We should all be glad that the Coalition government has decided to commit a good deal more money into primary and secondary education over the next 10 years. But the cynic will note that the forward-estimates cycle runs for four years only. Ten-year "commitments' are not contracts with state and territory governments, with individual schools or school systems, or with the public. The political advantage of appearing to pledge spending so far ahead is to make the promise seem to involve a great deal of money, even if only a couple of billion dollars are pledged for spending in the next three years. The bigger increases, if delivered, may well be within the term of other governments or, perhaps, other prime ministers.

The cynic will also note that the extra money has been found by cutting spending on universities. This is apparently possible, because a tame commissioned report alleges that universities have money to burn, and that students, who materially benefit in later life from having a university education, should contribute more to the cost. It's a proposition that sits oddly with the idea of an innovation nation, or with the notion that this government is all about enhancing the nation's infrastructure and productive capacity, but that is an argument for another day.

We should also no doubt be pleased that the government has pledged, more or less, to spend its money on broad equity principles, along the line suggested by the Gonski review. Under this scheme, there is a baseline set for government spending on a student. Because school underperformance was markedly affected by particular disadvantages in the student's background, Gonski wanted the baseline to be topped up where students fell into particular categories of disadvantage.

There was a loading for material poverty, or low socio-economic background, for Indigenous background, for disability, for living in a remote location, for being at a small school, or for having a family in which little English was spoken. Individual schools – or, more likely, individual school systems – could use these extra resources to focus on the consequences of some of this disadvantage. (Or not; whether the extra resources were focused at the disadvantage or some other school purpose, or linked to outcomes for disadvantaged kids, was a matter for those who received the money, not those who gave it.)

Four years ago, then opposition leader Tony Abbott did an about-face just before the election to announce that the Coalition was 100 per cent behind the Gillard government's policies on implementing the Gonski recommendations. There was not, he said, a cigarette-paper's worth of difference between Labor and Coalition thinking on the subject.

It proved, however, a typically elastic Abbott promise. The Coalition, in government, pretended to discover that Labor had not actually appropriated all of the promised money over the full term of its deals, and declared that it would bind itself only for four years, and then have a new scheme. (Although implementation of the Gonski report is chiefly attributed to Julia Gillard, it was Bill Shorten who was to cut 24 different deals with state and territory governments, and independent and systemic school systems in each state. He was the minister in the last days of the Labor government, running about the country making any number of arrangements, and with a good deal of flexibility and sweeteners in an effort to get everyone signed up before the election.)

Meanwhile, Coalition-commissioned reports and Coalition ideologues pronounced their hostility to Gonski principles and the quantum of money going to schools, or to state schools. The focus shifted to ideas about improving curriculums, teacher quality, how good teachers were to be rewarded and bad ones gotten rid of, and the imagined virtues of particular techniques for teaching reading or rote learning.

It is generally thought that when healthcare and education are strong political issues, Labor will benefit electorally at the polls. By contrast, the Coalition usually scores when the primary issues are the economy, national security or, apparently, the imminent invasion of boat people.

Labor was seen as much stronger on schools. Turnbull's sudden turnaround to embrace Gonski does not represent a Coalition conversion on the system of school funding. It is plainly focused at the political rather than the policy problem: neutralising education (or at least school education) as a high point of difference between Labor and Liberal. Most expect that Tuesday's budget will try to do something similar with Medicare and healthcare.

That this involves dumping previous party positions, philosophies or intentions is neither here nor there; Turnbull is simply acting as Abbott did in 2013 because to do otherwise may cost him votes. That there is no election due for two years invites a raised eyebrow about whether Turnbull has secret plans. Most likely, the poll he is thinking about is Newspoll, and the contest he is thinking about involves his leadership, not (at this stage) his party's re-election.

Labor seemed wrong-footed by this ruthless pragmatism, and has looked hard to "prove" that Turnbull's Gonski 2.0 is a lesser proposition, involving less money than Labor's plan. It might be better to focus on questioning Coalition sincerity or trustworthiness on the issue, since Turnbull's "agility" on the subject did not seem to involve much in the way of consultation with backbenchers, the party's councils or any great process of debate.

Turnbull was clever to get David Gonski on-board to lead a further review of principles, to accentuate the appearance of his scheme's being exactly what Gonski had recommended in the first place, and to sow further confusion about the baselines against which one could measure whether more or less money was being pledged.

