Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne said yesterday the idea public schools were underfunded was ''a myth'' propogated by the left of politics.
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Government funding of private and public schools dominated federal parliament for the second day, after opposition leader Tony Abbott said on Monday the fact governments spent more on government, than independent, schools was an ''injustice''.
Yesterday, Mr Pyne defended his leader against ''the myth'' that public schools - which educate 80 per cent of disadvantaged students - were under-funded.
''He was trying to address the myth that is created by the left in this country that somehow public schools are short-changed by government when they simply are not short-changed by government,'' Mr Pyne said.
The government is currently examining the Gonski review into school funding, which recommends a $5 billion investment into the government, independent and Catholic school sectors, based on 2009 figures. Under that model, additional funding would be directed to schools with a higher proportion of disadvantaged students.
The Gonski report - the most comprehensive review of school funding in some 40 years - described the current funding model as ''unnecessarily complex'' and lacking in coherence and transparency.
But Mr Pyne said Dr Gonski's report was itself overly complex, and written to please the government. ''The Gonski model is so complex and so complicated and so lacking in transparency that the government has had it since last December, released it in February, which means they've almost had 10 months to examine it, review it and respond to it and yet the government still hasn't responded to it,'' Mr Pyne said.
''The current model is the simplest model that's been devised in spending by the Commonwealth on schools since the Second World War.
''I think Mr Gonski in his attempt to please all people in the school sector and the government in particular has devised a model which is unworkable, complex, grotesquely expensive considering the budget situation that the government has found itself in, and would leave 3254 schools worse off if that model was implemented.''