• Jim McMorrow
• Australian Education Union

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01 August 2011The public funding of government and non-government schools has reached a critical point in its history. The Labor Government has set in train an independent and comprehensive review of funding policy for the decisions that will have to be taken when the current legislated funding period ends in 2012. By contrast, the federal Coalition has promised to retain and ‘improve’ the funding arrangements put in place by the Howard Government in 2001.

This is a significant issue for our schools, in particular for the many students who depend on a commitment to increased public investment in high quality public schooling for their life chances. Retaining the current funding scheme beyond 2012 will entrench the inequities and injustices that are embedded in its structure and operation. In such circumstances, public funding to nongovernment schools would continue to be distributed without regard to the full range of their income and resources; and without a formal funding standard based on the needs of students and the differing workloads in schools to meet those needs. The effect will be to further exacerbate the imbalance in the funding responsibilities of Commonwealth and State and Territory governments for government and non-government schools respectively.

Extension of the current Commonwealth general recurrent funding scheme to the next funding quadrennium would increase funding for nongovernment schools by more than $ 2.3 billion over the 2012 level, to a total of over $9.5 billion; compared with a $652 million increase for government schools, to a total of $3.1 billion, over the same period. This is the funding equivalent of an additional 8,300 teachers for the non-government sector, five times the additional 1,670 teachers in government schools that Commonwealth funding would support. Such an imbalance and injustice would be the clear outcomes of extension of this Commonwealth funding scheme, even if countered by State and Territory increases over that period.

Government schools’ share is projected to continue to decline to just 35 per cent of all Commonwealth funding for schools by 2016, if the current scheme is allowed to continue beyond 2012.