education
3 Sep 2008
Funding Public Schools in the Clever Country
If the Rudd Government is serious about evidence-based policy, it will act immediately on a recent report on education funding
In public life the profound issues — those recycled by various interest groups, policy wonks and pesky advocates for this and that — have always grappled for space with the popular, the superficial and the newsworthy. Every now and then, the popular and the profound come together.The Rudd Government has a tendency to use profound language ("evidence-based policy") to justify popular policies. The popular and the profound again cropped up alongside each other in education last week as federal politicians gathered in Canberra for the constantly recycled festival of Parliament. Keen to be on the front foot, the Rudd Government launched an assault on welfare recipient parents of kids who truant school, a move which has a strong popular heritage in bashing dole bludgers. He also wants information about everything in schools: taking a stick to schools is everyone's favourite sport.
Sure — there are useful elements in some popular policies. Information about schools informs government policy and parental choice. It's just that the beneficiaries are usually those already well educated and with access to networks and money. It rarely improves all schools for all kids: it crams middle class kids together and leaves poorer kids, schools and communities further out on a limb — further worsening our equity gaps in schooling.
There are ways to solve some of these problems — and this is where we get to this larger unresolved profound issue: the corrupted and dysfunctional way we fund schools.
This issue must be recycled until it is resolved. Two months after the Rudd Government was elected, the Sydney Morning Herald broke a story about a secret Howard government review into school funding. Basically the review confirmed what critics had been claiming for years: the Howard government's funding policy was a mess, compounded by complex and illogical deals and guarantees which ensured a large number of schools were funded well in excess of their entitlements.
Thanks to Bill Leak
It was potentially one of those "oh-my-gosh — we didn't realise it was so awful" moments that newly elected governments usually capitalise on — and follow up with more considered policy solutions. For a host of reasons, not least the fear of being beaten up by private school lobbies, Rudd and Gillard stuck to their line that the funding framework would not be changed until 2012.
The criticism has continued to mount, albeit deflected from time to time by the recycled popular things: school funding has never been a sexy or dramatic issue. There are no riots in the streets because of problems created by the Howard-Rudd schools funding framework. The gaps between schools widen slowly. Residualisation doesn't happen overnight. No one dies in an under-funded school. Any other consequences are well beyond the electoral cycle. And, apart from anything else, school funding is so eye-glazingly complex — all but the most persistent journalists break into a cold sweat at the thought of having to explain it.
But it's back! We now have another potential oh-my-gosh moment thanks to the number crunching and projections of Dr Jim McMorrow, currently Honorary Associate Professor in Education at the University of Sydney. McMorrow convincingly argues that in real terms and regardless of enrolments, public schools are going to be seriously dudded if the Rudd Government doesn't amend the Howard funding framework. The report shows how real funding to public schools is going to fall over the next four years; McMorrow likens the decline to the loss of 1000 teacher positions. By contrast, the projected increases to non-government schools amounts to a gain of 2650 teachers, well in excess of what might be explained by increased enrolments.
If funding to private schools isn't pulled back to their entitled amounts then an extra $1.5 billion will be needed just for public schools to keep up.
McMorrow's is timely advice: a looming hurdle for Rudd and Gillard is the required legislation for funding schools in the 2009-2012 period. Julia Gillard has promised to review the system for — wait for it — the 2013-2016 funding cycle. A Rudd Government would have to be into a third term before any reform would even start to bite.
McMorrow isn't any ordinary critic. He is extremely measured, arguably conservative and well-credentialed in the ALP. He gathers and weighs up the evidence, explains the options and comes up with practical policy solutions. What better person to throw Kevin and Julia a lifeline? This is an oh-my-gosh moment the ALP cannot afford to ignore.
The time is right for the Labor heavies to be serious about evidence-based policy and to provide a long missing ingredient in education policy: courageous leadership.
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douglas jones
Surely a case for transperancy in Government.(was not this promised?) Did Rudd agree to unchanged funding to 2012 because he did not wish to offend potantial voters or because he was not aware of the report, assuming the article in the SM H was not yet another example of spin. Equally surely it would not be beyond the Rudd government to say we have new information and thus will be changing funding very soon to take account of new data. Sure Nelson and the media would lambast Rudd but would the electorate? Wew might even think for an instant there is honesty in politics !
Before the election I said that Rudd would be Howard Lite. I haven’t been disproved in many situations. Like the addiction to privatisation, the addiction to ‘choice’ will continue under Labor. Meaning that those who can afford it will be the only ones who get a choice.
