The Gonski Funding Model: Promised, Diluted, and Still Not Fully Implemented
By Direct Democracy
What Was Gonski, and Why Did It Matter?
In 2011, the Gillard government commissioned businessman David Gonski to lead an independent review of school funding in Australia. The findings were damning: Australia's funding system was inequitable, inconsistent, and tied to a school's sector rather than its students' needs. Public, Catholic, and independent schools were funded through different, overlapping formulas that had evolved through decades of political compromise rather than any coherent educational philosophy.
The Gonski review proposed a needs-based funding model - a Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) that calculated how much each school needed to educate its students adequately, then topped up funding based on disadvantage. Students with disabilities, from low-income families, from remote communities, or from non-English-speaking backgrounds would attract additional loadings. Simple, fair, evidence-based.
The estimated cost to bring every Australian school to its SRS benchmark was around $5 billion in additional annual funding. Gonski recommended the federal and state governments share that burden over six years.
How Both Major Parties Broke Their Promises
What followed is a masterclass in how political promises get quietly gutted.
Labor's original sin: The Gillard government accepted the framework but signed sector-specific deals that locked in special arrangements for Catholic systemic schools - protecting their funding streams regardless of actual need. The "unity ticket" with the Catholic sector came at the cost of the model's integrity from day one.
The Abbott government's demolition job: In 2014, the Abbott government walked away from years four to six of the Gonski funding plan entirely, ripping out approximately $30 billion in promised school funding over a decade. Education Minister Christopher Pyne infamously described the reversal as a "unity ticket" - a phrase that became a punchline for broken promises.
Turnbull's 'Gonski 2.0': In 2017, the Turnbull government repackaged cuts as reform, commissioning David Gonski himself to return for a second review. The resulting "Quality Schools" legislation did introduce a proper SRS formula - but locked in a trajectory where Catholic and independent schools would reach 100% of their SRS target by 2023, while public schools would only reach 95% of their SRS by 2023, with no legislated timeline to reach 100%. That 5% gap represents roughly $1.9 billion per year withheld from state public schools.
Labor's return to government: The Albanese government, elected in 2022, pledged to finally close the gap. After extended negotiations with the states, a new agreement was announced in late 2023 - but implementation is slow, tied to state matching contributions, and still leaves some public schools years away from full funding.
Who Pays the Price?
The students who lose most from this ongoing failure are predictable:
- Remote and regional students, particularly Indigenous students, who face the highest educational disadvantage
- Students with disabilities, who require specialist support that under-resourced schools simply cannot provide
- Students in outer-suburban public schools in low-income areas, where teacher shortages are acute and resources are stretched
- First-generation university students, whose trajectory is heavily shaped by the resources available in their secondary schools
Australia's PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) results tell a sobering story. Between 2000 and 2022, Australia's reading scores fell from 528 to 498, maths from 533 to 487. We have slipped from being a top-five OECD nation in education to outside the top ten in most measures - during exactly the period when Gonski's recommendations were being ignored.
Who Benefits From the Status Quo?
The blunt answer: wealthy private schools and the political donors who send their children to them.
Australia spends more public money per student on private schools than almost any comparable nation. Some of the country's most expensive private schools - with annual fees exceeding $40,000 - continue to receive Commonwealth funding because the SRS formula still includes them, and the political will to redirect that money simply doesn't exist.
| School Sector | Average Commonwealth Funding Per Student (approx.) | Average SRS Achievement |
|---|---|---|
| Public schools | ~$3,000 | ~95% (2023 target) |
| Catholic systemic | ~$8,000 | ~100% |
| Independent private | ~$3,500–$10,000+ (varies widely) | Varies |
Sources: AEU, Australian Government Budget papers, ACARA
Both Labor and the Coalition have deep ties to the Catholic education sector - which enrols around 20% of Australian students and wields extraordinary political influence, particularly in marginal seats. Independent private schools meanwhile have wealthy parent communities who donate to political campaigns and sit on party advisory boards.
The result is a system that protects entrenched privilege while telling disadvantaged kids they'll have to wait a little longer.
Why This Persists: The Politics of Education Funding
Education funding is a rare policy area where the people most harmed - children - cannot vote. Their parents can, but the political messaging around school choice, religious education, and local autonomy consistently drowns out the equity argument.
Politicians from both major parties have learned that promising Gonski wins votes in an election, and watering it down loses almost no votes afterwards, because the consequences are diffuse, long-term, and fall on people with less political power.
This is textbook policy capture: the system reflects the preferences of organised, funded interest groups rather than the preferences of ordinary Australians.
What Would Voters Actually Choose?
Repeatedly, surveys show Australians strongly support needs-based school funding and are uncomfortable with wealthy private schools receiving government money. A 2022 Australia Institute poll found over 70% of respondents supported redirecting private school funding to public schools.
But that preference has never once been reflected in actual policy - because voters only get to choose between two parties that are both captured by the same interests.
This is exactly where direct democracy changes the equation. When members of Direct Democracy vote on education policy, the result isn't filtered through donor relationships, preferential deals with church bodies, or the career ambitions of shadow ministers. It reflects what Australians actually want for their kids' schools.
The evidence for full Gonski implementation is overwhelming. The public support is there. What's missing is a political system that actually listens.
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