(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)
Federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne says the former Labor government has left the Coalition with a 1.2 billion dollar shortfall in schools funding.
The Coalition says it believes the model Labor negotiated is too complicated, and Mr Pyne is looking for new deals using the same amount of funding Labor promised over four years.
He says the current system disadvantages those states and school institutions that have not signed on to the so-called Gonski Reform funding model.
Amanda Cavill reports.
Under the former Labor government's reforms, school funding was to be boosted by 14.5 billion dollars over six years.
Most of that money, 12 billion dollars, was aimed at public schools, while Catholic schools were promised 1.5 billion dollars and independent schools one billion dollars.
The funding reforms would have allocated nine thousand dollars to every primary-school student and 12 thousand to every high school student.
Extra money would have been added for disadvantaged students, including Indigenous pupils, those from low socio-economic backgrounds and those with disabilities.
Before the election, then-opposition leader Tony Abbott, who had opposed the funding model, promised to match Labor's funding for four years.
But Christopher Pyne says the pre-election financial outlook released by Treasury and Finance before the September poll reflects a massive schools-funding shortfall.
He says the treatment of payments for non-participating states and territories shows a 1.2-billion-dollar cut.
And he says it is because the money was taken from the education budget and returned to consolidated revenue.
Mr Pyne now says that system of funding schools simply cannot work because the system he has inherited is impossible to administer.
He says it is unfair to deliver plenty of money to some schools and much less for others.
"We now know that 900 schools in the independent sector will have what you might like to describe as the pure funding model but the other 90 per cent of schools around Australia will have a hybrid model which differs from every state and territory and the Catholic sector. So it's an incomprehensible mess, and added to that is this very substantial blow of a 1.2-billion-dollar cut."
Mr Pyne insists the billions of dollars promised by the Coalition in school funding is not at risk.
He says the Government is just not committed to the same implementation model.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has refused to answer questions about the funding shortfall.
[Journalist:] "The Government is saying that the reason they've got to go back to the drawing board is because some of the agreements that were signed by you weren't done correctly and, in fact, that you short-funded the schools agreements by more than one billion dollars. What do you have to say to that?" [Shorten:] "Tony Abbott promised before the election that they would be a government of no surprises and no excuses." [Journalist:] "So, if Labor had been elected, would you have cut education funding by more than one billion dollars?" [Shorten:] "Labor is the party that put needs-based education on the map."
Gonski panel member Kathryn Greiner says she is disappointed Mr Pyne will not meet with the expert panel who designed the model before making changes.
Ms Greiner has told the ABC she is not totally at odds with Mr Pyne over some changes but it is a complex issue that needs to be considered over time.
"In many ways, I understand his concerns. But I think it's too early for any judgment to be made, and my preference is that he should have agreed to the funding for at least three years and then work out the problems that will probably -- inevitably -- arise."
And the Government is likely to meet opposition from the state governments.
New South Wales Education Minister Adrian Piccoli has rejected Mr Pyne's criticism of the Gonski model.
He says it is a fair way to fund schools, people have agreed to it, and it will take years to unravel.
Tasmania's Premier Lara Giddings says there is no need for the federal government to renegotiate an agreement with the states because there is already one in place.
"We've already negotiated. We already have an agreement. We expect the Australian government to abide by their promise to the Tasmanian people and stick to the agreement that we have. Now what interests me here is that you have a unified voice from the states here. All of the states who've signed up want to see this money delivered, as promised before the election by Christopher Pyne and Tony Abbott, and (it) deserves to be delivered now after the election. It is just not good enough to throw away an election promise, to break an election promise, like that."
The Victorian government has also urged the Commonwealth to honour the deal it reached with Labor.
It says, while it did not actually sign on the dotted line, a 12.2-billion-dollar deal had been reached.
It says the deal guaranteed record levels of funding and an unprecedented six years of funding certainty for schools in Victoria.
The federal government says a new system will be negotiated before the start of the 2015 school year.
(Click on the audio tab above to hear the report)
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