State education ministers have claimed they are united against the Turnbull government’s new school funding model and will keep their fight up in schools and in the Senate.
At a press conference after the meeting in Adelaide on Thursday, the South Australian education minister, Susan Close, said there was “unity among the states” that the federal plan was “not good enough to achieve a good education for our children”.
The Turnbull government is offering an extra $2bn over four years in the so-called Gonski 2.0 package, but the states are demanding it honour years five and six of needs-based funding agreements that would deliver higher funding.
Despite the states’ objections, their lack of input on the plan means the fate of the schools funding package now rests with the Senate crossbench. The Greens and Nick Xenophon Team are waiting for a Senate inquiry before finalising their position and One Nation is also undeclared.
The education council meeting comes as Sarah Hanson-Young has met with the New South Wales Teachers Federation which is lobbying the Greens education spokeswoman to repudiate Gonski 2.0 and adopt a stronger stance in favour of the agreements with the states.
On Thursday the education lobby group Save Our Schools released new analysis of the Gonski 2.0 package that calculates it will increase per-student funding in real terms by $506 over 10 years or just $50 per student per year. The analysis assumed that school costs increase at 3% a year and enrolments at 1.43% a year.
It found the real increase for all schools is only 38% of that planned under Gonski 1.0 which would have delivered an increase of $1,347 per student over the 10 years.
Labor at first welcomed the Turnbull government’s intention to cut or slow funding growth for a small number of “over-funded” schools but in the budget reply committed to restoring $22bn over 10 years it says has been cut from schools funding.
On Thursday the education council agreed to advise the Council of Australian Governments (Coag) about future school reforms, which will be finalised in 2018 after the Turnbull government hopes to legislate funding increases in 2017.
Queensland education minister, Kate Jones, complained the commonwealth was trying to lock the states into agreeing to reform principles without giving them a say on funding.
Tasmania supports Gonski 2.0 because it will give Tasmanian students an increase in per-student funding from $5,083 in 2017 to $7,625 in 2027, significantly above the Australian average of $6,875.
But even the Coalition government in New South Wales has joined the revolt against Gonski 2.0. Before the meeting the NSW education minister, Rob Stokes, said his government had funded the full six years of its needs-based funding agreement acting “in good faith with the commonwealth”.
“I come here today to insist quite simply, we come with clean hands ... we have a deal with the commonwealth government and we expect that deal to be honoured.”
After the meeting Close and Jones both said the states’ role had been reduced to making a submission on funding to a Senate inquiry into Gonski 2.0.
The federal education minister Simon Birmingham said the education council meeting was “very constructive” and “free of posturing and talk of cuts” to schools’ funding. He said any claims of cuts were “posturing about what Julia Gillard promised states in 2013”.
Asked if Gonski 2.0 would go ahead even if the states maintained their opposition, Birmingham said he trusted states would “welcome the increased investment” proposed but ultimately the federal budget was a matter for the commonwealth parliament. Birmingham dismissed the Save Our Schools analysis as a “back of an envelope” calculation.
Correna Haythorpe, the Australian Education Union federal president, said the meeting was a farce “aimed at giving states the illusion of consultation, in an attempt to railroad states to agree on a flawed plan”.
“States don’t agree with slashing vital funding to our schools. In response, Malcolm Turnbull released a flawed policy without consultation with states in an attempt to force their hand – but it didn’t work,” she said.
“Turnbull has abandoned the Coag process in its haste to force its new funding model through parliament, and cut funds from schools.”
Gary Zadkovich, deputy president of the New South Wales Teachers Federation, told Guardian Australia the focus of the union’s campaign is now the federal parliament. “We’re doing everything we can to convince all 21 crossbenchers to reject it,” he said.
Zadkovich said the teachers’ union invited Hanson-Young to meet after reports the Greens could wave through the reforms, and they had a “very productive” meeting on Wednesday.
“She willingly agreed to meet with us. We explained the serious impacts and disadvantages suffered by public schools in New South Wales.”
The NSWTF has released a hit-list based on state government data that shows NSW public schools are set for a $846m cut in 2018 and 2019.
