A decade of inequity
How Australian governments have funded private schools above public schools since 2013
SEPTEMBER 2024
The Australian Education Union recognises the Traditional Custodians of the lands, sky and waters on which we live and work and pay our respects to Elders past and present. Always was, always will be.
Public schools in Australia educate proportionally 2.4 times the number of students from low socio-educational advantage backgrounds compared to private schools, 2.7 times the number of First Nations students and a higher number of students from a language background other than English than private schools.
Despite the clear and increasing need of public school students in Australia, under current arrangements private schools across the country will continue to be overfunded by the Commonwealth and state governments by a total of $2.1 billion between 2024 and 2028 while public schools will be underfunded by $31.7 billion over the same five-year time frame.
This situation has arisen through a series of special deals and accommodations made in the 2017 and 2020 amendments to the Act including the introduction of a $1.6 billion dollar “Choice and Affordability Fund” for private schools and $3.4 billion in transitional funding over and above the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) to cushion the requirement for private schools to reduce their reliance on government funding down to 100% of SRS by 2029. Simultaneously, the 2017 changes to the Act capped the Commonwealth contribution to public schools at 20% of SRS and bilateral funding agreements signed by all states and the Northern Territory entrenched underfunding by limiting their contributions to a maximum of 75% of the SRS over extended timelines.
It has been well over a decade since the Review of Funding for Schooling considered the state of school funding in Australia and found that “the cost of this inequity is high; both for individuals who are failing to reach their potential and for the nation as a whole”1 The review called for all levels of government to accept responsibility for “the magnitude of the investment required to improve Australia’s schooling performance and make substantial progress in reducing inequity of educational outcomes” 2 and warned that “a serious commitment to reducing inequity in Australia’s schooling will require significant additional and ongoing resources to make a substantial impact”. 3
This year, over 150,000 Year 12 students in public schools who started school just a few months after the Review of Funding for Schooling was presented to the Commonwealth will complete their schooling without their schools ever being funded to the SRS – the minimum funding level required to attain minimum acceptable achievement levels.
This report details how delay and partial implementation of the Gonski funding reforms under the Gillard government, followed by nine years of deliberate undermining by the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments, have broken the promise made by the Gonski Review to Australia’s public school students.
It has long been documented that the allocation of government funding to Catholic and independent school systems does not translate to those schools with the highest levels of need receiving the most funding.
The report lays bare the impact of more than a decade of special deals for the private school sector and a fundamental lack of transparency in the way that Australian schools are funded. This has been noted by the Australian National Audit Office, the National School Resourcing Board and by former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (in his recounting of discussions with the Archbishop of Sydney), 4 and has distorted the school funding apparatus to such an extent that a majority of the private schools in Australia receive more government funding per student than public schools from the same jurisdiction, of very similar size and geographical location, with student populations from very similar socioeducational backgrounds.
This report compares the combined Commonwealth and state/territory recurrent funding for comparable public and private schools. There are five conditions that must be met for schools to be considered comparable; we have selected these five conditions in a deliberately narrow approach to ensure that only the funding of schools of the same type, with very similar student parental and household characteristics, of similar size and location, are compared.
Schools are considered comparable if they are:
1. Within the same 50-point ICSEA range (socioeducational advantage, remoteness, percentage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students). An ICSEA of 1,000 is the median
2. In the same school size loading group (very small, small, medium or no loading as defined by the Australian Education Act)
3. The same type of school (primary, secondary, combined)
4. Not designated by ACARA as a Special School
5. Are in the same state or territory.
This approach ensures that the maximum number of components of student and school SRS loadings are included in the creation of comparable school groupings, including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Student loading, Socio-Educational Disadvantage loading, School Size loading and the School Location loading.
In short, this analysis uses the most robust and narrow methods of categorisation possible from the available data to determine whether individual schools can be accurately and fairly compared.
