Time to decide

We have the numbers

Over 2.53million Australian young people attend our public schools and early childhood education services. This sector includes the highest proportion of students with the highest additional needs. It contains the highest proportion of students who have the least educational support at home.

It is therefore vital that school funding is targeted to support those who have the most to gain from education – young people in public schools

For good reasons, public schools are the first choice for many parents. For many disadvantaged families, public schools are the only choice. The much vaunted ‘parent choice’ that lets parents enrol their children in heavily subsidised private schools is still only available to those who can afford it - and then only if the preferred school chooses to accept their child.

Fair go funding of Australia’s schools

The Australian Council of State School Organisations (ACSSO) will continue to lobby political parties to ensure the opportunity of additional government resourcing is allocated where it can make the greatest difference to the lives of children and their families

The mantra of Fair, Simple and Transparent funding, with no special deals, is at the forefront of every discussion ACSSO has with policy makers. The clear implication is that all expenditure of public funds in Australia’s schools must be based on need and essentials, not choice and luxury. This ensures all Australia’s children 'get a go' so they can 'have a go' and will enjoy 'a fair go' in our society.

School Resource Standard

The School Resource Standard (SRS) is the key to ensuring that the public funding of Australia’s schools is Fair, Simple and Transparent, and returns good value to the nation. The SRS is a measure that is set independently and accommodates individual school needs – such as loadings for extra support for students with disabilities.

It includes six additional loadings that may be applied. The first four are for schools managing additional needs around providing quality education to:

• students with disability

• students with low English language proficiency

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students

• socio-economically disadvantaged students

And a further two loadings are based on supplementing the higher operating costs or lower efficiency of funding in schools which:

• are located in regional or remote places
• have medium, small, or very small size populations.
• It is a good measure, and ACSSO supports it, but never yet have our schools received 100% of their SRS allocation in government funding. The average public school is more likely to receive 92% of what it has been assessed as needing.

The current Education Act sets Federal government funding at 20% of SRS for public schools, and 80% for private schools, on the basis that the states and territories should be covering the balance based on their historical responsibility for public education.

Just as the Commonwealth is yet to meet its 20% target (see comparison table for promised timetable), the states and territories are also below their 80% contribution and each jurisdiction has a schedule of payment increases logged in its section of the current National Partnership Agreement (NPA). They are, however, still well above the expected SRS contribution to non-government schools.

For example, in NSW, as you can see below, the schedule out to 2023 would still only bring the funded SRS allocation for a public school to a maximum of 92.22% (72.22% from NSW and 20% from the Commonwealth) while a private school might achieve 100% or more of its allocation (22.82% from NSW and up to 80% from the Commonwealth):

More ‘accounting tricks’

But the slow creep towards a fully funded SRS allocation for our schools is hampered by another factor. At a state level, enabled by the Commonwealth through the NPA, governments are applying what Labor spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek calls ‘accounting tricks’ to divert part of their SRS allocation for public schools elsewhere in the system.

This might be used for something practical like school bus schemes, or something on paper like funding depreciation costs. The public school principal can’t count on receiving their full allocation even if the governments were meeting their obligations because of central decisions to divert money away from cash to schools.

The mechanisms involved in providing public funds to individual schools leave much to be desired. Government schools are more likely to receive resources as a mixture of cash and kind of which they have to make the best they can. In many instance the cash component leaves little capacity to offset the resources that are provided in kind.

Systemic non-government schools and their communities are – like government schools – often in the dark about their individual SRS entitlements and they may be subject to the same centralised redistribution as public schools. These arrangements lack transparency over the outcome of public money.

Independent schools, on the other hand, are likely to receive all state and Commonwealth funds directly to their bank accounts as cash, with no interference from a department or system.

All public schools should reach receive 100% of their SRS in cash and/or kind. We argue that must happen by 2023, if not before. Governments should not only address underfunded public schools but should put strategy in place to reduce the funding to overfunded private schools as a matter of fairness

Inequitable enrolment practices

The ability of some schools to choose which individual students they will enrol has serious implications for fair funding, yet this remains the ‘elephant in the room’.

Non-government schools can reject students for reasons of their own choosing, including rejecting children with high needs who are not well-resourced by their families, or whose family faith, philosophy or culture don’t align well with the school and its community.

In many cases, of course, the ‘choice’ is void because families simply can’t afford the fees or the many additional on-costs for more expensive and mandatory equipment , weekend sports, or overseas excursions. These families may well fit the much-told model of working extra jobs to cover school expenses for their ‘choice’, but far more commonly they simply enrol their children in the local public school.

Despite the higher per child funding each private school, they will never be an affordable choice for most families because their fees are simply added onto the base government funding and used to maintain the perception of superiority over public education.

In the recent budget, the government made no attempt to bridge the funding gap. They also make no attempt to match Labor’s commitment to restore the public-school funding in the first Gonski package.

