Funding Imbalance Exposed

The My School website has revealed for the first time the imbalance in the distribution of education funding and the size of the resources gap between schools.

An analysis of the 2009 information added to the site has again highlighted the need for an urgent overhaul of schools funding.  It shows:

•  Elite private schools are getting the most federal funding. While government schools are operating on an average of $11,200 in total income per student, independent private schools have a substantially higher average income of $15,300 per student. Their average is higher in part because of the huge wealth of elite private schools which were shown to have a income of up to $35,000 per student. My School shows that it is these elite private schools that get the largest overall funding from the Federal Government. Wesley College, for example, received $7.2 million from the Federal Government in 2009. This was the icing on the cake for the school that had a total gross income of over $70 million. See how that compares with your local public school.  
• Public schools received less government funding for capital works on average than private schools. While public schools, on average, each received $438,106 (combined federal and state/territory funding), Catholic schools got $510,263 and Independent schools $567,514. Adding that funding to their private sources of income allowed Catholic schools to spend more than double what government schools did on capital works and Independent schools spent more than triple. Some private schools spent far more including the Shore school in Sydney which spent 80 times the government average.  
• Some private schools in high income areas received more government funding than public schools serving low income communities. The difference in funding in some cases was thousands of dollars per student. In Sydney, for example, the Catholic school Mercy College on Sydney’s North Shore received $10,943 in total from the federal and state government compared to $8,692 for Rooty Hill High School and $8,778 for Quakers Hill High, which are located in the western suburbs of Sydney. When you add in private sources of income, Mercy College had a 76 per cent higher income than Rooty Hill High. The Save our Schools group has more examples from other states here.  
• Some schools run by the Exclusive Brethren cult received more government funding than many public schools. The M.E.T school at Oatlands in Sydney received $8,920 a student from the state and federal government. When added to its private income that gave the school $20,910 per student to spend. In South Australia, the cult’s school, Melrose Park, got $9,287 from governments to spend. That is more than the money provided to the Prime Minister’s former school Unley High in Adelaide which received $9,261 per student.  
• Public schools are required to do more with less. As mentioned above, public schools had $11,200 in income per student on average, compared to $15,300 for independent private schools. While the Catholic school figure was lower at $10,900 per student that reflects the fact that Catholic schools have far lower costs overall and operate a much smaller network of schools. Unlike government schools they are not required to be in every community across Australia, and do not have the same proportion of higher needs students which are more expensive to educate. The vast majority of low income students (77%), Indigenous students (86%), those with a disability (80%) and those in remote areas (84%) attend government schools. Public schools are also open to all students, unlike private schools, and must operate even where student numbers are small and costs are high. When those factors are taken into account it is clear that public schools are operating at lower levels of income than comparable private schools.

As we have pointed out before, the financial information on My School is incomplete. It fails to show the value of private school assets and investments, the profits they are making or the money they have available for the school to spend in foundations and trusts.

 But what it does reveal is the urgent need for a full overhaul of federal funding to ensure that the money is going to where it is needed the most, not where it is needed the least as is too often the case at the moment.

 If you would like to make a submission to the Federal review of schools funding you can do it here. Remember there is not much time left with submissions closing on March 31.