‘Backwards by default’ is the most appropriate way to describe the Senate’s decision, on 23rd June 2017, to pass the Gonski 2.0 $23.5 billion funding model for Australian schools. It’s the extreme height of political pragmatism with regard to the most important public policy in the nation. The lure of money wins again. And, as expected, there’s already activity buzzing around what many believe is the next most important question: how shall we spend it?
No surprises here. Any amount of much-needed profound and honest reflection might be too much. Can we handle the truth? Especially if it forces many of us – parents, teachers, principals, lawyers, politicians, and bureaucrats – to admit that we might have failed so many children, including our own, by accepting the state of education in Australia – and for far too long.
Is this a choice we have willingly made, or is lack of choice at the centre of increasingly poor school performance?
Result = Response NOT Response + Ability
It is true that commencing in 2019, primary schools can look forward to a minimum of $10,576 per student and $13,290 for secondary schools; the schools, however, not schooling itself, will take the winner’s seat. Parents and children stand to receive nothing more than what they already have. For the sake of a quick result, Australians have been dealt a reactive blow – another ‘piggy bank and tuck shop’ solution.
Surely common sense would have included asking the difficult questions, accepting the reality of the findings and, more importantly, creating a nationally inclusive, differentiated model for education, with compassion firmly at the heart of every responsible action. It’s no longer acceptable to aspire to world leading opportunities, without facing the challenges associated with achieving them. We all have to toughen up and take responsibility.
If there were wider choices, would we be encouraged to take greater responsibility?
Faith vs Funding
The Commonwealth, States and Territories’ main stumbling block over funding for schooling is based on faith, but religion, or life view, lies at the heart of education – it is about responsible citizenship. The naïve notion that public schools are secular suggests – or accepts – that culture and citizenship do not exist. Regardless of the faith or life view that informs it, every school has a culture. The question is this: if the culture is not based on a specific faith or life view, then what is its base? What is the difference between a school culture and the culture of schooling? It would seem that printed paper offers the answer. Money not choice!
Could it be said that parents, forced to find the necessary funds to enrol their children in faith-based schools, are being penalised for choosing faith as the foundation for their children’s education? Could it also be said that these parents are being penalised because the State provides public schooling, and that anything resembling a faith-based school is seen as an entitlement rather than a personal investment in their children’s education?
If faith were replaced with ‘Australian Culture’, how would funding look? What would parental contributions and not-for-profit support look like?
Vague Intention vs Reality
Behind every policy is a person. Gonski 2.0 was constructed using a sampling of NAPLAN data, postcodes, and loadings for disability, languages other than English, socio-economic status, and location. It demonstrates a plan of action that aims to achieve a business objective; it shows little or no compassion for the individuals in question – the ‘persons’ behind this policy.
Consider these points:
- The formula’s target labelling – for instance ‘disabled student’. Behind the formula is a parent in need of assistance to educate a child, who is managing a disability.
- Low-income families in commission and rental housing share postcodes with affluent families. Postcode does not equate to taxable income; taxable income, however, more accurately reflects educational affordability.
- Adults of low socio-economic standing do not necessarily demonstrate ineptitude or illiteracy, just as affluent families are not necessarily free of disability, language barriers or academic challenges.
- The highest NAPLAN results for schools are not necessarily equivalent to the students’ best performances.
Schools are unique, as a family demographic is. The Gonski 2.0 inclusion of a ‘capacity to pay’ formula assumes that fee paying parents exist only in the private and denominational sectors. Capacity to pay does not include families of children attending public schools – leaving the use of demographics and postcodes across the board questionable.
If the funding model is based on inaccuracies, what then is the expected return on investment?
Registration vs Provision
With regard to funding, the emphasis has been placed on public, private and denominational schools. Little has been said about home schooling. Approximately 30,000 Australian families choose to home-school their children or to access distance education. Families that choose to home-school must register with the State or Territory in which they reside, but according to legislation – the Education and Training Reform Act 2006 of Victoria, for instance – schools are considered to be places in which education takes place during normal school hours, with the exception of home schooling. This shows the distinction between an investment in schools and an investment in schooling or education. However, section 1.2.1(d) of that same Act states: ‘Parents have the right to choose an appropriate education for their child’.