According to the Commonwealth Department of Education 1,150 private schools in Australia (40%)5 are funded above and beyond their level of need, and a clear majority now receive greater funding from the Commonwealth and state government combined than public schools of similar size and similar location and with comparable student populations. This funding imbalance has increased substantially over the last decade – in 2013, there were a total of 1,146 (45%) private schools that received more combined Commonwealth and state government funding than public schools of similar size, location and student needs.
A decade later, in 2022, this had increased to 1,550 (56%) private schools that received greater government funding than comparable public schools.
Rather than ridding Australian school systems of inequity, over the last decade successive governments have only succeeded in increasing and entrenching it through the chronic underfunding of public schools and the blatant overfunding of private schools through billions of dollars of special deals and accommodations.
The gap in total government funding received between private schools and public schools is as high as $7,282 per student.
On average, every private school student in Australia will receive $462 above their full SRS in combined state and Commonwealth funding in 2024, while every public school student will be underfunded by $2,509 and one in 10 public school students in Australia is effectively unfunded.
It is this overfunding that allows private schools to hire proportionally double the number of support staff and three and a half times the number of building-operations and maintenance staff as public schools.6
Private schools are overfunded by governments by $2.1 billion over five years, while public schools will be underfunded by $31.7 billion over the same fiveyear time frame (2024–2028).
The Albanese government now has a rare opportunity to set right a decade of wrongs. New bilateral agreements that will determine school funding for the next decade are being negotiated between the Commonwealth and state and territory governments right now, and unless all governments across the country cooperate to lift public school funding to a true 100% of the SRS, we will see yet another generation of students complete the entirety of their schooling without the resources they were promised in the year they first stepped into a classroom.
In order to finally make the promise of a “better and fairer education system” a reality, the AEU makes the following three recommendations to the Commonwealth, and to all state and territory governments:
1. Act on the Commonwealth’s commitment to get every school to 100% of SRS by replacing the 20% cap on Commonwealth SRS contributions to public schools with a 25% floor and ensuring that state and territory governments meet their funding commitments.
2. Remove the 4% “additional allowance” for capital depreciation, school transport and curriculum and registration bodies and other non-school-based costs from the calculation of the SRS contributions of all states and territories so that all jurisdictions fund public schools to their true commitment level of a minimum of 75% of the SRS.
3. Ensure that all school systems have the resources to make the required adjustments for students with disability and that school staff have the resources and time to assess them so that all students are able to access the level of support appropriate to their needs.
This report will detail how, more than a decade on from the Review of Funding for Schooling and the Australian Education Act 2013, inequity in funding arrangements between school sectors has entrenched gross underfunding of public schools. It will show how more than 2,000 private schools across Australia receive greater government funding than comparable public schools and will provide the strongest evidence yet of the entrenched inequity resulting from a decade of divergence from the promise of “needs-based and sector-blind” funding.
The report is split into two sections.
Section A presents evidence that public schools educate students with higher levels of need across all states and territories, and how despite the clear recommendations of the Review of School Funding and the intent of the Australian Education Act 2013 to improve equity in Australian schools, these proposals to improve equity have been diluted and corrupted over the last decade in the name of political expediency and sectoral interests to the detriment of the 2.6 million public school students in Australia.
Section A will also show how a decade of special deals and transitional funding arrangements for private schools, in combination with the entrenched underfunding of 98% of public schools, has resulted in more than 56% of private schools receiving more government funding than public schools of similar size that educate very similar cohorts of students.
Finally, it will recount evidence of how school funding inequity has become so entrenched that public schools will be underfunded by more than $30 billion over the next five years while private schools will be overfunded by governments to the tune of more than $2 billion.
Section B will show how school funding arrangements in Australia have strayed so far from the intention of the 2011 Review of Funding for Schooling that the majority of private schools are now in receipt of greater government funding than comparable and very similar public schools.
The impact of this decade of targeted neglect of public schools by Commonwealth and state and territory governments will be demonstrated by examining the number of private schools that receive more government funding than comparable public schools at the national aggregate and jurisdictional levels. Further, the report will provide examples of how this inequity manifests at the local level through case studies of the funding discrepancy in individual schools in very close geographical proximity.
