New teachers and extra support for disadvantaged children are likely to flow to SA’s schools next year after Premier Jay Weatherill signed up to Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s $650 million Gonski reform package this morning

Including $186 million for private and $197 million for the Catholic education sectors, plus $717 million to the public sector, the package will be worth around $1.1 billion between next year and 2019. Of that $656 million is new funding, with the rest coming via indexation over the next six years.

Around $400 million of that will be Federal funding with the rest of the new money coming from the State budget. Premier Weatherill said  the Budget he handed down last week had capacity to meet the Gonski funding and no changes to it would be required.

The deal represents an increase on the original offer from the Prime Minister of $566 million. The reform package has been increased by $90 million since then, of which $30 million will come from the State Government.

The reform package is worth $84 million next year, moving up to an extra $351 million a year from 2019 when it is fully funded.

The additional Federal funding will be indexed at 4.7 per cent.

Surrounded by students from Mitcham High – where the Prime Minister went to school – in Adelaide’s South, Weatherill signed on the dotted line.

Australian Education Union South Australian branch president Correna Haythorpe told InDaily no timing for a rollout had been set but she expected parents would start seeing improvements in their childrens’ schools from next year.

“We’re delighted with this. It’s a really big day for South Australia’s schools. These funds are going to provide a much needed boost.

“What we would expect to see is that this additional $657 million for schools would translate into additional teachers for our classrooms, would translate into additional support for our students who are most disadvantaged, those kids who’ve got numerous learning problems, our indigenous students, our students whose first language is not English.”

Speaking at Mitcham High this morning, the PM explained the extra $90 million by saying updated figures provided by the State Government had allowed the package to be refined.

“When we first announced our offers to states, we announced based funding and we pledged indexation.

“We’ve worked in the meantime to study and refine the figures. Having done that, the way the model works is that the figures do increase, to the figures that we increased today. $1.1 billion in total, $656 million in new funding.”

The total new funding flowing to South Australia is less per student than that which Gillard has offered to other State Governments. Victoria, for example, has been offered $4 billion in extra funding, while Western Australia’s offer was upped to $920 million this week after terse negotiations with that State’s government.

Gillard said this was because education in South Australia was already better funded than in other states.

“And it does mean therefore that South Australia is closer to the school resource standard. The model works to make sure around the country we can all say to each other that our schools have got the right

“South Australia was closer to the school resourcing standard.”

Premier Weatherill called the reform package “historic”.

“These historic changes to education funding are about ensuring that every child gets what they need for a high quality education – because every child is different and has different education requirements.

“More resources will also be provided to disadvantaged students, regional students, students with disabilities, Aboriginal students and students from non-English speaking backgrounds.”

The extra funding is linked to a range of reforms to the sector, including increasing the participation of parents in their childrens’ education, more autonomy for school principals and supporting teachers’ professional development.

Also included in the package are an “intensive intervention” to support literacy skills between prep and year 3, school readiness asssesments for students when they start school and more focus on learning about Asia.

Director of Catholic Education SA Dr Paul Sharkey said he was still doing the numbers to see how the extra $197 million would impact the Catholic sector.

“We are currently analyzing the numbers to see what new money is actually being offered to Catholic schools.  An important consideration will be to see some redress early in the six-year implementation of the new model, rather than all the money being back-ended towards 2019. Our schools have been under-funded by the State Government for many years now and we need to see some relief very soon.”

The Prime Minister has been negotiating the National Education Reform Agreement – her response to a report on school funding by businessman David Gonski – with State Premiers since she announced it in April. Gillard has set a deadline of June 30 for the negotiations.

South Australia becomes the third state behind New South Wales and the ACT to sign up. The Prime Minister has spent the week lobbying conservative governments in Western Australia and Queensland to sign up to the deal.

Shadow Minister for Education Christopher Pyne has said in the past a Coalition government would only honor the Gonski agreement if all states and territories were signed up to it when the Coalition took office. Otherwise the reform would be repealed.

The National Education Reform Agreement is structured so that schools receive funding on a per-student basis. Before today’s agreement, the package set funding for South Australian primary students at $9271 and $12,193 for secondary students, with additional loadings for disadvantage, disability, location and a range of other factors.

The plan is linked to an ambitious target to push Australian students into the top five countries internationally for reading, maths and science by 2025. An international benchmark test last year ranked Australia 27th in literacy, 12th in maths and 12th in science.

Read the full National Education Reform Agreement here.

More to come.