The plan for school funding
- More than 99 per cent of schools will see a year-on-year increase in funding, and on average per-student funding will grow 4.1 per cent a year over a decade.
- Federal funding will grow from $17.5 billion in 2017 to $22.1 billion by 2021, and $30.6 billion by 2027.
- The per student base amount in 2018 will be $10,953 for primary students and $13,764 for secondary school students.
- Ends 27 different school funding agreements the coalition inherited from Labor in 2013.
- Replaces them with a single, national needs-based, sector-blind funding model that will deliver across government and non-government schools.
- Additional support for students from low socio-economic backgrounds, those with a disability, who come from non-English-speaking backgrounds, smaller rural and regional remote schools.
- Transition to pay 80 per cent of the Gonski-based schooling resource standard for non-government schools - up from around 77 per cent now.
- Federal contribution to government schools will increase from 17 per cent now to 20 per cent of the schooling resource standard by 2020.
- A small number of schools - about two dozen - will experience "some negative" growth in their funding.
- Businessman David Gonski, who led the 2011 review, has agreed to head a new review and provide high-level advice to the government.
The reaction
"It's a smoke and mirrors, pea and thimble effort to hide the fact that instead of cutting $30 billion from schools over the decade, this government will cut $22 billion from schools over the decade." - Labor education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek.
"People are sick of the argy-bargy between the states and the Federal government, they're sick of the hyper-partisan fights between the government and the opposition, we've got to get the politics out of this." - Greens education spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young.
"It abandons a mechanism that ensures resources are distributed fairly and according to need among schools that belong to a single Catholic schools authority." - National Catholic Education Commission acting executive director Danielle Cronin.
"The core principles ... at first blush, seem like they're exactly the right ones." - Grattan Institute's school education program director Pete Goss.
"The government appears to be focusing on the apparently easier task of picking on a few schools which probably are overfunded but it's only a very small amount of the overall school budget." - Centre for Independent Studies Education policy analyst Blaise Joseph.
