Main Feature: Ellen Koshland of the Australian Learning Lecture, and authors Chris Bonnor and Tom Greenwell discuss the recent report Choice and Fairness: a common framework for all Australian schools, which outlines a proposed model for funding Australkian schools that addresses the issues of equity and segregation that are identified as rivers of educational decline.

Regular Features: Kolber’s Corner, Steven Kolber invites teachers to consider their cultural backgroud and concepts of normalcy; Ideology in Education, Tom Mahoney considers the ideological foundation of the practices of standardisation in eucation.

Links:
– Support TER Podcast at www.Patreon.com/TERPodcast
– Steven Kolber on Twitter
– Tom Mahoney on Twitter
– The issue of increasing disruption in Australian school classrooms
– Choice and Fairness: A Common Framework for all Australian schools

0:00 Opening Credits
1:31 – Intro
9:44 – Kolber’s Corner
18:28 – Ideology in Education
30:17 – Feature Introduction
33:38 – Interview – Ellen Koshland
39:49 – Interview – Tom Greenwell & Chris Bonnor
1:21:13 – Patron Shout Outs and Close

Read more for feature transcript

Feature Iterview Transcript (unedited, created by Otter.ai)

Cameron Malcher
I’m joined once again by the authors of waiting for Gonski Chris Bonner?

Chris Bonnor
Yes, indeed. Looking forward to this

Cameron Malcher
and Tom Greenwell

Tom Greenwell
Hi Cameron,

Cameron Malcher
and we’re here today to talk about a recent report you have co authored on behalf of the Australian learning lecture. But before we get into that report, let’s just recap some of the background of how we got here. When we last spoke in March of 2022, you had recently published a book waiting for Gonski, which was looking at the state of Australian education policy, you know, nearly a decade after the implementation of the Gonski school funding reforms. And the general findings of your research and writing was that the situation was not great that Australian school systems had become increasingly more segregated by socio economic status, I believe you said that the OECD data showed we had the fourth most segregated education system in the world or at least in the OACD participating nations, and that our results were suffering from the huge inequity and funding disparity that our education systems were experiencing. About two months later, we had a federal election, we had a change of government. In that intervening almost a year what have you seen change in Australian education policy regarding schools and school funding?

Tom Greenwell
What has changed is the rhetoric. Jason Claire has Minister Claire has consistently emphasized that he doesn’t want to Australia to be a country in which your educational achievement and opportunities is defined by your postcode. And, you know, that’s a very welcomed statement of values. But as of yet, education at the Commonwealth level has been barely ranked as a second order issue, the main decision that Minister Claire has made, at least as far as funding is to not make a decision to defer the advent of the new funding quadrennium for a year. Of course, there’s been reviews into initial teacher training, there almost always is and the teacher shortage and other matters, but little tangible has changed.

Cameron Malcher
Right? Yes. And I mean, it is noticeable that Minister Claire has returned to talking about return getting all us or not returning, but getting all schools to 100% of the school resourcing standard. But it’s certainly not at you know, as you mentioned, the second tier issue, it’s certainly not his first point talking point in any, in any press release or media. It’s always sort of buried towards the bottom somewhere.

Chris Bonnor
Yes. And when I get to camera on that, if if we got there, as will enlarge on later on, I’m sure if we got there, it’s not going to solve the problems that were highlighted that have continued since the Gonski. Review.

Cameron Malcher
Hmm. Well, let’s look at your new report, which has been commissioned by the Australian learning lecturer. First of all, let’s let’s just get some background to this report. How did it come about, that you co authored this report? Working with AOL?

Chris Bonnor
Yes, look, I was contacted by Ellen Koshland, who I knew from many years ago, who was concerned about the same issues that were raised in waiting for Gonski. And the book resonated with her and the book has had a reasonably high profile. But the book resonated with her. And she wanted us to enlarge in a shorter publication on what we were proposing as solutions to this escalating problem of segregated school enrollments, and a negative impact on overall student achievement.

