The Independent Schools Council of Australia has delivered a dim view of Australian education funding, saying all models are far removed from the Gonski recommendations, and national reform is virtually impossible.

The ISCA gave its view of the haphazard educational funding roll-outs that have occurred since the far-reaching report was compiled under the previous Labor government.

The views were aired at a Senate committee hearing on Thursday, which was looking into the ways new money has been allocated to the states and territories, and how closely those arrangements were to the recommendations of David Gonski’s report.

The Gonski report supposedly formed the basis of the previous government’s education funding reforms, but the actual application of the new model never really made it.

Now, under a Coalition government, the flaws in the push for nation-wide reform are beginning to show.

ISCA argued that across-the-board changes were impossible, given that there are 27 different funding models in operation and each jurisdiction maintains separate rights and needs.

Constitutional changes would have to be made, ISCA said, to change the weight of state responsibility over education.

Furthermore, the Abbott government has only committed to the initial phase of the roll-out of plan based somewhat on the Gonski recommendations, and it remains unclear what will happen after then.

ISCA executive director Bill Daniels told the hearing that things only appear to be getting worse.

“Regrettably, independent schools are left with the consequences of the inability of nine governments over the past three years to devise a better funding model,” he said.

“[In] reality we have a more complex situation than existed before. This is most unsatisfactory.”

The federal government and education department have both claimed recently that the amount of funding for schools does not necessarily mean better student results.

Education department associate secretary Tony Cook says some countries that spend less on students than Australia still see better results.

The Australian Education Union is looking for Labor’s full, six-year roll-out to be continued, as most of the money unlocked in the last two years of the scheme. The union says without this, student will simply be deprived of equal funding to their predecessors.