Why We Need Change

By Angelo Gavrielatos

Nowhere was the size of the challenge Australia faces in education more clearly illustrated than in the results of the latest international PISA test, released in December.

That assessment of 15 year old students found Australia, while still a high-performing nation, has slipped behind the top group of countries in reading literacy, maths and science.

Of even greater concern was the evidence of growing inequity.

The relationship between family wealth and educational achievement is now so strong that students from the poorest families are up to three years of schooling behind those of the same age from the wealthiest families.

This in a country where we cherish the ideal of a fair go for all.

Turning this around will require fundamental reform, including the replacement of the Commonwealth’s SES funding system.

There is clear evidence that, instead of ameliorating the effects of disadvantage, it has magnified them.

Private schools are funded regardless of their wealth or income. Student need is only measured by the general characteristics of the area they live. The result is that the largest increases in funding have gone to the wealthiest schools.

Due to political deals, almost 50 per cent of schools receive more money than they are entitled to.

Private school funding is indexed not according to their own costs, but according to the much higher ones in government schools, which, as the only ones open to all, educate the vast majority of students with higher educational needs.

This system has delivered astronomical increases to elite private schools – 237 per cent for The Kings School and 229 per cent for Trinity Grammar.

Meanwhile government schools, regardless of their needs, receive a lower funding rate than that of even the wealthiest private school.

The impact of this system shows that the privatisation of education is not the pathway to an equality of learning outcomes for all students. That can only be achieved by providing access for every child to public education of the highest quality. That is what a new funding system must support.