Tom Greenwell
And so just to enlarge on that a little bit, Cameron, Ellen Koshland, supports and is the founder of the Australian learning lecture. And its mission is really to sponsor and amplify big new ideas that can improve Australian education. So we were really, really excited that they, you know, wanted to support us in developing some of the positive proposals that we offered right at the end of waiting for Gonski. And, and yeah, and it’s, it’s been a really great process, working with the Australian learning lecture. And the other thing that we should add is that you know, what’s interesting here is that I think part of the reason why Ellen was so excited to see some of the arguments that we were putting in the book is that, you know, she has been associated over decades with people like Jack Keating and others who, you know, have have for a long time criticized some of the unexamined assumptions of the way we set up education in Australia. Yeah, so it’s, it’s been a really great process.

Cameron Malcher
So let’s dive into some of the contents of the report. And I suppose first of all, what is this report hoping to achieve? You said that you’re putting forward in more detail some of the solutions from the end of your book? Who is this report for? And what are you hoping it will achieve in that audience?

Tom Greenwell
So I think, to answer that, it’s worth emphasizing that we kind of told two stories in waiting for Gonski. One was a story everyone’s familiar with, and we about how the funding hasn’t arrived. But the other story was about how we argue that the Gonski report was lacking in certain respects in its very conception of what we need to do. Because there was a contradiction at the heart of the Gonski report. It told us about how concentrating disadvantaged students together is very, very negative in terms of student student achievement. But it effectively endorsed the drivers of segregation, which are producing those concentrations, specifically, unregulated fees in largely publicly funded non government schools, unregulated enrollment practices, and taxpayer fueled resource disparities, which would continue existing, even if the full Gonski were to finally arrive one day. So what we’re what we’re trying to do in this paper, is to set out a positive vision about how we could address those drivers of segregation and in effect, provide a more comprehensive solution to the problem that the Gonski review identified. And so we our main objective with this paper is to speak to policy education policymakers. I’d say particularly people on the public education side of the debate, to say, let’s there’s a there’s certain things that seem unthinkable in the way we talk about education in Australia. Like the idea of, you know, regulating creating a common regulatory framework across the sector’s that aren’t unthinkable if we looked at a whole range of international examples. So our objective is to say, to that audience, let’s reconsider some of the assumptions that we’ve taken for granted.

Cameron Malcher
Just to clarify, and to make sure I understand this correctly, when you were talking about the drivers of segregation, and you mentioned that it was largely an absence of regulation and an absence of frameworks for operation for schools. It sounds like the segregation is almost a side effect of a sort of policy vacuum rather than being well, is it the case that it’s a deliberate choice? And the way to get there is by absence of regulation? Or is it a case of attempting to do other things that have just led to this as an unintended consequence?

Chris Bonnor
You could argue, Cameron, that a lot of things have come together to make this happen. I mean, from the mid 1980s, enrollments in high SES and low SES schools have diverged even further and also between the sectors public and private sectors, they have diverged to the point where highest is schools, mainly private schools, at the top of the ladder, and other schools are enrolling more a larger proportion of the stragglers. So that really has brought into sharp focus why it is that low achievers in in particular, when concentrated together and not doing any better. In fact, they’re doing worse and high achievers, when concentrated together actually are doing much, much better at all, if at all. So, these things have come to go along with the research that’s clearly pointing to the peer effects the effects of other students on individual student achievement. Not only research but the the anecdotal reports from teachers and parents and school principals highlight this as a concern that has not been addressed. So we have to go to the framework of schools in addition to reforms inside schools before we can reach a solution.

Tom Greenwell
And Cameron just to add to Chris’s comment, I think that the social segregation in Australian schools the first step is to acknowledge that it doesn’t just reflect geographical location, that that’s a factor of course but as Schools are much worse than locations. And it’s affected by the drivers of segregation I mentioned, I think they exist because of a lack of regulation. And that lack of regulation is essentially a byproduct of us trying to do other things. Once upon a time when state aid was reintroduced in the late 60s and early 70s. It was an attempt to provide choice or to ensure that those families who were choosing something outside the government system had access to a reasonably resourced education. And that was the objective and some of the side effects of creating a dual system of publicly funded schools. One which is free and comprehensive. Another which is fee charging and selective. Were not were acknowledged in something like the Carmel report 50 years ago, but they weren’t thought through fully, and certainly not responded to comprehensively.

