School Funding Broken, Says Review Member

Fund Our Future: Stop the Cuts - National Demonstration (Photo credit: Matt Dinnery)

by AAP, 21st Century News: http://www.21stcenturynews.com.au/school-funding-broken-review-member

The model to fund Australia’s schools is broken and needs to be fixed now or the educational gap with the rest of the world will widen, a member of the government’s schools funding panel says.

The federal government has offered state and territory governments a two-for-one-dollar deal worth $14.5 billion in total to be agreed upon by June 30 to boost spending for schools across Australia. So far, no state nor territory has signed a deal with Canberra.

University of Swinburne Chancellor Bill Scales says the current model to fund Australia’s schools needs fixing. “It is actually broken and what the panel did, chaired by David (Gonski) of course, showed quite clearly why it was broken,” he told ABC television on Monday.

Mr Scales said more funding along with other measures such as improving the quality of teacher training were needed to lift Australia’s standards as overseas competitors raised theirs at a faster rate.

“We weren’t saying that funding was the only issue but saying it is a necessary condition,” he said. “We have to get that right so we can get so many of these other things right.”

Mr Scales said the cuts to university spending, around $2.8 billion, to help the investment in schools was detrimental to the whole education system. “To take resources from one sector to simply give to another will in fact undermine the whole of the system so we will no longer have a coherent education system in this country,” he said.

He was one of six members of the review panel that presented its report to the federal government in late 2011 with a goal to boost schools spending by $6.5 billion a year.