As the Catholic system welcomes new federal government funding, the Australian Education Union describes it as a “splurge” that “abandons” public school students.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Education Minister Dan Tehan announced a new private schools funding injection on Thursday.
The government is injecting an extra $4.6 billion into non-state schools within the next decade.
There will also be a new method of calculating how those schools are funded. Parental income tax records will from 2020 be used to assess the socio-economic status (SES) of private schools.
Executive Director of Sydney Catholic Schools, Dan White, says he is confident that the new school funding formula will be fairer for families, and will give Catholic schools certainty in the next 10 years.
“It will allow us to have confidence to keep our schools operating and delivering high quality Catholic education as well as planning for school improvements and new schools in growth areas,” he said.
“The proposed changes recognise that not all families in a particular school or area have the same ability to contribute to the education costs of their child.
“Across our system, this means that significantly more funding will flow to those schools which, because of their location, would otherwise have been penalised.”
But the Australian Education Union says state and territory education ministers must stand up and fight for public schools, describing the government’s move as a “spending splurge”.
Union federal president Correna Haythorpe says the nation’s 2.5 million public school students have been “abandoned”, and that it is now up to states and territories to make sure that they do not sign “inadequate” public school funding deals.
“This is the biggest special funding deal that private schools have ever seen, delivered by a Prime Minister who has abandoned public schools and public school students,” Ms Haythorpe said.
“Prime Minister Morrison seems to be flush with money when it comes to private schools, but he is leaving public schools to fend for themselves.”
She says funding negotiations are currently taking place between the Morrison government and the states and territories that will leave 87 per cent of public schools below the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) bench mark by 2023.
“While private schools also get a $1.9 billion capital works special deal, there is not one single dollar in capital funding to build and maintain essential public school infrastructure,” she said.
“It’s a shocking situation to have a Prime Minister who is so blatantly in favour of the private sector when the vast majority of students are in public schools.”