The evidence and data presented in this report will show how over a decade the promise of a “needs-based, sector-blind” approach to school funding has been twisted by government policy, legislative changes and bilateral agreements into what could today be described as a distorted “sector-based, needs-blind” approach that neglects public school students in favour of continuing largesse to private schools.
56% of private schools receive more government funding than public schools of similar size that educate very similar cohorts of students. This has increased from 45% in 2013.
Public schools educate more than 80% of children from families of low socio-educational advantage, more than 80% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, more than two-thirds (67%) of children with disability and 68% of students who come from language backgrounds other than English. Many of these children experience compound disadvantage as they present across two or more of the categories of disadvantage outlined above.
Although each of these priority equity cohorts of students receives some additional funding though additional loadings, the failure to fund 100% of the base SRS means that the current loading amounts are far from adequate. This is because all loading amounts are based on the funded SRS per student, rather than the full SRS. For example, if a jurisdiction funds its public schools to 90% of the SRS all student-based loadings will also only be funded to 90%. This means that students in receipt of loadings on top of their SRS base amounts (those who are most in need of support) are doubly short changed.7
The result of this funding inequity is increasingly stratified achievement. From 2008 to 2022 the gap between high and low socio-economic-status (SES) Year 3 students has widened substantially, from 1.4 years to 2.3 years at Year 3 and from 4.4 years to 5.1 years in Year 9. 8 Similarly, rates of Year 12 completion for public schools students have declined significantly throughout the years that the current funding arrangements have been in place – from a peak of 83.1% in 2018 to only 73.6% in 2023. 9
If governments are serious about turning around the decade-long decline in achievement for children from disadvantaged backgrounds and priority-equity cohorts, then a substantial and sustained increase in investment for public schools is required.
Eighty-two per cent of economically disadvantaged students, 83% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and 67% of students with disability attend public schools 31 and the failure of successive governments to address increasing economic segregation and widening achievement gaps for low SES students is one of Australia’s greatest public policy failures of the last decade.
These are the majority of students identified as “priority cohorts” in the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration and the National School Reform Agreement.
The Commonwealth cannot continue to claim that students from low SES backgrounds, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, and students with disability are its “priority cohorts” while simultaneously denying their schools the minimum funding they need to succeed.
The Expert Panel of the Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System noted that between 2018 and 2022, over 38% of schools with high concentrations of disadvantage experienced an increase in the concentration of disadvantage, meaning segregation in these schools had become more severe over time and that Australia now has one of the highest levels of school social segregation in the OECD. Public schools in Australia now have levels of concentrated disadvantage 7.6 times higher than independent schools and 5.2 times higher than Catholic schools. This means that disadvantaged students are overwhelmingly attending public schools with similarly disadvantaged students.10
According to the OECD “this social segregation that clusters students from low socio-economic backgrounds in schools where the majority of students are from a low socio-economic background dampens student expectations for the future, weakens levels of student confidence, reduces community engagement of school leavers, and undermines social cohesion”. 11
Proportion of schools with concentrations of advantage and disadvantage by sector (2018–2022)
Public schools educate students with the highest levels of need
Figure 3 provides more detail on the segregation of schooling in Australia. The closer each percentile bar is to 1%, the more evenly distributed schools are across ICSEA percentiles. As shown above, public schools are significantly overrepresented in up to the 50th ICSEA percentile (the bottom half of socio-educational advantage), Catholic schools are overrepresented from around the 50 th percentile through to the 85 th percentile and independent schools are substantially overrepresented from the 75 th percentile, with a very significant spike from the 95 th percentile.
