Sky News Agenda
21 Feb 2012
Transcipt SUBJECTS: Gonski Review
E&OE………
David Spears: What is wrong with this concept, this idea, of schools being funded based on need?
Christopher Pyne: Nothing David and that is exactly the model we have now. The SES funding model is a needs based model. It’s based on the income qualifications and the income and occupations of people in a census collected district area that is available to a school in the non-government school sector.
Spears: But funding to independent schools, public funding to independent schools, is not specifically based on any sort of measurement of what per student schools need to deliver a standard quality outcome.
Pyne: It is a needs based funding model David, and the myth that we don’t have a needs based funding model needs to be exploded and that’s why students in government schools can expect to attract $14,500 this year and children in the non-government sector can expect to attract $7,500 of government funding because the funds go where the needs are.
Spears: What about schools that have their funding levels frozen? Are you saying there’s no need to assess the wealth of the school community and what they really need?
Pyne: We welcome the Gonski review and I think it contains some very good things. I’m not quibbling with the work David Gonski has done. I think he’s done a very considered report. I’m more concerned about the Government’s response to it and right now with cost of living pressures being what they are the last thing that families could possibly afford is an increase in school fees, but if the Government goes ahead with its plan to means test the parents of non-government school children that’s exactly what will happen. Fees will go up in non-government schools and if the Government continue….
Spears: How will they go up? What makes you sure that fees will go up?
Pyne: Because the report conceives of finding out what the capacity to pay of each family in a non-government school. If, for example, a school is currently charging $2000 a year and it’s determined that they could actually get $4000 from a particular family the Government will be saying we are going to ask you to charge $4000 or we will reduce the funding from the federal government accordingly. In other words it’s a means test, just like the means test on the private health insurance rebate because it’s in Labor’s DNA to means test aspirational Australians.
Spears: The means test is going to be based on the current SES model, at least initially. How is it going to produce a different figure?
Pyne: David, the whole report is about dismantling the SES funding model. They just don’t have any other data at this stage to use so of course they have to continue that in the short term, but in the medium term…..
Spears: But surely more accurate data would mean a more accurate system of assessment?
Pyne: Right now the Coalition won’t support any funding model which increases the school fees of the 1.2 million children in non-government schools. Cost of living pressures are just too high to allow the Government to do that. In two ways they’ll do that. One by means testing the capacity to pay by families in non-government schools which I’ve already mentioned, but also if they don’t continue the current indexation arrangements that are six per cent each year. On your program this morning Craig Emerson has let the cat out of the bag and indicated that they won’t be doing that and of course that will mean one thing; up to $4.2 billion less in non-government schools which can only mean rising school fees or sacking teachers or a combination of both.
Spears: The minister Peter Garrett says the funding will be indexed. He won’t commit to any particular model of indexation.
Pyne: That’s right. He won’t.
Spears: He does say there will be indexation.
Pyne: David, the devil is will be the detail. For example essentially what the Government has announced is they have frozen non-government funding at the current level pending their announcement of some indexation model. If it’s not six per cent David, then it’s a cut to non-government schools. If it’s one per cent, two per cent, it’s a massive cut. Saying there will be indexation and then putting your money on the table are two very different things.
Spears: Can I just ask you in principle what you would say to parents of public school kids – most parents still do send their kids to public schools still – who see the amount of public money going to wealthy private schools? Is there a need for adjustment here?
Pyne: Well, David no. The facts are that children in government schools attract $14,000 per student in government funding and students in non-government schools attract $7500 and that is appropriate. 78 per cent of all Government funding goes to the 66 per cent of students that are in Government schools and 22 per cent of funding goes to the 34 per cent of children that are in non-government schools. So there’s already a very heavy weighting in favour of the government schools for government funding and there’s no proposition that that should be changed, but I’m not going to buy into the myth making that’s being created by some figures in the education sector who overdramatise the situation and pretend that somehow funding is at the core of our problems in education. It’s not. The problem at the core of our education system is that we don’t have principal autonomy, we don’t have a robust curriculum and we don’t have the teacher quality that exists in our Asian neighbours who are the people we’re apparently comparing ourselves with.
ENDS