The debate about the Australian Government’s funding for schools has been reinvigorated by its school funding review—the first comprehensive government appraisal of school funding since the early 1970s.
In 2009, the Australian Government restructured its funding for schools, particularly for government schools, as a result of a new federal financial relations framework established by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) through the Intergovernmental Agreement on Federal Financial Relations.

The Government has also implemented new programs which have resulted in increased funding for schools. Of these initiatives, it is the Building the Education Revolution (BER) economic stimulus programs that have produced the greatest increase in funding.

Although the Labor Government has significantly increased funding for schools, the majority of this increased funding (that is, the BER funding) is not ongoing and much of the remainder is the result of automatic increases as the result of indexation. The underlying historic pattern of ongoing government funding for schools remains—the Australian Government provides the majority of its funding to non‐government schools, and state and territory governments provide the majority of their funding to government schools. Overall, the majority of total public expenditure (Australian, state and territory) is allocated to government schools.

The purpose of this Background Note is to explain the Australian Government’s funding for schools by answering some commonly asked questions. In doing this, the Background Note provides: a brief history of the Australian Government’s funding for schools, explains the system of Australian Government funding for schools, and examines expenditure trends.

Image: Girl at school, torres21 / flickr