Is the home schooling issue the only evidence that investment in schools is not an investment in schooling or education?
Systemic Contradictions – Funding vs Managing
The Commonwealth Government will provide 20% of its funding for public schools, and 80% will go toward private schools. State and Territory Governments are expected to pay the larger portion of 80% for public schools and the remaining 20% for private schools. However equitable, government funding – regardless of its origin – does not equate to equitable provision or management of schooling.
To reference the State Government of Victorian Education once more, its website states, ‘Victorian legislation clearly states that instruction in the standard curriculum program must be provided free of charge to all students in Victorian government schools. However, free instruction refers to teaching staff, administration and the provision of facilities in connection with instruction of the standard curriculum program. In other words, government funding is essentially paying for wages, buildings and grounds. The website also states that, ‘schools decide on the learning program they offer, based on the needs and aspirations of the school community’. Parents are asked to meet costs that are beyond the ‘standard curriculum’, and no two school communities or public schools are necessarily the same.
Everything considered then, Victorian schools are no different from denominational or private schools. The same is true in other States and Territories that offer select entry schools, gender exclusive schools, and schools that offer the International Baccalaureate.
If the community can choose the learning program, and if funding is linked to students, why is the funding given to schools?
Resourcing vs Review
Gonksi 2.0 promises the establishment of a National School Resourcing Board to review the distribution of funds to schools. Providing checks and balances with regard to funding is clearly an incentive in this model. Money is a resource. A more intelligent way to use this money would be investing it in schooling. A review of ways to reduce acceptable waste in schools, as well as ways to replicate wise investment must also include a review of the standard curriculum, and the individuals that deliver it.
Can teachers be up-skilled, transferred or transitioned out of schools in the same way as a school’s buildings and grounds can be remodeled, renovated or closed?
Choice vs Control
In 2016, the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that in Australian schools there were more than 3.5 million full-time students, and almost 0.5 million teachers. Funding for schools includes the provision of wages for teachers. As employees, teachers are free to apply for positions in a range of schools, and to find an environment that suits their professional needs. As in all other professions, they have the opportunity to apply for promotions and positions of leadership outside the classroom, and to apply for leave or changes to working hours, including part-time options. Regardless of their choices, they will be paid.
Students, on the other hand, are subjected to compulsory school attendance. For them, there is nothing that equates to the flexible school hours, promotion, or flexible leave arrangements that teachers have. Furthermore, any schooling that takes place in schools before 8.45am or after 3.45pm – known as ‘before and after school care’ – comes at a cost to parents. It would seem that Gonski 2.0 is a funding source based on a cookie cutter philosophy that views a school as a business that operates from 8.45am to 3.45pm, rather than as one possible source of schooling?
Are schools designed to employ rather than to educate?
Contribution vs Consumption
At the Commonwealth level, schools are funded predominantly from the acquisition of income tax, GST and capital gains tax. At the State level, schools funding comes predominantly from stamp duty and land tax.
Parental contributions are expected in every school, regardless of location, denomination or sector. Just as the Catholic sector distributes funds between dioceses to support lower income families and communities, higher income earners, property investors, independently wealthy taxpayers, and businesses contribute to Australian schools at large – regardless of the number of children they have.
Families that choose to send their children to denominational or private schools, not only pay private school fees, after tax, they also contribute to schools across the nation through their payment of taxes.
If tax payers know the cost of Medicare, private health insurance, rates and land tax, and can choose to invest accordingly, should they also be able to choose whether or not they invest in schools or schooling, and to what value?
Area vs Academia
Increased opportunity for students to further their education to Year 12 and beyond has brought resounding success for many. For others, however, it has come at a grave cost.
During the 1930s, Tasmania, like other Australian States and Territories, struggled with the cost of maintaining rural schools, and with the limited opportunities, they provided for students. To counter the problem, the State introduced ‘area schools’. They offered a curriculum rich in citizenship, and specialised in practical subjects directly related to the character of the local districts. To ensure students weren’t limited to a life on a farm, these schools eventually became obsolete. They were, however, attempting to provide schooling for the much-needed workforce beyond the ‘white collar’ middle class. There is much to be learned from them:
First, an overemphasis on technology now tends to limit the use and development of different skill sets and interests. Agriculture, culinary skills, sport, the arts, music and manufacturing remain essential elements of a diverse and balanced society. Narrowing opportunity increases the risk of disengagement, abuse, suicide, depression, welfare and unemployment, to name a few.
