Ontario implemented needs-based funding a quarter of a century ago, and the benefits go beyond student achievement.

For Australians, needs-based school funding can often feel a lot like a mirage. It exists, but only as an alluring vision on the horizon, engendering hope and optimism but evaporating into thin air as soon as it is approached.

Likely due to sheer exhaustion, some public school stalwarts seem to have accommodated themselves to this illusion. Witness the reaction when funding deals were finalised prior to the federal election. Apparently, it was felt that it would be too impolite to mention a rather important detail out loud, namely that the Commonwealth will deliver just 2.5% of the additional funding this decade.

Marvellous things may happen in the 2030s, and it may yet transpire that the other 97.5% is more than mere optical illusion. But imagine what it’s like to encounter an actually existing needs-based funding system, where schools are already fully resourced to meet the educational needs of their students.

We had this experience when we joined a group of teachers, school principals and researchers on a study tour to Ontario, Canada’s largest province, late last year. We documented what we discovered in _Lessons from Canada: An Equal School System is Possible_.

Ontario implemented its needs-based funding formula in the late 1990s, replacing an unfair system of funding schools through local property taxes. Now, every school in the province is funded the same way. There’s a baseline amount for every student, plus loadings for the factors that indicate additional educational need: low parental income and education; disability, indigeneity, recent immigration and risk of suspension or expulsion. Small schools, rural schools and schools with declining enrolments all get extra support because they face higher costs.

Arriving in Ontario, the apparently impossible suddenly all seemed so simple. What remains for Australians an aspiration — a distant and impossible vision even — is an accomplished fact. That’s the first shock for an Australian visitor, but the second is even bigger.

In Ontario, needs-based funding applies equally to secular and faith-based schools. Take Notre Dame High, a school in Ottawa about 10 minutes’ drive from Canada’s parliament. Notre Dame is just like any Australian Catholic school: religion forms an integral part of the school’s curriculum and character; it is governed by a board elected by Catholic ratepayers.

The difference is that Notre Dame is fully publicly funded – just like an Australian public school. As a result it does not need to charge any admission fees (and nor is it permitted to). There are no academic entrance tests or interviews: students living within the catchment area have a right to attend the school.

Notre Dame High serves a very disadvantaged community, with almost twice as many students from low-income households as the Ontario average, and nearly triple the number of children with parents who did not complete high school. As a result, it receives significant additional resourcing to support students with numeracy and literacy challenges, experiencing poverty, facing suspension or expulsion, or conflict with the law.

If educational need is the sole criterion on which schools are funded, it wouldn’t make sense to deny this group of young people this extra resourcing. Or to require the parent community to pay out of their own pockets.

There’s another big benefit of this approach. Across Ontario, faith schools and secular schools enrol essentially the same students in socio-economic terms. As a result, Ontario’s schools are much more socially mixed than Australia’s, with the children of the rich and the poor rubbing shoulders much more often.

In Australia, higher per student income enables some schools to pull in advantaged and high-achieving students, while fees and enrolment discriminators push the disadvantaged and underachieving away. As a result Australia has one of the most segregated school systems in the world.

This means that disadvantaged children find themselves concentrated together in the same classrooms with teachers who are increasingly overworked and overwhelmed; unable to provide the individual attention each child needs; and, often, looking for work elsewhere. It is no accident that teacher shortages don’t affect all schools equally.

The independent expert panel on better and fairer schools, convened by Education Minister Jason Clare, comprehensively documented the link between segregation in Australian schools and inequity and underachievement. Meanwhile, Ontario eliminated fee barriers, enrolment discriminators and resource disparities 25 years ago, and it has outperformed Australia in maths, reading and science in every round of the PISA test.

That’s a big deal, but education is about much more than international standardised tests. When the children of the educated and the affluent go to school with the children of the poor and excluded, it changes how both groups see each other, and themselves, and the world around them. It is more likely that they come to understand themselves as part of a shared endeavour, a society in which nobody is left behind.

But we know what you’re thinking: “It’s never going to happen here.” Unaffordable. Politically impossible. Well, Ontario spends slightly less on education than Australia as a proportion of GDP – partly because its small number of fee-charging schools (which serve just 7% of students) receive no public funding.

As for the politics, Ontario shows that the happy consequence of providing full needs-based funding across school sectors is that it enjoys the political support of a widespread cross-section of society. It means that faith schools in Ontario are as fierce proponents of needs-based funding as secular schools. And that changes the equation for politicians. It’s really hard to argue against 93% of the population. Support of that magnitude has the power to transform visions into reality.

Tom Greenwell and Chris Bonnor are co-authors of _Lessons From Canada_ published by Australian Learning Lecture and _Waiting for Gonski_ (UNSW Press).

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.