’ may be nowhere near as generous as indexation under AGSRC which sees funding indexed at an average of 6% per year.
While details of the modelling are only just being released, there are concerns that under the Gonski model indexation may be much closer to levels like the Consumer Price Index which sits at around 3%.
A reduction of funding through indexation can only result in one thing – uncertainty for schools and parents on how to make up funding shortfalls in the future.
And reduced indexation over a 12 year period would certainly not be a good outcome for some schools.

The Ninth Principle
Parents who wish to make a private contribution toward the cost of their child’s education should not be penalised, nor should schools in their efforts to fundraise and encourage private investment.
As many of you will agree much of the reporting in the media misrepresents the current school funding situation by focussing on the level of resources and extensive facilities enjoyed by a handful of high fee schools.
The ultimate message that is fuelled by these kinds of reports is that no non-government school should have resources or facilities available to them that exceeds what is available to government schools.
We do not subscribe to this belief in the Coalition. And we do not believe that schools in the government or non-government should be punished for additional funds raised by previous generations.
The Gonski Review recommends all sources of funding must be published on the My School website – including information about a school’s capital stock or any other information as requested by the new Government Authorities[xxii].
The School Planning Authorities are then to be given the task amongst other things of assessing the financial contribution the relevant sector is deemed to be able to make with respect to capital infrastructure and assess how proposed facilities will be resourced and maintained into the future[xxiii].
It seem inevitable to me that the introduction of these new authorities would see us return to a policy much like the ‘No new school’ policy of the Hawke and Keating era, where the non-government schools sector was starved of capital funding.
In contrast the Coalition has promised a capital fund for schools once the Budget is returned to surplus – our commitment to the non-government sector has been very clear.

The Tenth Principle
Funding arrangements must be simple so schools are able to direct funding toward education outcomes, minimise administration costs and increase productivity and quality.
I want to finish by leaving you with an important point made by the New South Wales Parents Council on the new funding model that I heard made at a forum I attended in Orange last week.
They have observed that so far the SRS in their experience is no less complex or easier to understand than the current funding model.
Peter Garrett and the Prime Minister are fond of suggesting the Coalition’s funding model in not based on need, is complicated and lacks transparency.
But as we have heard for instance just in the time I have been speaking there is a lot of detail proposed in these new arrangements like socio-economic need, base entitlements, indexation levels and NAPAN results just to name a few!
Quite frankly I do not see how the Gonski model will be any easier for parent’s to understand than the current model.
At the end of the day I am of the belief that parents simply want to know that Governments are directing more funds to schools with the greatest socio-economic need.
Given the current funding arrangements operate to meet this objective; we most certainly will not support any funding model that results in unnecessary or complex administrative structures going forward.

What would the Coalition do with Gonski?

So there are some of the Coalition’s initial thoughts on how the Gonski Review fits within the context of our approach to student funding.

Like all reviews, there are some elements and findings which will inform the Coalition’s policy.

But the most pressing issue that now faces the sector is the emerging reality that not a single Government – not the Gillard Government or any State Government has announced that it will have the funds available to implement the SRS from 2014.
I want to leave you with the concluding comment that the Coalition has a very clear policy – not a single school’s recurrent funding levels would be reduced from 2014 in real terms.

Based on the current arrangements, funding to the non-government schools sector rises by about $4.2 billion over a quadrennium through increases in indexation.

And that is a real commitment that funding to the non-government sector will be maintained in real terms, not just dollar terms.
It is now time to start asking the Labor Party to make the same commitment without the weasel words of ‘no schools losing a dollar’ we hear on an almost daily basis from the Schools Minister.

Without a real commitment, the non-government sector faces an uncertain future under a Labor Government beyond 2014. An Abbott Government will give the sector the funding certainty into the future without caveats or false promises.

I would urge the entire non-government school sector to consider this carefully in the lead up to the next election.

________________________________

[i] School funding, Too many ifs and buts, Independent Schools Victoria, accessed 21 May 2012 athttp://www.independentschools.vic.edu.au/independent/pubs/school_funding_ifs_buts.pdf

[ii] Review of Funding for Schooling, Final Report, December 2011http://www.deewr.gov.au/Schooling/ReviewofFunding/Documents/Review-of-Funding-for-Schooling-Final-Report-Dec-2011.pdf

[iii] States Line up against Gillard, Australian Financial Review, April 2012http://afr.com/p/national/states_line_up_against_gillard_xj2T4gj0EKtu7a3qxW2YhM

[iv] Budget Paper No.2, 2012-2013, Review of Funding for Schooling – additional work, page 119

[v] The Hon Peter Garrett MP<http://ministers.deewr.gov.au/garrett> , Shadow Minister for School Education, Interview—936 ABC Hobart Statewide Mornings, 10 May 2012 accessed at:http://ministers.deewr.gov.au/garrett/interview-936-abc-hobart-statewide-mornings

[vi] Gonski top losing schools named, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 April 2012 http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/gonski-top-losing-schools-named-20120422-1xf71.html

[vii]Gonski will strip funding private schools claim, the Australian, 20 April 2012http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/education/gonski-will-strip-funding-private-schools-claim/story-fn59nlz9-1226333772127

[viii] Private schools warn of fee rises, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 April 2012http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/private-schools-warn-of-fee-rises-20120415-1x1q3.html

[ix] Review of Funding for Schooling, Final Report, December 2011, Recommendation 9 at pg XXII

[x] Review of Funding for Schooling, Final Report, December 2011, Table 19 pg 165
[xi] Catching up: learning from the best school systems in East Asia<http://www.grattan.edu.au/pub_page/129_report_learning_from_the_best.html>, Grattan Institute,
17 Feb 2012 , Pg 10
[xii] Review of Funding of Schooling, Response to the Four Commissioned Research
Reports by the Australian Parents Council, page 9http://www.austparents.edu.au/assets/files/Commentaries%20on%20Issues/APC%20response%20to%20Review%20research%20papers%2030%20Sep%202011_Final.pdf

[xiii] Review of Funding for Schooling, Final Report, December 2011, Table 19 pg 174

[xiv] NSW Department of Education Annual Report 2010, Table 13.01.

[xv] Australian Bureau of Statistics, Cat. 4221.0,http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/DetailsPage/4221.02011?OpenDocument
[xvi] Review of Funding for Schooling, Submission of Educational Transformations, 28 March 2011, pg 4,http://www.deewr.gov.au/Schooling/ReviewofFunding/SubEip/AtoF/Documents/Educational_Transformations.pdf

[xvii] Review of Funding for Schooling, Final Report, December 2011, pg 181

[xviii] Colin Barnett declares gonski review a goner, the Australian, 22 February 2012http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/education/colin-barnett-declares-gonski-review-a-goner/story-fn59nlz9-1226277644742

[xix] Ministers talk school funding, the Australian, 5 April 2012http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/education/ministers-talk-school-funding/story-fn59nlz9-1226319063770

[xx] What should we do with Gonski? Reviewing the Review – An Analysis of the Gonski Review of School Funding, Prepared by the Public Policy Institute of Australian Catholic University for Independent Schools Queensland, April 2012 pg 25

[xxi] Gonski Review outcomes encouraging for Queensland but is it false hope? Independent Schools Queensland, Media Release of 19 April 2012

[xxii] Review of Funding for Schooling, Final Report, December 2011, pg 195

[xxiii] Review of Funding for Schooling, Final Report, December 2011, pg 188