Audit Commission's Gonski landmines

The Commission of Audit has planted so many landmines across the political landscape that two have been scarcely noticed. One is planted directly under Gonski, the other under the federal role in schooling.

Of the many issues tackled by the Commission, school funding is one of the few about which the Government has to do something, soon. The Government has gone along with the remnants of the Gonski scheme, but only until 2016. Prime Minister Tony Abbott has already announced that after that, all bets are off. What the Commission suggests in this area is therefore of immediate interest.

The Commission finds that present school funding arrangements waste time and resources, and frustrate efforts at educational improvement. No surprises there. That is why the Rudd Government appointed Gonski in 2010, and that is what Gonski's report describes in detail.

Two levels of government, federal and state/territory, give money to non-government schools. The Federal Government also subsidises government schools, and runs special programs which come and go, targeting everything from computers to school chaplaincies, in all three schools sectors.

It is not surprising that Australia finds difficulty in getting any traction in educational reform or, as the Commission and others have noted, that spending has gone up much faster than detectable 'performance'.

The Commission doesn't like Gonski's proposed fix and, since some states signed up for Gonski and some didn't, it likes the upshot even less.

Saying that it's a mess was the easy part of the Commission's job. Figuring out what to do next is not so simple, although the Commission seems to have thought that it is. It has proposed two measures.

First, the Federal Government should give its schools allocations to the states. They, in turn, should do the distributing they currently do, but with more money (although not as much more as Labor promised). Rather than head toward a funding formula common to all states/territories and all three sectors, as suggested by Gonski, the Commission wants to head in the opposite direction.

Second, the Federal Government should set national ground rules - a national curriculum, national reporting on outcomes, and national disclosure by the states of how they do their distributing.

This could be workable, had the Commission gone about its task in the right spirit. But it has focused on getting an 'efficient' funding system, which is just one part of the puzzle.

Another, put front and centre by Gonski, is 'need'. The Commission says that it supports needs-based funding and that the states should report on how they do it. But it doesn't recognise need in its own proposals. It wants federal money to be handed to the states and territories in proportion to the number of students enrolled, as if there was no more need in Tasmania than in WA, or in the Northern Territory than the ACT.

Worse, it proposes to flick to each of the states and territories the task of solving or reducing yet another of the problems which preoccupied Gonski. 'Residualisation' has seen the best-resourced, best-positioned schools take students and families from the worst-off, giving Australia a high and rising degree of social segmentation in schooling and fanning conflict between sectors and social groups. Gonski proposed to put all schools on the same footing, thereby evening-up the playing field and dampening down chronic political conflict.

It would be open to each of the states and territories to adopt Gonski-like measures, as NSW has done. But what about the others? Will we get seven local battles over funding shares instead of just one national one?

One way of tackling these and other problems is through national reporting. The Commission is in favour of that, but only for 'outcomes'. Has the Commission bowed to objections by the independent schools to current requirements that they also report 'inputs' (income and expenditure) on the MySchool website?

Moreover, as just about any educationist of any ideological orientation will point out, data on outcomes alone are worse than useless. They are misleading. The real question is how much difference each school (or school system) makes, taking into account the difficulty of its educational job, and the resources to hand. The answer can only be found with data on inputs and social context as well as outcomes.

Nor do outcomes define everything that schools produce, or that parents (and governments) care about. What do current students, parents, and teachers report about the character and quality of life at their school, for example? It is all very well to say that these will be matters for each jurisdiction, but if there is a case for a national curriculum, or indeed national reporting on outcomes, why not on other crucial matters also?

These and other shortcomings could be remedied within a devolved system, but only by a much more considered framework of requirement and reporting than the Commission's narrow field of vision permits.

There is little reason to hope that the Government will see things differently. The Coalition in opposition, urged on by independent sector lobbies, opposed the Gonski solution from day one. It sought to frustrate governments, such as the O'Farrell Government in NSW, that supported Gonski, and encouraged the waverers and hold-outs such as WA and Queensland to resist.

After 18 months of playing the spoiler, the now Education Minister Christopher Pyne and Abbott announced an 11-hour conversion to Gonski, only to try to ditch it again within weeks of taking office. The Commission's proposals are inevitably tainted with the odour of bad faith.

Pyne's brazen effort to get rid of Gonski served only to show that he is not to be trusted and that Gonski enjoys widespread popular support. Abbott must be wondering whether this minister - or any minister - could carry the day with the kind of scheme recommended by the Commission.

Abbott no doubt also realises that Opposition Leader Bill Shorten would be happy to go to the next election as leader of the Gonski party and worry later about how to implement it.

In the meantime, the hottest ticket in town will be for Gonski's first major statement since the release of his report two years ago, scheduled for 21 May at the University of Melbourne. He has promised to give his views on the extent to which stakeholders have comprehended and implemented what he and his panel proposed.