This month we have seen an avalanche of commentary related to school funding, much of it fueled by the publication of school funding data on the MySchool website and the fast approaching deadline for submissions to the  Gonski Review.

Here are some of the highlight comments

Christopher Pyne, shadow education Minister (The Australian 4 March 2011, MySchool 2.0 website revelations to hurt independent schools funding: Opposition) sees the publication of the funding data on myschool as a deliberate ploy to undermine the non government sector.

 "... the government had not made a convincing case for publishing independent schools' financial data

The Coalition doesn't believe that information being made available will add anything to the educational outcomes of either government or non-government students. There can only be one reason to publish non-government financial data and that is to undermine government funding of non-government schools."

This is an interesting anti-transparency argument coming from a politician.  His logic appears to be that if people know the respective funding situation for Australian schools, all of whom receive significant dollars from Government, it will feed a politics of envy.

However Justine Ferrari (4 March, The Australian No class divide in schools spending) notes that the highest costs are incurred by special schools and very remote schools.

However, the schools spending the most money are not the elite, high-fee private schools but mostly government schools in remote areas, those with fewer than 100 students or teaching students with disabilities.

Bill  Daniels and Dick Shearman (representing  independent sector employers and unions respectively)  also make this point.

" elite, high-fee private schools had been pilloried by the public school lobby for years for receiving excessive government funding but MySchool figures showed they received very little money from government. Of schools operating with more than $15,000 a student, he said they included 250 independent schools and about 80 Catholic schools but more than 1700 government schools"  ( Daniels). 

''The most expensive schools to run are remote and small public schools with a spend way in excess of any high-fee independent school" (Shearman)

Shearman argued that because some government schools had higher levels of funding, the MySchools website actually showed ''chronic under-funding'' of low-fee Catholic and independent schools.  The example he gave was between a catholic school and a government school both in Marrickville  (Marrickville High School - $19,677 per student and Casimir Catholic-  $11,590).  This was an odd choice in view of their different ICSEA scores and population profiles.  If he had used the funding allocated to what ACARA defines as similar schools he would have found large differences within the catholic schools in this group and between state schools ranging from   over 18,000 for a small regional school to under $9000 for both state and catholic schools.  They are in fact highly variable.

Meanwhile Trevor Cobbold pointed out that the catholic system doesn't apply a needs based funding model to redistribute funding among their very unequal schools.

Trevor Cobbold, the convenor of Save Our Schools and a former productivity commission economist, said a federal Education Department report had shown only 40 per cent of Catholic schools are funded according to the Commonwealth funding formula, with the rest ''over-funded'' by more than $500 million a year.

He said the National Audit Office found that the Catholic system, which redistributes government funding to its own schools, was giving the most disadvantaged schools less money than they would get if the government funded them directly.

Angelo Gavrielatos (Australian Education Union Federal President ) says that government schools cost more because they educate the vast majority of students with high needs, who were more expensive to educate. He is also critical of the approach taken by MySchool to the reporting of school funding data

"Government schools educate 77 per cent of students from low-income families, 86 per cent of indigenous students, 80 per cent of students with a disability, 72 per cent of students in regional Australia and 84 per cent of students living in remote areas.

These figures are just the tip of the iceberg for private schools and do not take into account the money that is held in assets, investment portfolios, trusts and foundations.

It is only by looking at the total resources of schools can we get an understanding of the relationship between resourcing and outcomes."

Ben Jensen of the Grattan Institute (The Australian, 4 March, Finance data helps teachers) takes a different and more optimistic tack arguing that  the long term effects of having both student outcome data and school funding data together and available to all will drive a new paradigm for investing in education - predictably a market driven model  that will drive improvement across the board framework. 

A new paradigm that emphasises cost-effectiveness in education will create real change.

For policymakers and administrators, this new paradigm will require significant change in education systems in every state and territory. It will increase political accountability to ensure their school funding and education policies are increasing student learning, particularly in poorer communities. ....

Within schools, the shift will be even greater. In the old paradigm, schools have often tried to differentiate themselves in areas unrelated to performance. Some offer more subjects and smaller class sizes, most emphasise a positive school culture, and a number of wealthier schools highlight their buildings and the number of sportsgrounds they possess.

In this new paradigm, schools will have to focus on the drivers of performance. The leading schools will increase their focus on teacher effectiveness. School leaders will compete vigorously with other schools and other systems for the teachers that most increase student learning. They will hire from universities that have the best record in producing these teachers and also poach them from other schools. This is already starting to occur. Some see it as a negative but they are denying teachers the salaries they deserve. Competition for the best teachers should produce substantial and long-overdue increases in teachers' salaries.

