Australia’s ‘Gonski Review’ of school funding

Australia’s Federal Labor government can expect a major headache come Monday. Pundits of all stripes are limbering up for the expected fracas that will erupt when the Government releases their long awaited commissioned report on school funding, and their response to it. The report, written by a panel headed by University of NSW Chancellor David Gonski, is expected to recommend a serious shake-up to the current funding system.

It is timely then to consider some of the ethical issues that arise when it comes to questions of school choice and school funding.

One of the key issues is equity. Australia now stands out among OECD countries in the extent to which it subsidises fee-paying private schools, and consequently the overall number of students who attend such schools. Currently 34.6% of secondary school students in Australia attend non-government schools (up by over 14.6% since 1975), compared with, for instance, roughly 7% in the UK, 6% in Canada and 1% in Finland. The OECD average is almost half the proportion at around 15%. According to a report by the Nous Group, commissioned by the panel, “a higher proportion of Australian students attend non-government schools than in any similar OECD country other than the Netherlands.”

But being private is not the issue, and the simplistic private/public dichotomy approach is mistaken. What we should be concerned about is ensuring that our funding system allocates resources based on need, and that it helps us realise a more meritocratic society, where high-paying jobs and rewarding opportunities are available to the most talented and hardworking. Currently Australia’s funding system fails on both counts.

 

How the Commonwealth funding system works

The hydra-headed funding system currently in place was introduced in 2001 by the Liberal Howard Government, and allocates money to private schools under an SES (socio-economic status) model. Under this approach, private schools are guaranteed between 13.7 and 70% of the average cost of educating a student in a government school (the AGSRC index), depending on the socio-economic profile of students in a school community. This is based on census data that indicates the SES backgrounds of those living in certain areas.

But the amount of funding that is allocated to private schools in no way takes into consideration the level of fees that they charge or the amount of resources available to them (including from donations or endowments etc). In 2008, fees and private donations – glossed over for funding allocation purposes – accounted for an average of 43% of the total income of non-government schools. Further, almost half (40% in 2009) of all private schools receive more than they would be entitled to under the SES model due to ‘Funding Maintained Agreements’ for schools that would have been worse off.

 

Values at play

Choice is a very important value in the school funding debate – government subsidisation undoubtedly makes available a larger number of schools for some parents to send their children to. But choice for whom, exactly? Whilst government schools have a legal obligation to open their doors to all, private schools get the best of both worlds by being selective in the students they admit, and still receiving government funding. They have no obligations to accept the poor, the disadvantaged, or the most expensive students to teach. It is government schools that educate 80% of children with disabilities and special needs, and 86% of indigenous students. They educate almost double the number of students from low-income families (as a proportion of enrolments), and are overwhelmingly the providers of education in remote and rural areas. What reasons might we have for subsidising that choice, then?

There are in fact reasons to subsidise private education in some instances. One reason is that education is a public good; a society of well-educated people is better than one where people are never afforded those opportunities. We have good reason to think that education makes people happier, healthier, and more productive, and that those benefits are enjoyed by all to some extent. It’s usually said that we should focus on increasing the size of the pie, rather than how we cut it. I think we should be concerned about both. That’s because education is a positional good as well as an intrinsic one, or one with public benefits. Access to rewarding jobs is to a large extent (but not wholly) a zero-sum game. If someone lands a great job, someone else misses out. Since education is one of the main ways in which we land such jobs and win out over others, there are good reasons for believing that its advantages should be based on talents and not money. Not doing so is not only unfair, but it’s bad for society.

Imagine you are about to finish high school and would like to study medicine. You are bright and you’ve worked hard. But unfortunately for you the university you’d like to attend, instead of admitting students on the basis of their grades or talents, has decided instead to auction off such opportunities to the highest bidders. Consequently, less talented and less hard working students with wealthy parents have an advantage bought for them. Surely we would have good reason to object to such a system; it would constitute not only a very serious injustice to you, but it would also be hugely inefficient for society; it would seriously distort the rising of talent and ensure we had a society of second rate doctors. If harms of this kind were great enough, it might justify banning such a practice – but certainly it should not be subsidised by government. We need to think seriously about whether the educational opportunities we make available to high school students are any different. My suspicion is our different response has more to do with the anesthesia of familiarity.

There are also practical reasons (not based on principles like equality of opportunity) for thinking that government should, through its funding arrangements, promote and incentivise the enrolment of students in schools that are diverse and open to all. One such reason is social cohesion. A society that incentivises the lumping together of students in schools based on the income bracket or cultural background of their parents is one in which we ensure cross-cultural and cross-class communication and interaction is kept to a minimum. Another practical reason for investing more in government education is simply that, that is where government will get the greatest educational return for their investment.

Empirical data from countries like Finland, Canada and Japan show us that it is possible to have a schooling system that is both equitable and exceptional in its educational outcomes. My point is that it is also desireable. In 2010, 86% of the 100 schools which had the highest Year 12 (final year) scores in Victoria were private schools. The tail of underperformance in Australian government schools is significant, and the influence of class background on educational attainment in Australia is, according to the Nous et al report, “well above the OECD average, and substantially higher than in any comparable OECD country.” Using government money in ways that reinforce rather than tackle that problem is highly objectionable.

 

Conclusion

There is a public interest in ensuring that everyone has a good education, and perhaps a market in schools is desireable (it’s certainly not something objectionable in and of itself). But government should not subsidise advantage. It should not help you buy your child an advantage over others, especially where that means other, more naturally talented students from less advantaged backgrounds will miss out. That’s unfair (it harms the life chances of others), and it’s bad for society.

My only hope is that the Gonski Review can propose a better metric of need for the distribution of educational resources. If private schools are educating a large number of disadvantaged students and they have a lack of resources, then they deserve funding too. But let’s not top-up schools to buy extra swimming pools or more after school tutorials while that money could be used to help, far more significantly, those who aren’t so well off elsewhere.

I want to end with a quotation from the late American political philosopher John Rawls. Rawls writes that it is neither just nor unjust that people are born into society at some particular position (rich or poor) – those are simply natural facts. However;

“What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts. Aristocratic and caste societies are unjust because they make these contingencies the ascriptive basis for belonging to more or less enclosed and privileged social classes. The basic structure of these societies incorporates the arbitrariness found in nature. But there is no necessity for men to resign themselves to these contingencies. The social system is not an unchangeable order beyond human control but a pattern of human action.”

We shouldn’t buy the ‘life isn’t fair’ rhetoric. We can, and should, have an educational system that minimises the effect of social background on educational attainment. The Gonski Review will provide the government with an excellent chance to make our funding system fairer and more efficient. Let’s not squander such opportunities.

 

References:

All of my empirical notes and statistics come from either the Nous et al report (http://www.deewr.gov.au/Schooling/ReviewofFunding/Documents/Nous-SchoolingChallengesandOpportunities.pdf) or the book ‘School Choice: How parents negotiate the new school market in Australia’ (Allen&Unwin, 2009) by University of Sydney academics Professor Craig Campbell, Dr Helen Proctor and Professor Geoffrey Sherington.

A fully referenced version of this article can be provided on request.

You can find out more about the funding review here: http://www.deewr.gov.au/Schooling/ReviewofFunding/Pages/default.aspx