Prime Minister Tony Abbott has done a backflip on his earlier Gonski backflip - restoring all the money he originally promised for schools funding, with a guarantee that no school will be worse off. After…
Tony Abbott enters the last parliamentary fortnight highly vulnerable on that familiar issue of “trust” – and it is all his own doing. The Prime Minister today added to the ammunition the opposition has…
After a tense meeting in Canberra today, education state ministers raised concerns that the new federal government changes to school funding would see cuts only target public schools. The NSW education…
David Gonski and members of his panel on school funding, who included Kathryn Greiner and Carmen Lawrence, have every reason to feel appalled at the way their work has been treated and trashed by both…
It’s been a very long road for those wanting school funding reform. But it looks as though now the government version of the Gonski review is here to stay. Five states and territories are now on board…
It’s now more than three years since the government’s proposed changes to our school funding system began its long and bumpy road. A review was commissioned. Policy written. Deadlines for states to sign…
“There is a fox in the chicken coop in this plan and that is that the federal minister for education will have unprecedented power over state schools, and Tasmania, Western Australia, Queensland, Victoria…
Newly reinstated prime minister Kevin Rudd has publicly committed to Labor’s school reform agenda and extended the deadline for states and territories to sign up to the National Plan for School Improvement…
Kevin Rudd will hit western Sydney today to do some high profile campaigning. For Labor, he would say. For the leadership, others would note. Rudd will be mobbed. He’ll visit schools in the electorates…
The Australian Education Bill, introduced to the parliament last week, sets out the government’s Gonski reforms to school funding. One of the reform’s key tenets is that extra money should go to schools…
Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation; Bella Counihan, The Conversation, and Francisca Gallardo, The Conversation
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard today said NSW has become the first state to sign up to the National Education Reform Agreement, which aims to add $A14.5 billion to the public and private school…
As state premiers meet to thrash out an agreement on funding the Gonski school reforms, universities have been gnashing their teeth at being the losers in the funding equation. Earlier this week, Vice-Chancellor…
Losing A$200 a student doesn’t sound like a major cut for a multi-billion-dollar industry - so will the new university funding cuts really affect the quality of Australian higher education? Over the weekend…
Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s announcement yesterday about a new school funding and resource standard does not deliver on Gonski’s promise. Gillard said that the plan would mean “better resourcing and…
The Gillard government has two immediate problems with the politics of its A$14.5 billion education funding plan. First, and most seriously, the six-year blueprint, which requires the states to pay one…
The higher education sector is to take heavy budget cuts to help pay for the government’s Gonski school funding plan, a key measure in Julia Gillard’s bid for re-election. About A$2.3 billion will be saved…
In the lead up to negotiations with the states on schools funding reform, the government has armed itself by labelling the reforms as a moral issue. It’s easy, of course, for a politician to bring an issue…
Suddenly, everyone seems to be unloading about the state of federal-state relations and the problems of the Council of Australian Governments. COAG, where the prime minister, premiers and chief ministers…
After nearly six months on the policy bench, the Gillard Labor government is planning to release its response to the Gonski review into school funding. The government is still debating the reforms in cabinet…
Visiting Professor in Biomedical Ethics, Murdoch Children's Research Institute; Distinguished Visiting Professor in Law, University of Melbourne; Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, University of Oxford