Second, the current funding model provides loadings for students in rural areas. Let’s use a simple equation to consider the waste. Assume every child in Australia is provided a base rate of $1. The loading of $1 applies to rural locations. A rural school has 5 children and a regional school has 100. The regional school receives $100 and the rural school receives $10. Both schools offer the standard curriculum; the regional school, however, has greater financial flexibility. The same can be said for the loadings for disability, non-english speaking students, and indigenous students. Spreading the funds across more than 9000 schools limits schools to standard academia, as opposed to giving them the opportunity to specialize in a given area.
What is the cost to the Australian budget and on Australian society, when Gonski 2.0 invests in schools rather than in schooling that would prepare everyone for citizenship and employment, regardless of capacity?
Fundamentals vs Foundations
If schools are to have any fundamental impact on responsible citizenship, those planning to enter the teaching profession must themselves be the products of quality teacher training.
A 2015 ACER review of The Teacher Workforce in Australia: Supply, Demand and Data, has identified ‘out-of-field’ teachers – those who teach beyond their qualification. It is a grave concern.
Statistics from this report reveal the percentage of teachers teaching out-of-field in the following subjects:
- Mathematics and physics – about 20%
- History – 25%
- Computing/IT – 30%
- Geography – 40%
- English – % unknown
Major factors that lead to out-of-field teaching include:
- 35% (3,300) schools having fewer than 400 students; and the related impact on class size
- the expectation that schools offer a diverse curriculum, regardless of school size or location
- teachers having to cover a range of subjects
- competent teachers being placed with senior students (to boost Year 12 results)
- out-of-field teachers being placed with lower year levels
In addition, primary school teachers – qualified as generalist teachers – are expected to teach any of eight different year levels, across every area of the curriculum – all of which demand increased complexity of knowledge, understanding and skills. Furthermore, teachers aspiring to leadership and principal roles, who would then determine staffing, are expected to apply for, and perform in, such positions without any additional formal qualifications.
In 1964 the Martin Report or The Report of Tertiary Training in Australia recommended that an autonomous Board of Teacher Education be established in each State, and charged with the authority to advise government in relation to future developments in teaching training. Its view was that the educational experience of any child, gained from kindergarten to university, depends largely on the extent to which teachers are prepared to perform their tasks. A further recommendation was that the Board ‘should also become the channel through which Commonwealth funds would be made available for the development of the preparation of teachers’.
Succumbing to the ‘I Give a Gonski’ philosophy places schools in a lucrative financial position. It places teachers and students, however, in an increasingly vulnerable one – the implications of which include teacher stress and burnout, student disengagement, and increased rates of truancy and suspension.
Gonksi 2.0 is a $23.5 billion funding model for Australian schools. It might well become known, however, as one of Australia’s most radical investments in welfare, unless there is a parallel investment in quality teaching.
What are the real reasons for the encouragement of unskilled teachers? And who’s behind it?
Need vs Want
Imagine you were given $10,576 or $13,290 to invest in your child’s education. How would you use it? Would you choose a school? What type of school? Might you invest in one that was a better fit for your faith, your child’s ability and interests, or in a convenient location? Would you ‘top up’ the funds you were given, to give you greater choice?
Whatever your final decision, you’d certainly think more carefully about where and how any investment were spent. If a school couldn’t provide the education necessary to meet your child’s needs, chances are you would want the flexibility to invest with another, more appropriate, service provider – perhaps a sporting club, a leadership camp, a farm or a factory.
Above all else, you would actively advocate for an education for your child, not just for bricks and mortar, wouldn’t you? And wouldn’t every other Australian parent?
Has Gonski 2.0 delivered a currency that shows little regard for Australia or its future? I suspect so.
copyright © Cheryl Lacey 2017
Cheryl Lacey is an educationist and advocate of agitating change in Australian education to face global challenges facing Australia and Australians.
cheryl@cheryllacey.com www.cheryllacey.com
