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Funds not getting to right places
Justine Ferrari
The Australian
March 12

THE distribution of the federal government's crisis literacy and numeracy funding was flawed and failed to account for the larger number of students in the Northern Territory who don't meet basic academic standards, education funding experts say.

Melbourne University professor Steve Lamb and former Labor policy advisers Jim McMorrow and Lyndsay Connors questioned the methodology that allowed elite private schools in the ACT to receive money while schools in Darwin with one-third to one-half of their students struggling to meet standards received nothing.

As reported in The Australian yesterday, affluent private schools in Canberra, including Radford College (attended by Kevin Rudd's son), Canberra Girls Grammar and Canberra Grammar received money intended for struggling students under the $540 million national partnership on literacy and numeracy struck between the federal, state and territory governments. More than 90 per cent of students at the three schools perform above minimum standards in the national literacy and numeracy tests.

In contrast, schools in Darwin such as Nightcliff Middle School and Dripstone Middle School received no funding under the partnership despite having 20 per cent or more of their students at or below the standard.

Public schools in the ACT with struggling students also missed out, including Jervis Bay Primary School, where 68 per cent of students are indigenous. In the 2009 tests, more than half its students were at or below standard in numeracy and reading in Year 5.

The national partnership distributed federal funds according to the states' and territories' share of the total number of students at or below minimum standards in the 2008 NAPLAN (National Assessment Program -- Literacy and Numeracy) tests for Years 3, 5 and 7. As a result, the most populous states of NSW and Victoria received the bulk of the money, despite having the highest literacy and numeracy rates in the nation, along with the ACT.

But the Northern Territory, which has the lowest literacy and numeracy rates with about one-third of its students struggling to meet minimum standards, received the smallest amount of money after the ACT.

Education Minister Julia Gillard said the bulk of the national partnership money, $350m, was reserved for reward payments for school sectors with demonstrated improvement.

Professor Lamb said basing the funding allocations on students at or below the benchmark benefited states such as NSW and Victoria.

"It's a good idea to be targeting need and allocating funds on that basis but the issue is whether or not they have targeted need in the best way and I don't think they necessarily have," he said.