More drivel from Birmingham and 'brown nosing' from WA.

Birmingham wants to make changes ( cut backs to state education....) to the funding model involve altering federal legislation, and it is anticipated that the Commonwealth can make the changes without the agreement of the states.

When asked if he would push ahead with changes without state support, Senator Birmingham responded that he was "not looking for a result today".

"I'm looking for informed feedback and information from the states and territories," he said.

Another education ministers' meeting is scheduled for this year ahead of COAG discussions early next year. The funding changes are not expected to the finalised until after those consultations.

Senator Birmingham said he is expecting "robust discussion" from the education ministers, some of whom have said they were blindsided by the Senator's remarks.

South Australian Education Minister Susan Close said the first she knew of analysis of the Gonski model given to the media was when she heard Senator Birmingham on the ABC.

"It's extremely discourteous," she told AM this morning.

"We've had no paper presented to us and all we are left with is trying to glean what the proposition is by listening to programs such as yours.

"It seems what he's saying is just a recasting of 'we're not going to give you the money we know you need'."

But Ms Close told AM the Gonski model never envisaged full parity between states until its sixth year in 2020.

"The view that's being put forward through this study that somehow the disparity that occurs in the transition period is a reason to stop doing it at all is a view that will be firmly rebutted by all ministers," she said.

But Western Australia's Education Minister Peter Collier applauded Senator Birmingham's comments.

"I'm delighted that at last we've got a [Federal] Education Minister who's talking about equity in the funding distribution," he said.( Western Australia has effectively sabotaged Gonski right from the outset. It was Colin Barnett who refused to sign off on it in 2012-13. They are toadying up to the Feds prior to their election next year in the hope of getting extra money? And given the way Barnett and Porter have stuffed up their mining boom, they're bound to get it!)

The Australia Education Union hosted a briefing for some state and territory education ministers in Adelaide last night ahead of today's ministerial council meeting.

AEU Federal President Correna Haythorpe told AM Senator Birmingham's comments were a distraction from its failure to fund the final two years of the Gonski model.

"Pitting states against each other in these negotiations will do nothing to lift [school] results," she said

Meanwhile from NSW

NSW education minister Adrian Piccoli has warned he will publish full results of commonwealth funding cuts in new school agreements which he says would increase funding to some of the most expensive private schools while cutting funds to public schools.

“We will be making it very clear which schools will win out of any new funding model and which schools are going to lose,” Piccoli told the ABC.

“And what they are proposing is public schools are going to lose money in NSW but continuing to index some of the most expensive private schools in Sydney and across Australia by 3%. That means expensive private schools go up a minimum of 3%.”

Any commonwealth funding cuts could be published in NSW as every parent can already see what funding is given to their school. The NSW education department publishes the full list of funding increases every year, describing the list as “made possible through the Gonski agreement”.

Ministers met to begin discussions in Adelaide on Friday after the Coalition refused to honour Gonski-style school funding agreements signed under the Gillard government. Western Australia is the only state to support the change so far.

The new agreements will be for 2018-19, or years five and six of the Gonski agreements, which are are contained in the Australian Education Act, legislated by Labor. That act says funding to non-government schools must increase under indexation by 3% annually.

Piccoli also warned the Turnbull government that it might not get school funding changes – which would break his state’s Gonski-style agreement – through the Senate.

Labor, the Greens and the Nick Xenophon Team do not support cuts to the school funding agreements, already enough to block any changes to the Education Act.

The federal education minister, Simon Birmingham, has yet to fully release his proposal as states were not given formal briefings ahead of the meeting. But Birmingham, who told states he would give a verbal briefing, has said he supports needs-based funding but with conditions attached.( A verbal briefing!!! how immature and unprofessional!!!)

Birmingham has argued that the current school funding agreements are a corruption of the Gonski recommendations because different states get different amounts for equivalent schools.

Gonski recommended delivering individual students across the country the same base level of funding with loadings for disadvantage such as location, socioeconomic factors and disability.

On his way into the meeting on Friday, Birmingham said he was looking for the states to show how they could improve the funding model.

“I’m looking for informed feedback and information from states and territories about how we can improve the funding model that is not what David Gonski envisaged,” he said.

But Labor has argued that each state’s school system began with a different funding level, so the first Gonski-style agreements had to bring all resource levels to similar standards.

Piccoli rejected the argument that NSW had a “sweetheart” deal from Julia Gillard for signing up to the Gonski deal first in the rush to the 2013 federal election.

He said NSW made tough decisions which cut costs from the education bureaucracy so he could put money directly into schools. NSW agreed to index state funding so that more money went into schools, and as a result the commonwealth agreed to more funding.

“You can’t punish NSW because we made tough fiscal decisions and then we invested that money into frontline education,” Piccoli said.

“You can’t punish NSW because we have done the right thing by schools.”

Piccoli said NSW had implemented Gonski “more purely” than any other state and as a result there was absolute agreement between the public schools, the Catholic system and the independent sector.

By the way...where was Merlino?

This is what they really believe. The only honest thing Pyne said as minister!