His logic appears to be that the availability of the data will convince parents, principals, teachers, systems and everyone in between that teacher quality is all that matters and  this will drive intense competition for the best teachers and create a demand  on the teacher education system for high quality graduates.  I am not sure what he sees are the benefits for those schools and communities least able to compete in the market place for the best teachers even now.  It is also debatable whether parents who pay high fees are just after the highest NAPLAN scores.  They may well be after positional benefits above and beyond this

Christpopher Bantick  (MySchool mute on bad teachers, The Australian 5 March) also plays the teacher quality theme and the obstructionist approach of the union movement when it comes to dealing with bad teachers.

What MySchool does not address, or specifically target, is individual teachers who are simply not able to lift the standard of their student outcomes. It is also not recognising those who do. This plays into the waiting and gleeful hands of the unions. ...

What parents lack from MySchool is the clarity to compare individual teacher results in individual schools. This is, however, happening by default.

The union movement is highly accomplished at managing to manoeuvre perceptions that MySchool is a failure and it has nothing to do with teaching. The direct link between teacher quality and student achievement should be measured and displayed on MySchool. Instead, with Labor neatly tucked into the union's pocket - think of all those lucrative union donations at election time - the AEU is on safe ground.

Chris Bonner (Not all students are created equal, New Matilda, 16 March 2011) uses the myschool data to make the point that in spite of what is claimed, we have in Australia a cascading social hierarchy of secondary schools with high-fee schools at the top - then Anglican, Catholic, Christian and government schools in descending order.

Lower socio-educational status (SES) students are disproportionately found in public schools, the schools which are required to be available for all students in all locations. Public schools also enrol most of the high-cost students, including those distantly located or otherwise disadvantaged. (He uses Dick Shearman's statement to support this too)

He also uses the MySchool data to have a go at the commonsense logic that private schools save taxpayers money

For years we have been told that private schools save governments money because parents fund a significant part of their costs. We've also been told that Catholic schools represent better value because they cost less to run.

It is true that the income that public schools receive from governments is, on average, 37 per cent more than received by Catholic schools. It certainly seems that Catholic schools cost us less.

But ..., we get a different story if we try harder to compare financial apples with apples. If we take groups of public and Catholic schools with similar enrolment profiles the funding differences narrow considerably - to as low as 10 per cent.

Suddenly the argument that governments save money by subsidising students in Catholic schools looks much weaker - and we have recently read about the Catholic schools that receive more public funding than some government schools. While these comparisons are not apples with apples, it still isn't a good look.

In reality, the cost to government of educating students comparable to those found in Catholic schools is likely to be about the same. When all costs and enrolment variables are considered, including the cost of small schools and duplicated provisions, there are almost certainly no savings to government in the recurrent funding of Catholic schools.

Kevin Donnelly (the Drum unleashed Only the demise of independent schools will please Gillard's educrats, 17 March 2011) sees the whole thing as a conspiracy involving the AEU, the PM, ACER and Barry McGaw to name a few.

Make no mistake, Australia's cultural-left education establishment, including the Australian Education Union, the Australian Council for Educational Research, various activists and influential figures like Barry McGaw, chosen by Julia Gillard to head the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), has embarked on a well-orchestrated and concerted campaign against Catholic and independent schools.

The current review of school funding, chaired by the Sydney businessman David Gonski and established by Julia Gillard when she was education minister, provides a once in a lifetime opportunity for opponents of school choice to pressure governments to cut funding to non-government schools and to undermine their autonomy via increased regulation and control.

Parents should not underestimate the degree of antagonism critics have for Catholic and independent schools. Over the last 2 to 3 years, opponents like Jane Caro, Kenneth Davidson, Trevor Cobbold, Jack Keating, Barry McGaw and Jim McMorrow have variously attacked non-government schools for being elitist, socially divisive, exclusive and privileged, academically weak, over-funded and instrumental in destroying the state system of education....

Not only does McGaw fail to provide any evidence to support his claim but, research both here and in the US examining the social impact of schools suggests that non-government schools, especially Catholic schools, promote and strengthen community ties and feelings of reciprocity and mutual obligation.

In an open and free liberal democracy like Australia, non-government school parents who pay taxes for a system they do not use, thus saving governments billions of dollars every year, plus school fees might expect to be supported for their initiative and hard work that allows them to make the choice.

...Instead of praising parents for their incentive and effort, they are unfairly characterised as wealthy and privileged and for choosing schools that promote social instability and elitism...

