Federal government public school funding will be cut real terms within three years based on current budget projections, according to this report, which recommends an immediate investment of at least $1.5 billion to restore federal funding to 1996 levels in order to ensure equality of opportunity.

The paper puts forward two suggestions for increasing Commonwealth funding to schools to begin re-aligning its investment in its own education priorities,. The suggestions are presented as ‘scenarios’ involving adjustments to Commonwealth general recurrent grants. These would also have the benefit of repairing the current arbitrary and anomalous formula, which delivers Commonwealth funding for government schools of 8.9% of primary schools’ AGSRC and 10% of the secondary AGSRC – both significantly lower than the minimum grant of 13.7% paid to independent primary and secondary non-government schools with the highest socio-economic score.