Cameron Malcher
Well, as you said, at the beginning of the interview, not a lot has changed policy wise in the year since we have had a change of government. But you do have a section in the report outlining the kind of current state of schools as a result of this past couple of decades of policy. Where are we at the moment? What is the environment into which you are writing this report?

Chris Bonnor
It’s it’s fairly fairly diabolical. I mean, we’re able to track what we’re concerned about since 20 1011, because maybe because of the data behind the Moscow website, and it is really showing that high SES schools are accumulating more advantaged kids and are growing in size, low SES schools are losing their achievers, and are fairly static, or in many cases shrinking in size. So to be able to measure these things over just a decade, is, is very eye opening. It’s quite frightening. I was I never cease to be surprised, at the extent to which things have deteriorated? Well, certainly before Gonski, during Gonski. But of course, even after Gonski, we weren’t expected, we weren’t expecting that. But that’s what’s happening.

Tom Greenwell
And what’s very clear in all the measures, whether it’s Pisa, whether it’s NAPLAN, what have you, is there really massive gaps in students from different backgrounds, persevere. So it’s now you know, three or four years of learning, which can separate students from the most and the least advantaged quarters of our society.

Cameron Malcher
And can I just ask, how do you attribute cause and effect in that, like, how do you? How do you say that the school segregation issue and the issues of inequity, are responsible for this much of the decline in results, or this much of the shift in results? How do you go about actually linking those two together?

Chris Bonnor
I suppose it’s because of the fact that the enrollment discriminators, whether it’s by charging a fee, or kids doing really well in a particular test, or whatever are choices made by schools about who they enroll, they have continued unabated. And certainly, I mean, it’s not about blaming parents with the choices and the decisions they make. But if you’re a family, and the school that you might be zoned for, has a fairly substantial enrollment of stragglers, then it’s hardly surprising that you’re going to be looking somewhere else, as a school for your child. And this has been the case since the mid 80s. But as I say, has accelerated.

Tom Greenwell
And we saw a range of research in the paper, which, you know, going back to the Gonski Review, which which says that the impact on achievement of students peers in the classroom or in a school is at least as substantial as the impact of their own family social background. So that, you know, that evidence is coming from a number of sources, whether it’s the Gonski review, or the Australian Council of Education Research, or recently, the productivity commissioned, acknowledged, a Productivity Commission acknowledged the impact of compositional or peer effects. As for the kind of the causal, what’s causing that link, I think the research is less decided. But there’s certainly a number of links which are pointed to which will be very easily recognizable for educators that, you know, when you have a bunch of really advanced high achieving students, they bring a whole lot of motivation, a whole lot of background knowledge to learning. They spur each other, spur each other on to new heights. There’s a you know, kind of constructive competitive culture almost created around learning, and there’s strong post school aspirate Shouldn’t and and, you know, shared post school aspirations. Whereas we, when you concentrate a lot of disadvantaged students together, it means there’s huge demands on teacher time. There’s often challenges engaging students and a lot of disruption. So So learning time is reduced. And, you know, it can affect how schools and teachers target the curriculum. So often in very disadvantaged schools, the kind of academic subjects, which are precursors to tertiary education, and not on the curriculum. And it flows through into teacher morale and teacher attention and teacher recruitment. So, you know, Chris has done very powerful work on how the teacher shortage is a teacher shortage at some schools, but there’s a teacher surplus at other schools. And the schools that were where the teacher shortage hurts the hardest, are, you know, regional and remote schools, often and out of Metropolitan schools. And geography plays a part there. But it’s also harder to attract and retain teachers, where the work of educating students is so much more challenging, because of a huge concentration of social disadvantage.

