The new Labor-Green dominated Government has magnified the deep uncertainties already being felt by Australia's non-government schools over funding.
The Rudd-Gillard Labor government maintained a holding pattern on school funding in its first term, providing a degree of stability in recurrent public funding for the growing Catholic and independent school sectors.
It adopted the SES model introduced by the Howard Coalition government in 2001, and guaranteed that no non-government school would be made financially worse off during the current funding agreement term.
The current agreement will now expire in 2013, with Julia Gillard committing during the election campaign to maintaining the existing system for an additional year beyond that.
Despite this, in April this year Gillard announced a review of school funding arrangements to apply beyond the current school funding agreement.
The terms of reference for the review, headed by David Gonski, contains provisions which may signal an end to current nongovernment school funding arrangements which have served Australian education well.
In particular, the review is to consider the role of private contributions and other income sources when recommending a model for allocating funds across schools. This suggests replacing the existing SES with something resembling the former Education Resources Index, which withheld funds from schools with greater private income sources.
Similarly, there have been concerns expressed by non-government school representatives that public funding to Catholic and independent schools will not be maintained in real terms. This would imply that fees would need to be increased in order to cover the rising costs of teacher wages and educational supplies.
In late July, former education minister Simon Crean stated that non-government schools should not necessarily assume the maintenance of a funding guarantee, since indexation arrangements could change as a result of the review.
The newly sworn-in Minister for School Education, Peter Garrett, has not refuted this statement in his short tenure in the job.
To fuel further uncertainty into the funding outlook for non-government schooling, enter the Greens. In their election manifesto released before the election, Greens leader Bob Brown and his education spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young called for an almost immediate overhaul of school funding.
Under their policy the existing SES model was to be abolished at the end of this year, with a replacement funding arrangement that accounts for the resource levels and funding capacity of non-government schools.
Schools that charge higher tuition fees or receive greater donations from their local communities would have their public funding substantially reduced under the Greens' plan. This resource-based funding arrangement is strikingly reminiscent of the ''hit list'' that was devised by Labor during its ill-fated 2004 federal election campaign.
The existing funding indexation arrangement, which ties funding growth to non-government schools on the basis on recurrent costs of government schools, would also be abolished.
Presumably, given their stated objective of redistributing funds to government schools, the Greens would want to replace the existing indexation with a framework that provides Catholic and independent schools with far lower growth in public funding.
The overall objective of Green education policy is to see the reduction in total federal funding to non-government schools back to 2003-04 levels.
This change would effectively reduce public funding by $1000 for each student enrolled in Catholic and independent schools.
In response to this enforced funding restriction, schools would be forced either to raise fees even further or reduce the level of educational service provision to students.
If the Greens wield their new-found political muscle to push school funding policy in their preferred direction, such a scenario would be highly detrimental to the broader interests of Australian education.
Catholic and independent schools provide a quality, values based education that is highly responsive to the educational needs of students and parental choices.
Reducing public funding by the amount envisaged by the Greens would restrict the choice of non-government schooling to all but the wealthiest Australian parents.
It should also be understood that the federal and state governments have a limited fiscal capacity to enrol at least an additional 30 per cent of currently enrolled students into the government school system.
Cost-effective public funding to non-government schools ensure that the taxpaying public are better off, as students in Catholic and independent schools alleviate the fiscal pressure off states and the Commonwealth to fund the same students in expensive government schools.
The continuing funding uncertainty in Australian school education partly reflects a lack of appreciation of the significant contribution that non-government schools play in helping to ensure that this country maintains a world class standard of education.
Any funding change that dilutes this contribution will do little but harm the economic and social interests of future generations.
ADVERTISEMENT
No comments:
Post a Comment