Recurrent expenditure on school education in Australia is over $44 billion each year, around $36 billion of this provided by governments. These are considerable sums, more often than not expressed as a cost rather than an investment – especially when it doesn’t always seem to deliver noticeable improvements in student results.

This paper uses data from the My School website to explore some indicators of change in the equity of schools since the evidence on which the Gonski panel based its findings about school funding and inequality was obtained. At the time of writing there is a bare three years since the release of the Gonski...