Gonski and Faux Reform

Now the extra base funding necessary to get us to this school resourcing standard over six years is $14.5 billion. It’s a lot of money, but I believe it is a wise investment in our children’s future and in our nation’s future. J. Gillard The Gonski Review has led to our Prime Minister announcing “the biggest changes […]

A Bigger Picture

Winston Churchill famously said that ‘democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried’. One can certainly bemoan the messiness of what can only be described as a serious deficit of coherent national educational strategy, ironically, at a time when ‘Australia is falling behind’ is often heard from politicians. […]

#Gonski

I blogged about the Review of Funding for Schooling last year with some hope that positive outcomes would result. Here’s the official School Funding website where you can read David Gonski and his panel’s recent findings. The headline news is the recommendation that 5 billion dollars extra funding flows into the education budget but that […]

Conclusions: Waiting for Gonski (Part 4)

Each report reaches conclusions and offers advice to the panel. The following comments are not a comprehensive analysis of these findings but my conclusions about what is the best advice. I am interested in Australians having a ‘high equity, high quality’ system and my comments are to be viewed from this perspective. The politics of […]

The Reports: Waiting for Gonski (Part 3)

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by Oberazzi Have you read the reports commissioned by the Gonski Review of Funding for Schooling panel? I will briefly outline the ‘research questions’ each report was trying to answer or assess for the panel. My purpose is to clearly understand the scope of each […]

The Eye of the Future: Waiting for Gonski (Part 2)

All agree that the educational and political issues David Gonski and his panel must sift through are formidable. Maybe we need to simplify. If you asked an Australian person the following question, how would they likely respond? Should all Australian children be provided with a high quality education regardless of social background? The vast majority of […]

Waiting for Gonski (Part 1)

 On 31 August 2011, the Review of Funding for Schooling panel released a Paper on Commissioned Research and four research reports, seeking feedback from the general public. It is important to note that these research reports do not necessarily reflect the views of the panel.          Source   The Review of Funding for […]