Coalition"s second Gonski U-turn: Labor model to be largely retained

The Abbott government has performed an additional U-turn on college funding, indicating it will substantially retain Labor’s Gonski-inspired model in excess of the next 4 many years.

The announcement on Monday follows a week of criticism right after the training minister, Christopher Pyne, stated that the former government’s method would stay in area for only a single yr, 2014, and would then be replaced by a new nevertheless-to-be devised model.

But the prime minister, Tony Abbott, stated the pupil resource common model – envisaged beneath the Gonski reforms – would be implemented more than the subsequent 4 years in the 5 jurisdictions that signed up to Labor’s system just before the election. These jurisdictions – New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory – had been anxious the volume of cash allocated to them would be diminished as a end result of the complete funding pool being shared across all states and territories soon after 2014.

Half an hour just before parliamentary query time, when the opposition was set to launch a full-scale attack above last week’s rethink, Abbott fronted the media to announce the government would reinstate the total $ 1.2bn earmarked for Queensland, Western Australian and the Northern Territory in excess of the next 4 many years. This volume was removed from the budget by the former Labor government ahead of the election as a outcome of a failure to strike a deal with individuals 3 conservative-led states.

“What we mentioned was that we would honour the agreements and we would match the gives and they had been provides primarily based on I believe the pupil assets model,” Abbott informed reporters.

Last week the government committed only to $ 230m to cover the non-signatory states for 2014. Abbott said Pyne had because negotiated with these 3 governments and secured an agreement to deliver the identical federal funding that had initially been envisaged more than the next 4 years.

Abbott mentioned this would deliver total added federal funding over the subsequent four years to $ 2.8bn. Every state and territory would acquire the same federal funding that had been earmarked in excess of the price range cycle.

“We will employ a funding model that is nationwide, fair and wants primarily based whilst obtaining rid of the prescriptive command and management features that removed authority for schools from states, territories and the non-government sector,” Abbott mentioned.

“The government will also honour funding promised to non-government representative bodies for four years which includes $ 55m to Catholic Education Commissions and $ 110m to the Association of Independent Colleges.”

Asked to confirm the funding model would stay the same in the signatory states more than the subsequent four years, not just 2014, Pyne did not outline any changes to the calculation formula. He said the government would improve the model by removing “command and control” factors, which is primarily the level of federal regulation of state spending.

More to come…

Coalition"s second Gonski U-turn: Labor model to be largely retained