Pearls and Irritations

Private schools have seized on an opportunity provided by an Amendment Bill before the Parliament to attempt to lock-in billions in Commonwealth over-funding for years to come.

In a submission to a Senate inquiry on the Bill, Independent Schools Australia (ISA) has proposed that the current cap on Commonwealth funding be replaced by a floor. If adopted, it will open the door for a future government to arbitrarily increase the Commonwealth share of funding for private schools without any parliamentary scrutiny. Such a move would further widen the already huge resource gap between independent and public schools.

Under the current Commonwealth funding arrangements, private schools will be over-funded by $2.8 billion during 2022-2028 inclusive – Catholic schools by $1.3 billion and Independent schools by $1.5 billion. This over-funding is due to expire in 2029 when the legislative cap of 80% on the Commonwealth share of funding the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) becomes fully effective.

In its insatiable greed for taxpayer funding, ISA is attempting to derail ending privileged over-funding for its schools and that of other private schools. ISA’s submission to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee inquiry on the Better and Fairer Schools (Funding and Reform) Bill proposes that the current cap of 80% for Commonwealth funding be replaced by a floor of 80%. This would create the opportunity for a future Labor or Coalition government to increase the funding share above 80%, thereby entrenching or increasing the current over-funding. This is entirely possible as there will be two federal elections before the over-funding is due to end.

Moreover, the increase could be made almost in secret and without any accountability to the Parliament because of other amendments to the Act proposed by the Albanese Government. The Bill provides that changes to the Commonwealth SRS shares in future would be determined by the Minister through a change to the Regulation to the Act and any change would not be subject to disallowance by the Parliament. The only constraint on the Minister is that the Bill provides that the Minister must consult with the Ministerial Council of education ministers on any change to the Commonwealth share.

As a result, a future Minister could increase the share above 80% virtually at will since there will be no recourse in the Parliament. It could even increase the share to 100% which would result in massive over-funding because of state/territory funding of private schools.

The basis for ISA’s proposal is that private schools should have a similar provision for their Commonwealth funding share as public schools given that the Bill replaces the 20% cap on the Commonwealth share of funding of public schools with a floor of 20%.

Nobody should be seduced by this seeming reasonableness. It is completely disingenuous because it ignores the reality of the relative funding of private and public schools. Public schools are hugely under-funded. On average, they are only funded at 87.6% of their SRS by combined Commonwealth and state/territory governments after taking account of the “accounting tricks” used by state governments to defraud public schools of over $2 billion in annual funding. Replacing the 20% cap on Commonwealth funding for public schools with a floor will allow a greater role for the Commonwealth in funding public schools that is commensurate with its national educational, social and economic policy responsibilities.

ISA is using this change to advance its own greed for more taxpayer funding despite their already extensive over-funding and that of Catholic schools. Independent and Catholic schools in all states and territories are over-funded by the Commonwealth Government. They will remain so until at least 2029 when all are due to be funded at 80% of their SRS. Catholic schools are over-funded by $1.3 billion during 2022-2028 inclusive and Independent schools by $1.5 billion.

Commonwealth over-funding of private schools is compounded by state/territory government over-funding. The most recent funding compliance report by the National Schools Resourcing Board shows that every state government except the Northern Territory is funding private schools at above 20% of their SRS.

ISA’s case is baseless. There is no reason to open the door to further increases in the Commonwealth funding share of the SRS of private schools. They already receive over-generous funding by the taxpayer. The current funding model heavily favours private schools in a myriad of ways which provides them with a huge resource advantage over public schools even though they enrol only a small proportion of low socio-economic, Indigenous, disability and remote area students. Acceding to its proposal would misdirect more funding to those with least need and exacerbate the resource gap between rich and poor.

There is a clear and present danger that the effort by ISA to lock-in their over-funding will succeed.

First, there can be little doubt that it will be supported by the Coalition members of the Senate Committee. After all, as Tony Abbott said, the Coalition has a proud history of funding Catholic and Independent schools, “it’s in our DNA”. It should be emphatically rejected by other members of the Committee.

Second, the Labor Party has a long history of craven capitulation to the demands of private schools. The original Gonski funding model was fatally undermined by special deals negotiated with the Catholic Church and ISA. More recently, it capitulated to an orchestrated campaign by private schools against the recommendation of the Productivity Commission to end tax deductible status for school building funds that bring hundreds of millions in donations that are not even considered in estimating their need for government funding.

The Albanese Government is clearly averse to negotiating legislative changes with the Greens. It has set a precedent by doing deals with the Coalition to water down the environmental protection agency powers and changes in aged care. It is conceivable that the Government would do a deal to replace caps on the Commonwealth share of the SRS of both public and private schools.

Any such deal with the Opposition would be gross stupidity and a diabolical betrayal of public schools. It would cement in place the massive resource advantage for private schools for decades because the ALP has demonstrated repeatedly that it is intimidated by the private school lobby and has no heart to challenge the funding privileges of private schools.

The Senate Legislative Committee should reject the ISA proposal as an opportunist grab for more taxpayer funding.

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