Labor has suggested it would renegotiate separate deals with state governments and the independent and Catholic school sectors to reverse funding growth cuts in the Turnbull government schools plan.
At a press conference in Canberra on Friday, Bill Shorten pledged to “fix the unfairness in [the government’s] school funding cuts” while Labor’s education spokeswoman, Tanya Plibersek, recommitted to cuts to overfunded schools.
The promises, pulling the opposition’s policy in opposite directions, suggest Labor will have to redesign its education offering and renegotiate needs-based funding agreements to deliver on its intention to spend $22bn more over the decade than the Coalition.
Early on Friday morning the parliament passed the Coalition’s Gonski 2.0 schools funding plan which will deliver $23.5bn more to schools over a decade. Under the plan the federal government will give public schools 20% of the school resource standard and non-government schools 80% after six years of funding growth.
Also in Canberra, Malcolm Turnbull heralded the package as “the biggest reform in commonwealth school funding ever”.
“For the first time that which has always been aspired to but never achieved has been achieved: national, consistent, needs-based funding right across the country,” he said.
The prime minister criticised the fact the previous Labor government had concluded funding deals with the separate school sectors in each state and territory because he said it resulted in “the same school with the same needs in [one] state getting radically different treatment than it did in another”.
“[The deals were] inconsistent between systems, between states. It was unfair. It couldn’t be justified.”
Later at a Catholic primary school, Shorten said the Gonski 2.0 policy did not spend what was promised and was unfair to government and low-fee Catholic schools.
“If the Turnbull government does not fix the unfairness in its school funding cuts at the next election, we will,” he said.
Asked if this pledge meant Labor would restore dollar for dollar the funding promised in now torn-up agreements, Plibersek said Labor had “already agreed that some schools, wealthy overfunded schools, will actually receive less funding”.
“They will be brought down to the schooling resource standard more quickly under Labor, so that does necessarily mean some redistribution within that funding pool,” she said.
Under the Coalition policy, about 24 non-government schools will lose funding and 353 more will receive less than promised by six-year needs-based funding agreements.
Plibersek did not say definitively whether Labor would return to separate deals or retain the architecture of Gonski 2.0, namely the federal government giving states a fixed portion of the SRS.
But she criticised that central design premise of Gonski 2.0, likening it to putting a four-year old on a football field with a 14-year old.
“[If] the rules are exactly the same for both kids, well, that’s consistent, but it’s not fair.”
Under an amendment negotiated by the crossbench, by 2023 state governments will have to give their public schools 75% of the school resource standard, leading to concerns from some states about their capacity to pay.
Plibersek said Labor would work with state governments and the Catholic school systems rather than “impose a funding system on the states with no consultation”.
“We say every school in every system in every state and territory should be at at least 95% of the schooling resource standard. We say that the fastest growth should go in the shortest time to the neediest schools – that is the principle at the heart of Labor’s funding arrangements.”