Chris Bonnor
Yeah, we’ve got to think of resources a bit more widely than we have been, you know, we talked about money as a resource and what many can buy. But school, I was a school principal in a former life, I know very well, that students can be a very, very powerful resource for schools. And sadly, I have to say that when schools are pitched in competition with each other, as they tend to be in our system, schools go after those valuable resources, they look for those students, those enrollments that are going to enhance the profile image of the school. And its headline results, which is really sad, because competition should be about improving the innate quality of schools. But it doesn’t do that. It simply sins, school principals and schools in search of the ones they want. On that

Cameron Malcher
note, can I just ask, have you looked into these issues on a state by state basis? Like there are there are obviously different state systems managed very differently? And I know here in New South Wales, where I am, there have been quite significant policy changes in the last few years on things like out of area enrollments, for schools, trying to trying to not, I suppose to eliminate effectively a lot of out of area enrollment for students. And I’m just wondering, do you see a lot of policy variation between states? And is there much of a impact difference between states that do significantly different enrollment policies?

Chris Bonnor
Can I just mention one thing that’s really, really important in New South Wales? We are the home of 48 selective schools. I think next, in the in the Commonwealth comes Victoria, with what follow up, I think, from memory. That’s a significant policy difference. And in that sense, on the basis of what we’ve been talking about New South Wales, instead of being part of any solution is part of the problem. Because we are dividing within public education. And across all sectors, we are accelerating that division of enrollments between schools that are advantaged in schools that are not. So there’s those differences. And I don’t think I’m very wary about comparing the states and such things as NAPLAN. I’m not quite sure how, how how useful that is. But my impression is certainly, in looking at the data I’ve looked at, which includes high school specific and visa you achievement, we are not doing anything to help the situation at all in New South Wales.

Cameron Malcher
Well, while we may not be comparing states within Australia, in the report, you do compare the Australian system to a few other countries that are doing things a bit differently. Can we just have a bit of an overview of the countries that you choose to highlight in the report?

Tom Greenwell
Yes, so we talk about, you know, particularly Canada, where of course, education is governed on a provincial basis. So think of Canada’s largest province, Ontario. We see it as an example of, you know, something that Australia should be looking for, for inspiration, because in Ontario, the Catholic schools, fully publicly funded, they are free to the user, and they enroll on an inclusive basis. The way it the way it actually works. There is when you pay your taxes, you indicate whether your kind of those taxes are going to go to a Catholic school because you’re a or to a state owned school. And that’s where then your child We’ll go. Now the schools are funded on a needs basis. But you, you indicate that and that also means that you have a right to your local Catholic school, if that’s what you’ve indicated. So, the first thing about the first thing about a place like Ontario is it shows us about alternative arrangements where you can reconcile choice and equity, there is that choice between, you know, a religious ethos or a non religious religious ethos, but it’s done in a way in which schools are resourced on a common bases, both in the sense of money, and in the sense of resources, Chris was talking about the distribution of students from different social backgrounds. And then what we see flowing on is that, you know, in a place like Ontario, not only have they outperformed Australia, in Pisa since its inception. But you also see in the OECD surveys of students in Ontario, that, that disadvantaged students feel a much stronger connection with school. And they feel more positive about their, their prospects after school. So Canada is and particularly provinces, like Ontario, and Alberta is something we report, point two in the report. But also, I mean, what we emphasize is that Australia is something of an outlier in having schools, which non non government sectors which are so largely publicly funded with very few public obligations in return. So it’s actually, you know, if you go to New Zealand, or the Netherlands, or Scotland, they all have fully publicly funded faith based schools. And this is this is the norm. And, and so our argument here is, let’s have a really hard thing about why we’ve chosen to go on a different path. And is it serving us well?

Cameron Malcher
And what about a bit closer to home, I noticed you also compare the New Zealand system to Australia as well.

