PM won't commit to more schools funding

20 Feb 2012, 6:47 pm   -   Source: AAP
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Education minister Peter Garrett has ruled out a return to Labor's 2004 election policy. (AAP)

Education minister Peter Garrett has ruled out a return to Labor's 2004 election policy. (AAP)

The federal government has stopped short of committing to increase schools funding, saying it needs to work out details with the states first.

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The federal government has broadly welcomed recommendations to overhaul schools funding but stopped short of committing to a spending increase.

Education and school groups say federal, state and territory governments will need to move quickly to have the recommended new arrangements, released on Monday, in place by the start of the next funding round in 2014.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard hopes to introduce legislation for a new system to parliament by the end of this year but says negotiations with states and territories could take time.

Under the recommendations proposed by an expert panel led by businessman David Gonski, Australian governments would need to commit about an extra $5.4 billion a year, shared between public and private sectors, to lift student achievements.

It criticised current funding arrangements as unnecessarily complex, lacking coherence and transparency and duplicating funding in some areas.

The panel, which has been reviewing the funding system for two years, also recommended an overhaul of the method of calculating funding per student.

The new model would apply to public and private sectors and be based on the actual resources used by schools that consistently achieve high results.

Loadings would be added to the per student amount to address disadvantage, indigenous students, disability, school size and location.

Preliminary estimates from the Gonski review suggested this would be about $8000 per primary student and $10,500 per secondary student - although this is based on 2009 data and needs to be revisited.

Mr Gonski described his panel's report as a roadmap for a genuine, long-term partnership involving all governments and the private schooling sector.

"This is the only way that we can ensure our children and young people receive an excellent education in schools that are funded appropriately for need regardless of sector and jurisdiction," he said.

Angelo Gavrielatos, federal president of the Australian Education Union, said the government must give a clear timetable for the introduction of legislation so the funding arrangements could begin by 2014.

The federal government will take a set of funding principles to the next Council of Australian Governments meeting, scheduled for April.

Ms Gillard said the states and territories had proven themselves brave and willing partners in making other reforms, such as the national curriculum and the MySchool website.

"I think we've got an impressive track record of getting some hard education reforms done," she told journalists in Canberra.

"That doesn't mean that I expect any premier or any chief minister to come to the table and say, `I'm going to tick everything.'

"But I would expect them to bring a spirit of goodwill."

Still, Ms Gillard said it was too early to commit to an actual dollar increase in funding in the budget.

The federal opposition savaged the Gonski review and vowed to scrap any overhaul of the system based on its recommendations.

Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne insisted if the government adopted the review's findings, funding for non-government schools would decline and tuition fees would rise.

"The coalition won't implement a new policy that hits parents in their hip pocket to the tune of potentially thousands of dollars a year," Mr Pyne told reporters in Canberra.

The review "anticipates" a minimum private contribution of at least 10 per cent of the schooling resource standard per student at the poorest non-government schools.

It also recommended private schools which did not charge fees or which served the neediest students - such as special schools for disabled students - be fully publicly funded.

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