The architect of Australia’s significant education funding reforms has lamented their deterioration, just a few years after being put in place.

The first budget for the new government has put a bullet through the final two years of the needs-based state-federal funding arrangements, commonly known as the Gonski reforms.

Budget papers indicate the government will move to lower, inflation-based funding increases from 2017.

The shift re-allocates billions that had been set aside to be distributed under a new funding model, which was specifically aimed at boosting the base level for schools in the deepest disadvantage. 

It also deprives state governments and state schools of education funding whose purpose was defined by the thorough and far-reaching Gonski review.

Speaking about education for the first time since the LNP took government, Mr Gonski has told an audience at Melbourne University that Commission of Audit’s calls for education cuts in the budget were unfounded and went way too far.

“My biggest regret with the views of commission is their suggestion that the funding of 2018 should be based on 2017 funding indexed [to] changes in the CPI and the relevant wage price index,” Mr Gonski said.

“So the concept of aspiration - or indeed their concept of efficiency - ends in 2017 and from then on funding increases by indexes not specifically related to changes in costs in education.

“I sincerely hope that in the period between now and 2017 the federal government will change the presently budgeted position,” he said.

Mr Gonski says that the Commission of Audit held the simplified view that increased funding does not equate to better school outcomes. This thinking based o the fact that education funding did increase in Australia between 2000 and 2012, while results in international tests declined.

“Both statements are true,” he wrote in a subsequent opinion piece for the Sydney Morning Herald.

“Funding did increase and comparative results in PISA scores did decrease, however, the Commission does not recognise there are many other reasons to explain this.

“Monies may have increased but not been given in the correct areas and other countries may have been more adept at where they put their money to improve their country’s scores.

“The essence of what our review contended was that the way monies were applied was the important driver because increasing money where it counts was vital.

“The monies distributed over the 12-year period to which the commission refers are not applied on a needs-based aspirational system.”

He said his biggest regret was including actual dollar figures in the final reports to government, which appear to have come off looking like a demand for more money, when it was actually a push to change the way by which it is dispersed.

Gonski says his report still stands up to scrutiny.

“Some may disagree with aspects and conclusions, but I'm not aware of any major holes that have been found,” he told the audience in Melbourne, leaving them to ponder why such a robust review and funding model has now been scrapped.