Tom Greenwell
Right, right. And so New Zealand’s interesting because it’s very, very, it has a parallel history to Australia’s and the Catholic systems in both countries, were on the verge of bankruptcy in the 1960s and 1970s. And in both cases, the states stepped in to essentially prop up the Catholic schools financially. But the kind of quid pro quo, if you like, in New Zealand, was that New Zealand’s Catholic schools would become what are called State integrated schools, and would no longer charge fees other than a small maintenance fee to maintain the buildings that were owned by the Catholic Church. And those maintenance fees would be subject to regulation and would have to be justified. So they’re very modest, even compared to Catholic schools in Australia. So it’s a interesting example, because I think it shows how, you know, a very similar country has a more rigorous approach to regulating non government school fees. But it also I think, we I think we comment in the report that that, that kind of car that loophole, to continue charging fees for to cover capital costs, is a bit of a risk. And it means that over time, it’s meant that, you know, maybe the New Zealand model isn’t as effective as as, say those provinces in Canada was talking about or a place like Scotland or a place like Netherlands, where faith based schools are fully free.

Chris Bonnor
Yeah, the other thing about New Zealand too, it’s interesting, New Zealand’s a unitary state, whereas Australia is a federal system of government. And of course, in New Zealand, it was easy to secure agreement between the New Zealand government and the churches. In New South Wales, of course, we had this constant sort of bickering between the states. And even after the Gonski review, recommendations came out there was there was Julia GL Geller going from state to state to state to secure agreement, participation by the different states to the to what she was going to legislate what she wanted to legislate. So that has begun our school system ever since. I mean, even now, with the schools resourcing standard, the states are dragging their feet. And as has always been the case, going back, going back decades, that is something we need to address head on. And in fact, Godsey came up with a recommendation or way of doing that it across levels of government school authority or resourcing authority, but hasn’t happened needs to happen if we’re going to make any sort of progress.

Cameron Malcher
So what do you see as the path for us to get here? Like, what’s the what’s the roadmap, this report lays out to get this conversation started?

Tom Greenwell
Well, I think the starting point is our proposal, which is a common framework for all schools. And that is, as per the kind of international examples we’ve talked about. It’s, it would mean that we would have all schools that receive public would be fully publicly funded. And whether they’re in the government or the non government sector, and as a consequence, they would be free to the user and prohibited from charging fees. All schools that receive public funding would be open to children of all abilities, and are prohibited from excluding children on the basis of entrance tests and other similar discriminators. And but non government schools could continue to apply enrollment and other policies necessary to maintaining their special religious or educational ethos. And non government schools that accepted these conditions would be fully publicly funded. In recurrent for recurrent and capital costs on the same basis, as similar public schools. And that same needs funding bases, non government schools that rejected those conditions, would would no longer receive any public funding at all. So I guess that’s, that’s, that’s the proposal that we are suggesting as an ultimate destination. And we acknowledge in the report that there is a journey, obviously, there’s a journey to get there. And so what we really suggest in the report is that the first step is the unfinished business. And that is to fund all schools at 100% of the schooling resource standard. The second step, which could be simultaneous is to create a new conversation about the common framework we’re suggesting. And and I mean, we are we Jen genuinely mean a conversation, we’ve offered a concrete proposal to provide some precision, about what we think’s at stake here. And to point out that the kinds of arrangements were proposing are very common internationally. But we need to do a there needs to be a lot of work to really think about what is would be acceptable to all the parties involved, and what would work optimally in the Australian context. So we think conversation needs to begin. And ultimately, that could result in a, you know, a national education summit, which brings all the major stakeholders together to hash out a deal and to agree on a common regulatory framework in return for full public funding of all schools. And we we think that part of achieving the kind of arrangements were arguing for is that we do need to revive a really good idea from the Gonski report, which is to establish school planning authorities in each state. And they, as we as we envision envision them would be really responsible for ensuring that the kind of regulations that were agreed on, were applied independently neutrally and transparently across all schools.

Cameron Malcher
And so what can we just dig into that a bit more? What would be the actual scope and authority of those individual authorities?

