Saying so doesn't make it so. This was my initial reaction to the Prime Minister's announcement of the Government's formal response to the Gonski Report. I was struck by the prevalence of rhetoric and lack of detail in response to a detailed report that was presented more than eight months ago.
A central thrust of Gonski was that additional funds need to be directed towards students who experience disadvantage. The Government accepts that schools with students who face additional challenges would be entitled to additional funding. New money would be directed to pay for teachers' aides, specialist literacy and numeracy coaches and new resources. There would be continuity and certainty to such funding.
These additional funds and loadings would fund every student identified as being at disadvantage, irrespective of the school the student attends.
It is difficult to disagree with the principle behind this. The how and to what effect will be the critical points.
The question of where the extra money will be found is largely ducked by the Prime Minister. A purported $6.5 billion is to be phased in, from after the next election until 2020. Many commentators argue that this figure is significantly understated, if all promises are to be kept.
State governments provide almost 75 per cent of funding for education, yet rather extraordinarily the PM said 'We will now start discussions with state and territory governments, and Catholic and independent schools, over the details of our plan' (emphasis mine).
The credibility of the Prime Minister in announcing a policy response in such a critical area before reaching agreement with the states may also be questioned. Without the states coming on board, and finding their share of the money, the implementation of Gonski is impossible.
This point was illustrated graphically when the Catholic and independent schools sectors were informed by the NSW Government that their funding would be cut significantly from 2013, leading to fee rises of up to $500 per student. State schools were also to suffer undisclosed cuts.
To what extent these cuts, made without any consultation or warning — and after next year's budgets have been determined in many schools, are the result of over-stretched state budgets or are part of the clearing of decks before negotiations commence between state and federal authorities over implementing Gonski, is uncertain.
True, the projected cuts may not occur, as a firestorm of objections from parents and schools has led to rumours of a backdown (current at the time of writing). But the fact that such a cut in education in Australia's largest state could be seriously contemplated demonstrates the grave concerns about the feasibility of fully funding the Government's response to Gonski.
With regard to non-government schools, we are assured 'Every school would see its funding rise every year'. Yet the modelling mechanism that will determine the funding for each school has not been released; one suspects, because any model that attempts to follow Gonski and honour the Government's promise will not add up.
Modelling attempts by various state governments and the Catholic system show many anomalies. Many schools, including state schools, would lose funds, while some modelling based on the recommendation that every school receive a base grant for each student means The Kings School would get an extra $2 million per annum.
Similarly the mechanism that would reflect the idea 'that the government funding provided to non-government schools would be adjusted based on parents' capacity to contribute' is not detailed. Nor is the rate of the indexation of funding each year. (The educational inflation rate is considerably higher than the inflation rate due to the costs of teachers' salaries and new technology.)
A key assumption underlying the Government's approach is that increased funding equals improved standards. There is no necessary causal relationship between funding and educational outcomes. By the Government's own measure of standards of our relative ranking in world academic testing such as PISA, our results have dropped despite increases in funding over the last ten years.
At the time of Gonski's release, the Grattan Institute launched its report 'Lessons from high-performing systems in East Asia'. It highlighted the success, as measured by international testing, of schools in Shanghai, Korea and Singapore, which the Prime Minister now sets as a goal for Australian schools by 2025. Gonski too highlighted a perceived fall in competitiveness of Australian students as a rationale for challenging the status quo.
Ironically, most of the factors cited in the Grattan report do not relate to the allocation of resources. In the education systems of places such as Korea, Singapore and Shanghai you will find often narrow and high focused curriculums, early streaming of students into vocational and academic streams, parental expectations and a cultural approach to education that is quite distinct from what most Australians might believe in.
Research identifies the single most important measure in lifting student classroom performance as teaching standards. Reflecting this, the Prime Minister also focused on teacher training and appraisal. Her plan calls for, among other factors, 'higher entry standards — entrants to the teaching profession will be in the top 30 per cent of literacy and numeracy results'.
This is most problematic. There is already a teacher shortage in some areas, and most universities are adamant that it is impossible to train enough teachers if entrants must be from the top 30 per cent. Moreover, it may be that such an arbitrary limit will prevent some fine teachers being recruited — sometimes those who have struggled in their own education prove to be excellent teachers.
Insofar as there is a problem with teacher quality, I suspect it has more to do with industrial restraint than university entry. Achieving appropriate pay of teachers, especially in the years when they are in their prime, and in a way that can discriminate between those who are effective and those who are less so, while respecting the collegiate nature of the profession, is no easy task. It certainly can't occur in an overly rigid bureaucratic system.
Fr Chris Middleton SJ is the Principal of St Aloysius College, Milson's Point, in Sydney. This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in The Gonzagan, the school's weekly newsletter. Fr Middleton was awarded for Best Education Coverage at the 2012 Australasian Catholic Press Association Awards for his article 'Gonski's reductionist view of education' published in Eureka Street.