Special funding deals

The National School Reform Agreement, signed by Education Minister Dan Tehan at the end of last year with each state and territory, restored $4.6 billion of funding for independent schools and the Catholic system – after a lot of conflict and wrestling – but left public schools with no additional funding.

But the problem goes back further than that, even in recent history. A data investigation by the ABC last year found the billions poured into Australian schools since the dawn of the “education revolution” under former Labor Education Minister Julia Gillard in 2008 left thousands of public schools with less public funding than similar private schools. This is because of the steep rise in government funding to private schools.

Source: ABC investigation, 'Counting the cost of the education revolution'

Not so blind

The additional funding was meant to be ‘sector-blind’, and based on student and school needs. The result, however, was the income divide became wider for many schools than at any point in the past decade.

Grattan Institute’s school education program director Peter Goss notes:

A decade ago, one in 20 private schools [received] more public dollars per student than comparable government schools ... By 2016, it was more than one in three.

This is a direct result of the special deals that both Coalition and Labor governments have done with the independent and Catholic school sectors.

We call for the removal of the $1.2 billion Choice and Affordability Fund. Additional funding to independent and Catholic schools has never resulted in the reduction of fees to parents.

Prioritise public education

We need a government in place that not only prioritises public education but has the tenacity to make the hard decisions and act on over-funded elite private schools

We call for a further investment into education funding with a clear priority to addressing those in most need - such as in the six additional SRS loadings listed earlier - to address disadvantage across the nation.

There is also the potential in any review to address the scope of a new seventh loading: to address psycho-social trauma issues experienced by students that can provide tangible and meaningful support in schools for trauma informed practice.

We support expanding universal preschool access to two-years of early childhood education for every Australian family. This is a provision that’s well recognised as vital foundation to a child’s future success and would have a significant benefit for all our schools.

Most countries in the OECD support early childhood education in this way and while Labor and the Greens are prepared with a policy of permanent funding for universal preschool access, the Liberal Government maintains its philosophy of childcare being primarily a workforce participation tool rather than an educational obligation.

Family engagement 

Amid increasing reports of parents ‘bullying’ school staff, we believe authentic family engagement would help considerably.

Rather than enhancing family engagement, many school improvement initiatives have disrupted school-family working relationships and displaced families as key stakeholders.

High systemic demands for school accountability and mandated evidence-based practices have tended to reduce school and teacher discretion and increase staff workloads reducing the capacity of schools to make customised provision for all students.

Systems have tended to impose recipes’ on schools and teachers, rather that offer ‘menus’ from which schools and teachers (in collaboration with students and their families) can choose the best options for students.

The value of family engagement in education is another key point of interest for parents with over 50 years of research and best practice to draw on.

The Gonski 2.0 panel’s findings amplify this point and we look forward to the opportunity within the promise of additional funding to make this a priority and target funding to support schools to engage with families; provide professional development, provide additional time for teachers to engage in this practice and for governments to promote this as a priority

Additionally, we would support the increase in number of ‘community hubs’ – particularly in connection with the early childhood services such as preschools and long day care centres. This would aid the development of authentic , long-lasting, family engagement practices

A lesson in history

The first Gonski report in 2011 laid the foundation for national needs-based funding via the creation of the SRS, but as we described earlier, it was deemed too costly to fully implement. Instead a schedule of increasing payments for government schools and decreasing payments for over-funded private schools was eventually agreed by all jurisdictions.

Labor’s 2013 Education Act included many good elements but was hampered by the requirement that no school lose a dollar. It thus failed to lift most schools to 100 per cent of SRS, while continuing to increase funding for overfunded schools.

The Coalition’s Australian Education Amendment 2017 improved on the 2013 Act. For the first time, funding was reduced to overfunded schools and Commonwealth funding became more consistent across states and territories.

A new National Schools Resourcing Board (NSRB) reviewed key elements of funding. The NSRB’s first review proposed a new and better parental ‘capacity-to-contribute’ model for non-government schools, based on family income rather than where parents live.

However, in accepting the NSRB model the Coalition also introduced a $1.2 billion ‘Choice and Affordability Fund’ and has committed to this funding if re-elected. This is a backward step, subsidising low-fee private schools even when parents can afford to pay their way.

Labor has now committed to build on the 2017 Amendment and invest $14 billion more in public schools. Under Labor’s policy, Commonwealth funding would rise to 22.2 per cent of SRS, compared to the Coalition’s 20 per cent. Despite these improvements, neither party’s policy will fully fund all schools. Unless that changes, public schools will continue to be under-funded relative to private schools.

Government obligation

Parents are required by law to send their children to school over the compulsory years of education. This places an obligation on governments to ensure that all Australia’s children are given a fair go regardless of the families and communities into which they are born.

Governments are responsible for all schools and need to account for the quality and fairness of Australia’s school system.

Our public schools are increasingly and proudly the first choice for our children’s future and ACSSO will continue to lobby for Fair, Simple and Transparent education policy – with funding based on true need and no special deals for exclusive sectors. We call upon all sides of politics to unite in fully and properly supporting our nation’s public school students, families and communities.