Tom Greenwell
So they would be independent statutory authorities. And, you know, they would be, for instance, we would talk in the proposal when you get into the nitty gritty of how do you have common enrollment obligations, that there may be a requirement for reserved seating for disadvantaged students, for instance, or there may be, you know, in some some other countries that have waited lotteries to enter schools that are weighted against socio economic criteria. So I’ve been responsible of a school planning authority to to oversee the conduct of those kinds of mechanisms. It would be the cont it would be the responsibility of the school planning authority for zoning because we’re also arguing that zoning needs to extend beyond public the public sector into non government sectors. So that you know, part of being a free non government school open to all comers would be that you would be people in your local area would have a right to a place in your school. If so, for instance, so the school planning authorities, the idea here is that, you know, like I didn’t know the elect Australian Electoral Commission, we wanted to be independent and arm’s length from government and to be viewed by that they’re making controversial decisions or decisions, which could be, you know, contested, that they’re viewed as, as independent and neutral.

Cameron Malcher
Convention, just ask when you talk about things like weighted lotteries for enrollment, that an authority might be responsible for overlooking. We’ve had a newly elected member of parliament here in New South Wales spruiking, the idea of school vouchers once again, and school vouchers is a policy that often goes hand in hand with enrollment lotteries in some schools. Does your proposal leave room open for something like a school voucher system? Or is that something that you would not want to see implemented?

Chris Bonnor
It’s, I mean, it’s always possible, but the point is about vouchers is that it is not accompanied by the regulation. And the and the, and the structural reforms that was that Tom was talking about. So vouchers wouldn’t change anything. I mean, vouchers were tried, for example, in Chile, back in, but not a 90s. But they’ve walked away from that, because and they’ve walked towards greater regulation of private schools in their enrollment practices. You’ve got to solve all those other problems, vouchers are no solution.

Tom Greenwell
I’d frame it. And yeah, I agree with Chris. And I’d frame a frame, I’d respond to the question by framing it a slightly different way. What we’re arguing for is the extension of the universal provision of free education across all the sectors. And but we’re then trying to answer a question, which is, you could you can make sure all schools were free. But there’s all sorts of potential for schools to become selective on a defective on a de facto basis. Whether it’s because of their existing location or their, for whatever reasons, there’s potential for them to discriminate on the students they enroll. And what we point to in the report is we have really concrete examples from places like Belgium, or Paris, or certain school districts in the United States, where they’ve wrestled with, how do we ensure that schools enroll inclusively, despite the fact that there is this natural tendency for a school to, you know, create special programs to kind of encourage the high achievers and to maybe let the, you know, tell the disadvantaged kids that, you know, maybe their interests can be better served somewhere else? How do you need to regulate to stop that? And this is where these examples are things like, firstly, extending zoning to all schools. Secondly, having reserved seating for disadvantaged students may be a regulation, maybe a requirement that you could impose on schools, or having, as I say, weighted lotteries. We have concrete examples from other from, you know, internationally, which we can learn from.

Cameron Malcher
Well, you know, as you outlined before, your report does provide a fairly clear kind of five point plan for how to get from where we are now to this more regulated and equitable system. But what do you see as the particular considerations or particular obstacles that what what is it preventing us from getting there that needs this conversation to happen, you know, if you’ve, if you’re able to point to the research and say school systems managed in this way achieve better outcomes for students? Why do we need to have this conversation to get us moving in that direction? Why? Why are we not already heading down that way, voluntarily? If I could

Chris Bonnor
kick it off, I think we need a very wide understanding in the community about what’s happening now, how we got to this point, and how bad it is. Because when there’s a problem in our whole system schools, we tend to re re resort to more within school reforms. So we need also to know why these within school reforms, many of which are fantastic, why by themselves, they haven’t made the difference. Why are things still getting worse? So that wide understanding of the nature of the problem is really important. And the fact that we’ve got to look elsewhere it’s time we started looking beyond schools and beyond the usual rafter. reforms for solutions, my feeling is that the Productivity Commission started going down that direction, in his most recent report, but they also have a long way to go.