Choice is another wedge politics word that tends to create a greater drift to private. How long before there are no public schools, health or child care. Nothing Howard did will be changed and he will even me-too him with union bashing.
Why no enquiries into the lies and incompetence of the previous government that we are aware of? Could you imagine anyone in the corporate world hiring ex Liberal ministers if their incompetence was put on full display. Rudd hopes the same three wise monkeys approach will be extended to him so that he doesn’t have any black marks in case he jumps to corporate instead of a cushy ambassadors position after politics. Perhaps CEO of Australian Public Schools Pty Ltd.
The final proof for me was Gerard Henderson going into bat for Kevin in his last collumn. Says it all.
If schools across the country are to be compared, one of the most important factors seems to be left out of Gillards ‘transparency’ list. Surely the resource base or budget of each school would be a critical aspect of accountability?
I agree skreig.
If Julia Umbrage (anyone who has seen "Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix" will understand the reference) is so keen on comparing schools, let’s have a return on investment league table.
You know, how many (total) dollars does it take to get a UAI of 97 from Scots College or Abbotsleigh compared to how many (total) dollars it takes to get the same mark from Nepean or Winmalee High.
That should make interesting reading.
This is a great article Chris, but we need to employ hard science, or hard maths, to help Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd and others see how silly some of their school funding advice has been in recent times – specifically, the advice that has led them to believe it was competent and just to keep the current Kemp/Howard SES (socioeconomic status) funding model till at least 2012.
The core problem with the SES funding model has always been the way the SES scores for schools are calculated. Specifically, only about 3% of the data feeding into schools’ SES scores is data for the actual families of the actual kids at the actual schools (it may be as high as about 10% for some schools, but perhaps as low as 1% for others – the Government would have the data needed to fully confirm these figures, and it’s time we find out the true percentages here for each and every school receiving funding according to the SES model). So SES scores suffer from what an engineer would refer to as a ridiculously high "noise to signal ratio" in that irrelevant noise (data from households with no substantive connection to the school whose SES score is being determined) drowns out the valid "signal" (data from the actual families with kids at the school whose SES score is being determined). So there’s a huge "garbage in, garbage out" flaw that gives rise to SES scores that are just totally absurd and invalid in view of this huge "noise to signal ratio". THIS is why the SES scores are so ridiculously low (and funding levels correspondingly so ridiculously high) for schools like Kings and Geelong Grammar. The wealthiest schools would have SES scores well over 200 if SES scores were competently calculated, but scores are (1) mainly based on data from households with no connection to the school, as above (all just totally beyond the pale!), and (2) invalidly set to a normal distribution with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. This transformation to a normal distribution (bell curve) just totally distorts and invalidates SES scores for schools. Why? Well substantive SES data is NOT normally distributed. Chi-squared goodness of fit tests could confirm this. Income and other SES input variables are positively skewed to a significant extent. And with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, we have the misleading impression that the families of kids at a school with an SES score of say 130 have incomes (and other SES input variables) only about one and a half times greater on average than those of families with kids at a school with an SES score of 85, when the families at the school with the 130 SES score would probably be receiving incomes about four times greater on average than those at the school with an SES score of 85. Ratio comparisons like this 130 to 85 comparison lose all meaning following transformation to a normal distribution. The normal transformation employed in the current SES score determination process can hence and otherwise have no place at all in a valid funding formula. And the Government effectively knows this. The Government certainly doesn’t put income levels on to a normal distribution (i.e. a bell curve) before determining income tax levels, Medicare levies, and government benefits such as the family tax benefit etc. By basing school funding levels on SES data that has been ridiculously and invalidly transformed to a normal distribution, the Government is being inconsistent as well as incompetent.
Hard science, hard maths and hard engineering wouldn’t tolerate rubbish like this absurd SES determination process. The SES score system is about as competent as a fuel that’s 3% petrol and the other 97% water. The mechanical system we refer to as a car wouldn’t move very far if we tried to run it with such a ridiculously diluted fuel mix, and the current Kemp/Howard school funding system is every bit as incompetent as this 3 to 97 fuel-water mix, but it seems that competence and fairness simply don’t matter to the politicians and senior bureaucrats responsible for this SES scandal. They just have to be good "wheeler-dealer" types it seems. All very demoralising! The irony here is that we really don’t need a competent education system at all if the only skills valued by the powers that be are hollow wheeler-dealer type skills.
We need politicians and senior bureaucrats responsible for school funding systems (and people seeking a fairer system as well) to either (1) vastly strengthen their hard maths, science and engineering type skills themselves, or (2) at least show better respect for such skills when applied to these sorts of debates.
Mark Drummond (markld@ozemail.com.au)