Turnbull's new policy has some critics, including one group that the Coalition normally has nailed down: those in charge of systemic Catholic schools. These did particularly well under Gonski 1.0, in part because of sweeteners offered by Bill Shorten, but their demographics are against them, and the rate of growth of extra funding over the next decade is at about two-thirds of state schools and independent schools. Big rich independent schools, including high-fee well-resourced independent Catholic colleges not in the Catholic systemic system, will get lower growth, or less than they now receive. But there are many independent schools that, like systemic Catholic schools, do not charge high fees, and whose total income, including money from fees, the Commonwealth and the state, is lower or not much different from nearby state schools.

Non-government schools do not, on average, have enrolments of children with disabilities, Indigenous backgrounds, non-English speaking parents and so on at rates equivalent to government schools.

And, in some rural areas, some non-government schools have consciously pitched themselves to capture "white drift", by which the middle class of the community (including children of the Indigenous middle class) attend local Catholic (or sometimes Protestant) schools, leaving hollowed-out government schools largely occupied by children of parents largely dependent on welfare. These concentrations of social, cultural and education problems are not, usually, schools that can easily address their problems with some supplementation by government on Gonski grounds, even with the best teachers and programs. They have vicious cycles of poor teacher morale, community alienation, and difficulties in attracting and retaining good teachers, good students and good community champions. Even parents who "want to do the right thing" often end up deciding that they cannot imperil or gamble with their child's future at schools losing students, facing truancy and discipline problems and having difficulties in engaging with parents.

That the Catholic schools have inverted an old history – when they were the poor and under-resourced schools, operating purely on their own resources – does not seem to trouble church authorities much. Nor the question about which school Jesus would have attended.

A good many Canberra non-government schools, including systemic Catholic ones, face reduced federal funding over time, or rates of growth of federal funding well below those in state schools.

No doubt the Commonwealth will make some transition deals. Just as, no doubt, there will be deals to appease the loudest Catholic archbishops pretending that Catholic schools (once, on average, the poorest for resources) are being discriminated against. There will be appeasement, but it is interesting to note a certain exasperation and initial firmness from a Coalition that has, since about 1963 at least, pandered to the church hierarchy, particularly over education.

The reputation of the Catholic church is not what it was, even five years ago. The moral authority of the archbishops, and the esteem in which stewards of private schools are held, has taken a battering, thanks to their handling of sexual abuse. A good many people, even some of those predisposed to "choice", to the supposed superior discipline of the private system, or to the idea of an education that integrates religious and secular instruction, would not mind seeing the stewards get their comeuppance.

That Canberra schools seem to suffer does not reflect vengeance from Barnaby Joyce or Fiona for our sin of being the national capital. It reflects the fact that Canberra is a very bourgeois environment, with high average levels of income, education and socio-economic status. Of course it has its pockets of poverty (even if non-government schools have been picking up less than their share of it). But educational outcomes are very good. This is as much because of the backgrounds and demands of parents as because of the quality of its teachers and the supplementations, where appropriate, via Gonski. Reduced grants going to some schools reflect a judgment that the resources at that school put its students in at least the same position as students everywhere else in Australia. Those who want more – and they are entitled to want higher standards – must pay for it from their own resources, not at the expense of government grants to schoolchildren elsewhere. They can also, of course, make common cause with all parents of schoolchildren everywhere, that the total pie of resources available for education be expanded, so that all the potential quality of all schools improves.

So how can we – all Australians – lose from all this unanimity? It's simple, really. It is right, proper and just that public funds available for schools be distributed equitably, with special attention given to those who are disadvantaged. This should make some difference to educational outcomes. But only some. Study after study has shown that making a real difference in educational outcomes – at the top, the middle and the bottom of the heap – comes from the quality of the teaching, not the quantity of the resources or staff available.

Better-resourced schools can do things that help good teaching, including smaller classes, more personalised teaching, better pastoral care and so on. But no one has ever established any direct relationship between inputs and outcomes, and there are many cases where very well-resourced schools, with superior SES levels, perform worse than less-resourced schools with better teachers and better leaders.

That the political parties have carried out a reasonably intelligent, if excessively ideological, argument about balancing the need for attention to teacher quality and the need for attention to equitable resourcing – all the while tending to increase resources over time – has helped to keep both ends in view.

The quality and quantity arguments are, of course, not contradictory. But the Gonski recommendations, however worthy, have little to say about raising standards, or how that is to be done. Or about what is to be done with the resources made available.

When parties agree, in effect, to kill off the debate, there's a serious risk parents will delude themselves that we have, by going Gonski, reached some sort of educational nirvana that will address all of the problems of slipping international competitiveness. We won't; we will only defer it.

Jack Waterford is a former Canberra Times editor. jwaterfordcanberra@gmail.com