Victoria’s ‘Education State’ slogan rings hollow

It was during the election campaign that returned Victorian Labor to power in 2014 that Daniel Andrews announced new number plates bearing the slogan “The Education State”. His government’s first budget was billed as “the biggest education budget in history”, just two years after Julia Gillard’s federal Labor government announced the Gonski plan to move school funding to a needs-based model.

“For the first time, Victoria will meet Gonski funding levels up to the 2017 school year,” Andrews’ debut budget declared. “Too many children are learning in rundown and overcrowded classrooms. Parents in growth areas don’t have enough choices for their kids’ future.”

In May of last year, Andrews’ successor, Jacinta Allan, told the City of Melbourne’s M2050 Summit that education was “a defining part of who we are as a state”.

Yet by any definition, this government is falling short of its promise to make education a top priority.

The Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) which David Gonski’s 2011 review of school funding brought into the lexicon was meant to provide a floor figure for the resourcing of public schools, not a ceiling. Yet as things stand, our state is in some sort of crawl space beneath that floor.

In October, the annual report of the National School Resourcing Board, an independent watchdog set up as a result of the Gonski review that measures the schools funding of state and territory governments, revealed Victoria was the only state that had failed to meet its minimum requirements over the 2023 funding year.

State schools received $9.01 billion in funding, compared with the minimum $9.23 billion required under the funding agreement. Over the same reporting period, NSW provided $12.87 billion to its government schools, $1.3 billion more than its minimum commitment.

Under the current model, states are to provide at least 75 per cent of the SRS for public schools, with the Commonwealth making up the difference. In 2023, while NSW funded 80.23 per cent of the total, Victoria provided just 68.76 per cent.

What those numbers mean is that we are not meeting our obligations to children in state schools. And until we stump up as a state, the federal government’s contribution will also be curtailed. Ours is the only state in the nation not to have agreed a path to full funding with the Albanese government.

Our deputy premier, Education Minister Ben Carroll, is entitled to point out that Gonski himself recommended that capital investment in schools be included in calculations of funding, something that has not been done. The Allan government will this year open Victoria’s 100th new school since the 2018 election, representing billions in investment that doesn’t count towards the SRS.

Carroll is also within his rights to point to last year’s nation-leading NAPLAN results as evidence that a great deal is being done right in our state schools.

But the needs of schools are a moving target and funding of our state system is coming off a low base. Imagine how much more could be achieved if the government completed the assignment given to it on recurrent funding and brought the pay of our teachers into line with other states.

Instead, we have seen a series of manoeuvres by this state government which throw their rhetoric about education into severe doubt.

In January 2024, our reporting showed that a loophole was allowing states to claim 4 per cent of their share of public school funding in capital depreciation and non-school spending. The result was that the gap between funding of public and private schools was exacerbated. Education economist Adam Rorris, who helped the Commonwealth devise the minimum standards, called it “a rort”.

In March of that year, a meeting of the Allan cabinet’s budget and finance committee quietly shelved the commitment to reach the 75 per cent SRS mark by 2028, pushing that objective back to 2031 and effectively creating a $2.4 billion shortfall in state school funding in the meantime.

As The Age has reported and Carroll seems happy to concede, a straightforward way to boost Victoria’s contribution to resourcing schools would be to give our underpaid teachers their due.

For the Albanese government, being able to say that they had put Gonski back on track early last year was crucial to their May election pitch. Clearing the decks for this year’s state election may likewise encourage the Allan government to give closer consideration to the teachers’ pays claims.

But the heads of agreement announced at Boronia Heights Primary School by Allan, Carroll, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and federal Education Minister Jason Clare a year ago is the real benchmark. A deal has been struck for our hospitals, surely schools deserve it too. “For Labor, nothing is more important than education,” the prime minister said at the time.

On this score, the Allan government has homework to hand in. If it can’t or won’t reach a complete agreement with Canberra on the basic ask of full funding for our state schools, perhaps it will find its number plates were cancelled.

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