This report was commissioned by the Australian Education Union to examine the economic case in favour of the full implementation of the school funding reforms outlined by the Review of School Funding (Gonski Review).

Australia has been recognised as consistently outperforming most OECD countries in the standardised Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests that are run internationally. While this constitutes the good news, there has been another truth that has long been recognised – Australia has inequitable learning outcomes with a ‘longer tail’ of weaker performing students. As a consequence, Australia has been dropping (relative to other countries) in its PISA tests performance.

This report frames this problem through a targeted analysis of (i) the most recent NAPLAN results, and (ii) a summary of the PISA findings related to equity and Australian schooling.