Jack Keating (education policy and leadership unit within the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne) weighs into the debate as a self styled moderator, taking the reasonable line unlike the emotive extremes on both sides (Do school funds add up?). 

The responses of some school sectors to the MySchool website's publication of funding data are all too predictable - different claims about which schools have the best and worst resource levels. Comparisons between government, Catholic and independent schools have been the main currency of the school funding debate for longer than any of us can remember.

He takes the line that apart from the top few schools, the funding battle should now be put to bed

A large amount of the resources that most schools receive is to deal with ..differences. The best way to demonstrate this is to look at the difference between the average cost per student and the marginal cost per student (the cost of taking on an extra student). For example, the average resource level for Victorian government school students as reported on MySchool is $10,178, yet the marginal funding rate is about $6530, plus about $500 in private income. That is, while a school may have recurrent resource levels equal to $11,000 per student, it will receive only 64 per cent of that amount for each extra enrolment.

The reason for this difference is that about 36 per cent of resources are devoted to needs and special programs. The biggest imposts are the costs of students with disabilities and the higher costs incurred by small schools.

Other needs are those of indigenous students, students from low-income households, migrant and new-arrival students and isolated students. Australian government school systems have a myriad of funding allocations for these and other needs of communities, schools and students.

He argues that in spite of all the acrimony all parties agree that school funding is a mess and that

the unproductive debate that has taken place for the past three decades or more has helped to produce and exacerbate this mess by ensuring that government decisions about school funding are made for political reasons rather than on the basis of good governance and good education for all.

He sees opportunity to move forward if both Catholic and government sector agree that governments funding should be based on need not entitlement.

For the Catholic sector, this means it should accept that it has now achieved its century-old mission of resource parity. It should desist from claims that it is under-resourced in comparison to government schools. The claim is unjustified and is provocative towards the government-school lobby.

For the government-school lobby, it should realise that some idea of resource parity has now been accepted by Australian governments and the Gonski review, and also realise that there is a critical and possibly last opportunity to establish this on a needs rather than entitlement basis. The opportunity is served by two factors: the high percentage of resources that are currently devoted to needs - school, community and student needs - and a government policy frame over the past three years that has recognised need.

Government funding of private schooling in Australia, because of its highly political nature, has been underpinned by a notion of entitlement - that is, all schools and students irrespective of their levels of autonomy and private resources are entitled to government funding. The political driver that has allowed this notion to survive, and indeed prosper under the Howard government, was the claim, especially from the Catholic sector, of unequal resource levels. If the claim is put to bed, if both Catholic and government school sectors can accept a funding regime that recognises the need for adequate resource levels for all students, and if they then recognise that this should be the foundation for a resource-needs regime that recognises the different needs of communities and students and the different challenges that different schools face, then there is the chance for real reform.

Tony Moore also argues that the acrimony is uncalled for.  He sees the review as an opportunity to shift the debate away from public Versus Private and to focus on what requirements the state should put on all the schools it funds to ensure equality of standards and opportunity.

While the Howard government's seriously flawed SES funding formula will surely be revisited, resulting in a fairer division of this money, federal Labor will continue the provision of state aid. Yet it is imperative that Labor not miss the opportunity afforded by this review, chaired by University of NSW chancellor David Gonski, to think creatively about what the community gets for its investment in private schooling. After all, private schools receive a level of government funding roughly equal to that provided to higher education. Moreover, government and non-government sectors are regulated by the state in terms of curriculum and standards in teaching. Might it not make sense, then, for the federal government, rather than setting up competition between public and private, to work to bring the sectors together as part of one public system?

... The review of funding Gillard set in train must look to ...other public systems such as the ABC that artfully mix public and private funds and providers, and explore under what regulatory changes the non-government schools could co-operate in a better integrated yet internally differentiated public system.

He believes that the conceptual move to one overarching system should see government schools becoming more like the independent sector - more autonomous but within a framework of more public reports and more accountability..

MySchool follows in the Fabian tradition of providing information to citizens so that they might reform social institutions and control their own lives. Unions should be arguing for more information and accountability from public and private institutions, not less. Indeed, each sector has much to learn from the other, and public funding could be used to encourage cross-fertilisation and to reduce inequities and social, ethnic and religious division.

It is not clear how he thinks this is going to happen.  But he implies this will be the end result of this one overarching system with more autonomy, more accountability and a degree of funding conditionality

Just as the Howard government tried to promote flag waving and plain English reports in state schools, a Labor government should use the carrot of federal funding to wean private schools off their Edwardian snobbery and into contemporary Australia. For instance, private schools wishing to receive public money would be encouraged to be responsible citizens through a variety of funding conditions, which may include improving equity.

