Public schools in Central Australia will meet the minimum education funding benchmark for the first time since the Gonski reforms were introduced under the new federal budget, but the Greens say more needs to be done to close the gap between public and private education.
The Albanese government will spend a record high of $28bn on schools in 2023-24, Tuesday’s budget confirmed, rising to $31.4bn in 2026-27.
Government schools will receive an extra 5.7% in federal funding, totalling $10.8bn in the next financial year, while private and Catholic schools will have their funding increased by 4.8% to $17.4bn.
The figures do not represent the entire funding for all sectors – most funding for public schools comes from state governments.
The extra $590m to government schools is well short of the billions demanded by teachers’ unions.
The education minister, Jason Clare, said while funding per student was going up, the number of students attending public schools was going down.
School funding is allocated based on projected enrolments, with data showing parents are continuing to turn away from public education to the private sector.
“If that’s not proof of why we need serious reform in education, I don’t know what is. I want public education to be the first choice of parents,” Clare said.
“If we are serious about breaking the cycle of disadvantage this is where we have got to do it.”
For the first time, Central Australia will meet full funding of the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) – the minimum benchmark to provide a decent education agreed to by governments – after receiving $40m in the budget to improve student outcomes.
Only the ACT had previously achieved the benchmark, set out more than a decade ago in the Gonski review of school funding.
Clare signed a pledge for each school to reach 100% of its SRS funding at the NSW Teachers Federation Principals’ Conference last week.
The federal president of the Australian Education Union, Correna Haythorpe, said while $40m may not be much compared with other budget commitments, it was important to be “clear about what it represents”.
“For public school students in central Australia … that funding will deliver more teachers, more education support staff, and more one-on-one individual attention,” she said.
“For public schools across the country, it is the first, albeit small, step towards the delivery of Labor’s 2022 election commitment – to get every public school on the pathway to 100% of the SRS.
“But it cannot be the only step.”
The Australian Education Union has been calling for an extra $6.5bn a year in public school funding to address growing disparities in the sector.
Since 2017, high school retention rates have dropped from 83% to 76% in public schools, while remaining relatively steady at non-government schools.
For students from poorer backgrounds, just 74% complete high school.
Haythorpe said the Northern Territory had the highest levels of student need. Almost half of its students are First Nations students, a quarter have a disability and one in five public school students are underfunded.
“It’s one in 10 public school students across the nation,” she said. “That is a national shame.”
Greens spokesperson on schools, senator Penny Allman-Payne, said apublic schools across the country are struggling to attract and retain teachers and meet the needs of their students.
“Labor says it wants to put all public schools on a pathway to full funding. But under the current national school reform agreement, public schools will never receive 100% of their SRS.”
The agreement was postponed until next year under Labor.
The budget also outlined $254m to be injected to improve Indigenous education outcomes, including $38.4m for children in remote areas, $11m for national Indigenous languages and $21.6m for a boarding grants program.
A further $9.3m on top of the previously announced $328m for the National Teacher Workforce Action Plan will also be allocated to address workforce shortages.
Independent Schools Australia chief executive, Graham Catt, said the budget provided funding certainty but questioned a plan to save $1.9m over four years by improving funding integrity in non-government schools, citing a lack of detail over how it would be achieved.
In budget papers, the government said it would strengthen safeguards for non-government schools to encourage “compliance oversight” and ensure funding was used for the “purpose intended”.
