MEDIA RELEASE: Ignore Gonski: No evidence that Australian schools are under-funded

Despite the election campaign scaremongering about Gonski, there is no evidence to support the belief that Australian schools need more funding to improve academic performance, according to a new study by former education professor Ken Gannicott in the next issue of the quarterly magazine, Policy (to be published on June 22).

Access the article: Did Gonski Get it Right? School funding and performance

The 2011 Gonski report linked alleged underfunding of schools with the declining performance of Australian students, with the claim that a significant increase in funding was required across all school sectors.

Prof Gannicott says Australia’s schools are in fact quite well funded by international standards.  “The latest data show that Australia spends 4% of GDP on its schools, well above the OECD average of 3.7%,” he says.

The critical question is whether this better-than-average funding has a beneficial effect on academic performance, but Prof Gannicott points out that “nowhere in the Gonski Report was there any specific test of the relationship between spending and performance in Australian schools”.

Prof Gannicott’s research used the latest NAPLAN data to examine the Australian evidence.  Based on a diverse nation-wide sample of almost 2,000 schools, the relationship between each school’s recurrent income per student and its average NAPLAN score was tested through statistical modelling.

He found that, for both primary and secondary schools, increased funding per student is not associated with better NAPLAN performance, and that this finding is sustained even after taking into account important variables such as the socio-educational background of students and schools.

“There is no evidence that system-wide extra funding is necessary for good NAPLAN performance,” Prof Gannicott says.

“No matter whether we use a simple test of the relationship between school funding and NAPLAN scores, or whether we include additional explanatory variables such as the socio-economic background of the students, the result is the same: school performance is negatively related to funding.”

A further striking finding, which calls into question the key Gonski proposal for needs-based funding, was that the lowest-performing primary schools in the sample (those with NAPLAN scores at or below the national minimum standard) already receive higher average funding per student ($14,226) than those schools which are performing well ($11,447).

“The reasons for low performance are complex, but funding is clearly not the major explanation.   There is no reason to suppose that additional funding will in itself raise achievement to acceptable levels in poorly-performing schools,” Prof Gannicott says

“These results are consistent with a large body of international evidence. It is not a question of how much money, it is a question of how it is spent.”

“If we are serious about raising academic performance in Australian schools, we should take note of growing evidence about the specific practices in the school and classroom that produce better academic performance.    More of the same is not going to work.”