Private schools should increase the number of scholarships offered to less-well-off students and have to show good cause for turning away students with learning difficulties. Team sport should be played with local state schools rather than those part of an antiquated GPS rating. Private schools should co-operate with local state schools in extracurricular projects such as music tuition, drama and debating. Private schools could also co-operate in core curriculum areas where a local state school might lack expertise (such as foreign languages).

By such measures, the government can demand good citizenship for its investment. Some will argue that this is illiberal social engineering. Yet on equity and efficiency grounds it is important that money is not handed over without seeking some mutual obligation in return. Independent schools wishing to avoid these obligations and maintain an elitist course are free to refuse public funding, as do elite independent schools in Britain such as Eton.

Finally we hear that the high profile of the funding review has led to an acceptance by key players in the Catholic and independent sectors that the maintenance of funding over and above the SES provisions  will almost certainly have to go (Private school Funding looking bleak SMH 25 march 2010).

"...the chief executive of the Sydney Anglican Schools Corporation, Laurie Scandrett, told a Canberra forum organised by the Independent Education Union, which represents non-government school teachers, that the ''funding maintained'' provisions needed to be abolished in order to preserve the best elements of the socio-economic status model.

''If 'funding maintained' status is to be continued forever, then SES is discredited,'' Dr Scandrett said. ''I like SES. I think it's the best system. But at the moment it just doesn't work, and it won't work long-term if 'funding maintained' status is to be continued forever.''

The executive director Independent Schools Council of Australia, Bill Daniels, said the ''funding maintained'' provisions were a ''sitting duck'' for opponents of private school funding.

''Funding maintenance as we currently know it will not survive this review,'' he said.

Mr Daniels said the government would need to find more money to protect the interests of the schools that enjoy ''funding maintained'' status.

''We won't accept a proposition that any school should lose funding,'' he said. ''I've got all sorts of ideas about how you could address it. None of them can occur without more money.''

A spokesman for the National Catholic Education Commission, Tim Smith, said he expected the ''funding maintained'' provisions to be abolished. ''We think it's gone,'' he told the forum. But he said the Catholic sector would argue that no school should be worse off in real terms.

It looks like the desire to convince the  Gonski Review committee to continue to apply the SES model to non Government school funding has led to the adoption of this position.  This is something that the coalition government failed to understand.  They interpreted the non governments sectors acceptance of an end to the maintained funding  running up the white flag'' before the deadline for submissions to the review panel had even closed, because they have become to cosy with the current labour government.

''The Coalition wonders why they would go to the barricades to defend funding of non-government schools when the peak bodies aren't even prepared to do so,'' a Coalition source said. ''This has been a hallmark of the way the independent schools and the Catholic schools peak bodies have operated since the Labor Party were elected. They are too close to the Labor Party, and the loser is going to be the parents of non-government schoolkids, who will have to pay higher fees when their funding is cut,'' the source said.

Some schools are being urged by their parents groups to start to plan ahead - to get ready for a reduced budget.  Dr Simon Smith for example has written an open letter (Parents pressure Wesley over spending The Age, 29 March 2011) calling for a review of spending on marketing, scholarships, a remote campus and overseas travel, ahead of anticipated cuts in government funding to elite schools.

He said Wesley's school council should be ''alert to this looming challenge'' and engage parents in a full review of school spending, which would explore cuts and seek a mandate for ''non-core'' projects.

Dr Smith said areas of Wesley College's expenditure and involvement that regularly gave parents cause for concern included:

• The Yiramalay/Wesley campus on a cattle station in remote Western Australia.
• The scholarship program, which ''appears to focus on picking winners and lacks a moral purpose''.
• Marketing and overseas travel budgets.
• The Wesley College Institute for Innovation in Education.

''All of these activities lack project and financial transparency and accountability,'' he said in the letter.

What I find interesting is that none of these opinion pieces noted the following

• That many parents (and teachers) find the information on the myschool website hard to understand and that even where it is understood it often raises more questions than it answers, but allows for limited exploring to investigate these very questions
• That Australia's approach of providing funding as an entitlement to the independent sector is not the standard approach of most OECD countries
• That although the MySchool results around school funding show that high needs and "cost of delivery" factors tare major drivers of costs there is no requirements for states to make public the metrics on which these costs and needs are based and we are left with just a vague idea that they matter - we just don't know what it might really cost to distribute highly experienced teachers equitably or access to high standard library, ICT resources or course options. Surely this is a priority.