What’s Wrong with the Gonski Report: Funding Reform and Student Achievement

Melbourne Institute Policy Brief No. 02/13

Date: 2013

Author(s):

Moshe Justman
Chris Ryan

Abstract

This brief is critical of a number of important premises that lie behind the Gonski report on school funding and the proposed reforms based on that report by the Australian government. Specifically, we: see no reason to make performance on international tests an objective of Australian schooling; doubt the wisdom of increasing the role of the Australian government in schooling; argue the impact of additional resources on student achievement is likely to be small; view the resource standards calculated in the Gonski report as unlikely to achieve what they are intended to do; and believe there is really no possibility of constructing any such objective resource standards.

Download Paper