Tom Greenwell
And then moving, moving into, I guess, some of the political challenges. We argued that, you know, our paper is called choice and fairness. And we’re really suggesting a common framework that we think will be better at providing both than what we currently do in Australia at the moment. But our argument is that part of the problem with the debate in Australia is that it’s a debate. We’re choosing choice and fairness are pitted against each other as though there’s a zero sum game. Right. And so part of what we see as a challenge is that when you have an argument for Gonski, and for needs based funding, and that involves taking some funding away from non government, schools, people, parents, schools across the non government sector view this as an attack on choice. And, and we get into this debate about well, do I, you know, I’m a taxpayer, and, you know, this is the kind of education I want for my child, and, and so on. And these kinds of arguments come up. So what we’re, what we’re arguing is that a solution, which provides both choice, and fairness, is likely to generate a larger coalition across the community. And that’s going to be part of the road forward in dealing with the politics.

Chris Bonnor
And remember, this is about starting a conversation. This is about injecting something different into the debates about schools. And so our challenge to any of the any, anyone who might have their doubts is let’s get the conversation going. And as they come up with something better, so be it. But of course, keeping in mind that it has to, it has to deal with that relationship between choice and equity, we can do both. And it also has to deal with the political realities. You have extreme suggestions on on all sides in this in the previous debates, they’re not viable, unless we can get that broad coalition of interests together to work towards what we say, what we see is the priorities of having both choice and equity. What if we don’t? I guess that’s part of my response. What if we do nothing? And that’s pretty frightening on the braces on the basis of the current trajectory? If we do nothing, it’s going to cost us big time.

Cameron Malcher
Yeah, well, I suppose, you know, this conversation around education. I’ve been teaching myself now getting close to 20 years. And this has been the dominant political conversation between particularly the two major ideologies of of our political landscape in Australia. And it always feels to me like it’s one of those things a bit like climate change, where the potential negative consequences are so far down the road, people have trouble seeing them in terms of what’s happening right now. And similarly, I have trouble seeing the state of where we are as a result of policy decisions made 2030 years ago.

Chris Bonnor
Yeah, this isn’t coming. It’s with us right now.

Tom Greenwell
I think that’s absolutely correct, Cameron. And, and I guess, just to just to add to Chris’s comment that our argument here is, you know, we’re proposing a constructive proposal here, and people can pick holes in it. And that’s, you know, we absolutely invite that invite that conversation, but we would also challenge, you know, people who are who are engaging with the report, to make an argument about how they think we should address the drivers of enrollment segregation, or do they think we should tacitly accept them? That’s the conversation we have to have.

Cameron Malcher
So just one final thing, you had the official launch of this policy, just a little under a week ago, from the time of this recording, have you had much of a reception since then, who has actually got their hands on the report? And if you had any feedback in the short time since it went to the public?

Tom Greenwell
Yeah, that’s been we’re really pleased with the media coverage. And I think, to me, the most interesting piece of feedback, or reaction was from the Victorian education, Catholic Education Commission, that, you know, said any proposal like this weren’t serious consideration, which was just, you know, a response in the media I grabbed but it was also reflected in an open mind and I think that there is a risk that sometimes either side of the kind of school funding debates can just You know that the the other side is not open to conversation, not open to persuasion or, you know, rational dialogue. And I think that, you know, should make us think twice about that.

Chris Bonnor
That sort of response, a fairly positive response wouldn’t have happened 10 years ago. So, and I think that’s a measure of how, how things have deteriorated and a measure of the of the wider range of people who are really concerned and are looking to a solution.

Cameron Malcher
Well, Tom, Chris, thank you once again, for what has been a fairly confronting conversation looking at the realities of where we are in Australian education and our policy landscape. Hopefully, this does continue the conversation between the sector’s and various governments of Australia. And I look forward to catching up with you again, hopefully to discuss some new policy initiatives that might arise out of this in the coming year or so. So Tom, Chris, once again, thank you for your time. Thanks, Cameron.

Tom Greenwell
Thanks so much camera.