Education gulf can't be bridged with money alone – inequality expert

The gulf in educational attainment between Australia’s most affluent suburbs and its 50 most disadvantaged communities cannot be narrowed by needs-based funding alone, the author of a new report on educational inequality has said.

Prof Alan Duncan, director of the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre and the lead author of its report Educate Australia Fair?, said it was unclear how the redesigned Gonski 2.0 education changes would improve education outcomes in the most disadvantaged schools.

The report, released on Wednesday, found the most disadvantaged schools received, on average, twice the funding per student than schools in the least disadvantaged areas but that funding needed to be linked to improved results.

“That link between funding and outcomes is something that is missing from the current debate,” Duncan told Guardian Australia.

The Gonski 2.0 school package, which will give schools an extra $23.5bn over 10 years, passed parliament on Friday.

The second phase of the plan, a review by David Gonski into education standards and reforms needed to improve schools, will be delivered late this year and implemented through a new national agreement on education reform by mid next year.

Duncan said the full suite of reforms would have to go “beyond funding” to look at other factors behind educational inequality, pointing to measures including increasing preschool and early childhood education, which was pushed by the first round of Gonski reforms in 2012 as an evidence-based way to improve outcomes in the long term.

“Funding of course is important, resourcing is important, but in no sense is that the only priority in addressing the educational equity gap,” he said.

The report assessed school districts across criteria such as Naplan results, preschool attendance, year 12 completion rates, enrolment in tertiary education, non-attendance rates and the number of students flagged as vulnerable in the Australian early development census.

It ranked the inner-city Sydney suburbs of Paddington and Moore Park as the least disadvantaged area in Australia, followed by Camberwell in Melbourne and a slew of other affluent Sydney suburbs: St Ives, Wahroonga-Warrawee, Pymble, Darlinghurst, Lindfield-Roseville, Cremorne-Cammeray, North Sydney-Lavender Bay, and Crows Nest-Waverton.

The most disadvantaged regions were remote and populated by predominantly Indigenous communities: Tanami, Yuendumu-Anmatjere, Barkly, Elsey, the Gulf country, Daly and the Tiwi Islands in the Northern Territory; the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in South Australia; and the Leinster - Leonora region and Halls Creek in Western Australia.

Students in the 50 most disadvantaged regions in Australia were four times more likely to be considered developmentally vulnerable in at least one area, half as likely to attend preschool for the recommended minimum 15 hours or more a week in the year before starting school, and were more likely to have high non-attendance rates or disengage from education entirely than students in less disadvantaged regions, the report said.

Indigenous students were twice as likely as non-Indigenous students to be developmentally vulnerable in one or more domain, 40% less likely to finish high-school, and 60% less likely to go to university than non-Indigenous students.

In every state and territory, the region marked as the most disadvantaged had a higher than average Indigenous population, while the area considered least disadvantaged was in a capital city, often with a water view.

Throughout Australia, students with tertiary-educated parents were more likely to graduate from tertiary education themselves, making up two-thirds of all domestic university enrolments.

The report said the results challenged the policy rhetoric that education was a pathway out of disadvantage and were a “a sobering reminder of the level of inequality that still exists in our community”.

“Many of today’s young children will not receive a ‘fair go’ in accessing education opportunities, for no other reasons than family background, demographic characteristic and geography,” it said.

The difference between results in east coast cities and the rest of the country is so vast that the most disadvantaged 10% of children in the Australian Capital Territory are on par with the most advantaged 10% in the NT.

Duncan said success at school allowed young people to access other opportunities that could influence their life trajectory but questioned whether “that success is actually being distributed equally”.

“It’s not that upward mobility through education is less effective now than it used to be, it’s more that we don’t appear to be distributing those opportunities equitably across the full Australian landscape,” he said.

“There are a host of factors that drive educational inequality and a host of potential solutions to reduce educational inequality, and in neither sense is funding the silver bullet that addresses that disadvantage.”