Kick the Commonwealth out of school funding and the classroom. They should regulate, not dictate

The Federal government should cease its direct funding of the school systems. It should direct those funds back to the states. Its involvement in school funding is expensive, wasteful of taxpayer funds and provides no value to state schooling systems.

The Federal government has a key role to play in assuring the system via:

NAPLAN
the National Curriculum and the Measurement Framework for Schooling in Australia (ACARA) and
Teacher training and registration standards (Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST), Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL))

The “Schools Resourcing Standard (SRS)” is nothing of the sort. It is an arbitrary benchmark which has no useful meaning in determining needs-based funding. The population, needs, and priorities of Victoria could not be more different from those of Tasmania and the Northern Territory. Arbitrary funding benchmarks hinder the development of accurate, needs-based funding assessments for primary and secondary education.

NAPLAN is, by design, a measure of total system success, not individual student achievement. This is an important quality check on the states’ schooling systems.

The National Curriculum provides a useful framework necessary for NAPLAN standardised testing to have any meaning.

It is nonsense that Initial Teacher Education (ITE) is accredited nationally, provided by Federally funded universities, is in line with national standards and yet teacher accreditation remains with the states. Incoming migrants cannot have their credentials verified for nationwide work. Teachers have to re-register if they cross the border. Teacher registration should be nationally harmonised.

The Federal government’s interventions in schooling have provided zero policy value. Instead, the Federal government’s pointless interventions have simply undermined confidence and created confusion about schooling. There are more than 150 countries whose populations are less than Victoria’s. The Federal government provides no thought leadership, policy perspectives, or intellectual rigour that contribute to informed debates about education.

Google backgrounder

Criticisms of the Gonski reforms and the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) generally fall into two opposing camps: those who argue the model was structurally flawed from the start, and those who argue that political compromises ruined its execution. [1, 2, 3] Introduced in 2012 to establish a transparent, needs-based funding system for Australian schools, the framework has faced significant backlash over its methodology, financial focus, and implementation failures.

1. Conceptual and Methodological Criticisms

Weak links between funding and performance: Conservative think tanks, such as the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), and right-aligned politicians argue that pouring money into schools does not automatically improve educational results. They point out that real spending per student increased significantly while Australia’s performance in international tests (like PISA) stagnated or declined. [4, 5, 6, 7]
Preoccupation with finance: Critics argue the model treats funding as the primary solution to educational inequality. They claim it ignores critical non-financial determinants of success, such as teacher quality, curriculum design, and school leadership. [8, 9, 10]
Flawed logic of the SRS benchmark: The SRS base rate was calculated using a group of “reference schools” where 80% of students met NAPLAN benchmarks. Education economists have criticized this methodology as arbitrary, claiming it fails to create a truly objective or scientifically sound “standard” for what a baseline education actually costs. [9, 11, 12]
Flawed “loading” criteria: Some researchers argue that using broad sociological proxies (like socio-economic status, indigeneity, or location) to determine equity “loadings” is inefficient. They argue funding should follow the specific academic deficits of individual children (e.g., specific reading delays) rather than their demographic profiles. [13, 14]

2. Strategic and Political Implementation Failures

The “No Loser” policy: To secure political support, the Gillard Labor government promised that “no school would lose a dollar” under Gonski. Public education advocates, such as Save Our Schools, argue this compromised the model’s core integrity by locking in over-funding for many wealthy private schools. [11, 15, 16, 17, 18]
State-by-state political bargaining: Instead of establishing the independent National Schools Resourcing Body recommended by the panel, the government engaged in separate, highly politicised bilateral deals with individual states. This created a fragmented, complex patchwork of funding rather than a cohesive national system. [2, 4, 19]
Systemic underfunding of public schools: A major criticism from the Australian Education Union (AEU) and the Greens is that the Gonski model was never fully realized for government schools. While many private schools operate above 100% of their SRS, the vast majority of public schools remain funded below 91% of their baseline standard. [1, 3, 11, 20]

3. Structural and Accounting Disparities

Accounting tricks by state governments: Public school advocates criticize funding loopholes that allow state governments to count non-schooling costs—such as capital depreciation, school transport, and regulatory oversight bodies—toward their required 80% share of the public school SRS. This deflates the actual money reaching classrooms. [21, 22, 23, 24, 25]
The “Capacity to Contribute” distortion: For non-government schools, the SRS is reduced based on the community’s estimated capacity to pay fees. Critics argue that the method used to calculate this capacity has historically mismeasured household incomes, which artificially inflates government subsidies to wealthy private institutions. [15, 26, 27]

[1] https://theconversation.com

[2] https://www.qtu.asn.au

[3] https://www.theguardian.com

[4] https://www.aph.gov.au

[5] https://www.cis.org.au

[6] https://link.springer.com

[7] https://desgriffin.com

[8] https://www.education.gov.au

[9] https://theconversation.com

[10] https://www.cambridge.org

[11] https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au

[12] https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au