What does equity in schools look like? And how is it tied to growing teacher shortages?

When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared victory on election night, he said he wanted to unite Australians around “our shared values of fairness and opportunity, and hard work and kindness to those in need”.

So what would this look like in Australian schools? Schools, after all, are where a society that believes in fairness and opportunity must begin. Equity involves more than fairly funding schools.

It is about matching teachers’ passion with the respect, time, resources and conditions that enable them to do what they signed up to do: make a difference in students’ lives.

Read more: Almost 60% of teachers say they want out. What is Labor going to do for an exhausted school sector?

Based on our research into quality use of evidence do drive quality in education, I suggest equity, hard work and kindness should underpin school policy in three ways.

1. Ensure fairness in funding

The first priority is fairness in funding. It has been ten years since the Gonski review proposed a more equitable approach to school funding. The goal was to ensure differences in students’ educational outcomes are not the product of differences in wealth, income or power.

Since then, the approach has been diluted and gone backwards.

While resourcing to schools increased by over A$2 billion over a decade, the Grattan Institute found that once wage growth is taken into account, private schools received over 80% of this extra funding despite educating less than 20% of Australia’s most disadvantaged students.

COVID-19 has intensified disparities that are hard-baked into Australia schooling through the historical segregation of schools.

The basis of the reform therefore needs to be reviewed. As then Prime Minister Julia Gillard, a former education minister, effectively tied a hand behind the government’s back by committing to the principle that no school would lose funding as a result of the reforms.

This distorted Gonski’s needs-based aspiration.

The needs-based funding that needs to be directed to public schools for them to be fully funded according to the Gonski model equates to more than $1,000 per student each year. But ensuring all schools get a fair share of public funding is only a part of the challenge.