Garnaut Fitzgerald Review of Commonwealth-State Funding

APPENDIX B: National Education and Training Program
New approach
Commonwealth funding for the new Education and Training Program would total around
$7.2 billion in 2002–03. This is about 50 per cent of the available pool for the Health and
Aged Care and Education and Training Programs.
Establishing a broad education SPP would result in significant advantages, including:
• improving effectiveness of service delivery
• reducing administrative complexity
• increased simplicity and transparency
• increasing the States’ ownership of education issues, encouraging them to deliver
education outcomes rather than focusing on inputs
• a more cooperative approach between the States and the Commonwealth.
Consolidating education SPPs will improve education outcomes. Increased policy
flexibility will enable program requirements to be targeted at specific communities and
allow policy choice to occur at community level, for example, by schools themselves. It
will also improve efficiency, simplicity and transparency. In addition, equity outcomes
could be targeted to suit local requirements.
‘Through’ SPPs, which are simply passed by the States to private institutions, will
remain unchanged.
As in the Health and Aged Care Program, a simple approach is suggested for the
distribution of the Education and Training Program. Under the model, the Ministerial
Council would agree indicators of need. As with health, simple and objective criteria
should be used. The projections in Chapter 13 are based on the number of government
school and publicly funded vocational education and training students in each State.
Modification of a simple equal per capita distribution is recommended as there are
important differences between States that have an impact on demand for government
schools and vocational education and training, including:
• number of school-age children
• proportion of students in government and non-government schools
• participation rates in publicly funded vocational education and training courses.
In determining the appropriate distribution, the Ministerial Council would need to
consider how differences in the structure and number of years of school education
provided by each State should be taken into account. For example, Queensland and
Western Australia have twelve years of formal schooling, while all other States have
thirteen.
FINAL REPORT [212]