Ross Gittins:

Because the Rudd Government promised to leave the funding formula unreformed during the next funding quadrennium ending in 2012, McMorrow projects that whereas another four years will see annual grants to the private schools increase by 3 per cent in real terms, real grants to public schools will fall by 2 per cent.

All this will occur while Rudd is pressing schools to publish far more information about their performance and encouraging parents to “walk with their feet” if they don’t like what’s revealed.

The state education bureaucracies and their unions have their own reasons for continuing to resist federal pressure to publish performance indicators. But Rudd is giving them a valid argument that his competition is biased against them.

Chris Bonnor:

Information about schools informs government policy and parental choice. It’s just that the beneficiaries are usually those already well educated and with access to networks and money. It rarely improves all schools for all kids: it crams middle class kids together and leaves poorer kids, schools and communities further out on a limb — further worsening our equity gaps in schooling.

There are ways to solve some of these problems — and this is where we get to this larger unresolved profound issue: the corrupted and dysfunctional way we fund schools.