The publication of the Review of Funding for Schooling in 2012 and the passing of the Australian Education Act 2013 (the Act) was envisioned as the beginning of a new era of sector-blind and needs-based funding for schools in Australia. These milestones were designed to put an end to decades of opaque ad hoc funding arrangements between governments, school systems and sector bodies. Adam Rorris, an education economist who contributed to the creation of the SRS, describes the state of school funding in Australia prior to 2012:
“Programs were too often poorly coordinated or conflicting with stated objectives. The resounding truth that brought shame to the whole funding system was that nearly 80% of students that were deemed to be at risk were found in the public school systems. On a needs basis, the public schools were also the most under-funded across the country. Existing funding arrangements had seen public schools stuck on inadequate levels of resourcing, with no plan to retrieve the situation. The Australian situation in school funding compared badly with the best performers in the OECD PISA tests in 2012. By the time Australian governments began to get serious about addressing the problems with under-resourced schools in Australia, it was already clear that the gap in resources between the wealthy and the poorer schools was considerably in excess of what the best performing countries were practicing.” 12
To address the chaotic funding system described above, the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) was designed and recommended by the Review and introduced in the Act as a “needs-based, sector-blind” method of determining the amount of funding each school student required, based on the allocation of a base level of annual funding supplemented by four student characteristic loadings and two school characteristic loadings. The Review Panel devised and recommended that the SRS:
form the basis for general recurrent funding for all students in all schooling sectors consist of separate per student amounts for primary school students and secondary school students provide loadings for the additional costs of meeting certain educational needs. These loadings would take into account socio-economic background, disability, English language profciency, the particular needs of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students, school size and school location
be based on actual resources used by schools already achieving high educational outcomes for their students over a sustained period of time
recognise that schools with similar student populations require the same level of resources regardless of whether they are located in the government, Catholic or independent school sectors
be periodically reviewed every four years so that it continues to reflect community aspirations and, in between reviews, be indexed using a simple measure that is based on the actual increase in costs in schools already achieving the relevant high educational outcomes over a sustained period of time.13
In order for the SRS to fairly and equitably allocate resources across school systems and sectors it was necessary for it to be fully funded. The SRS was never intended to be an aspiration to be met at the end of an undefined pathway. It was calculated and intended as the bare minimum level of recurrent funding required to enable 80% of students reach the minimum acceptable proficiency levels in literacy and numeracy. When the
Australian Education Act 2013 was legislated it was intended that all public schools would reach 95% of the SRS by 2019.
In the decade since the Act established the SRS as the formula for funding schools, it has been politically recast as a future goal to incrementally strive towards, and undermined through special deals made to boost recurrent funding to private schools and through accounting tricks inserted into funding agreements between states, territories and the Commonwealth.
The most egregious undermining of the SRS took place under the 2013-2022 federal Coalition government, which oversaw a significant and deliberate shift in the way that schools in Australia are funded and in the way that decisions about school funding are made and implemented.
True “needs-based
funding” is more elusive than ever
As shown in Figure 4 below, per-student combined Commonwealth and state funding to private schools has grown significantly faster than for public schools in the decade since 2013.
Private schools have received 1.85 times the growth in government funding that public schools have received over the last decade. This growth in private school funding has largely been driven by the Commonwealth, which has increased its funding by 44.3% in real terms on a perstudent basis over the decade from 2012-13 to 2021-22.15
Public schools educate students with the highest levels of need
In the 2014-15 Federal Budget the newly elected Coalition government sought to undermine existing funding arrangements and to abandon the funding equity embedded in the SRS funding model by cutting the indexation of school funding from 4.7% to the CPI inflation rate. This change meant that schools funded below the SRS were deprived of the mechanism designed to ensure that they could catch up and reach the full SRS and, further, resulted in a projected cut of $30 billion of previously promised funding to public schools over the decade to 2024-25. 16
By 2017 the Coalition had revised its planned cuts to $22 billion, confirmed in a leaked government briefing paper which stated that “compared to Labor’s arrangements, this represents a savings of $6.3 billion over four years (2018 to 2021) and $22.3 billion over 10 years (2018 to 2027)”. 17 This planned cut was later reduced as a result of Senate negotiations to $17 billion.
The Commonwealth then unilaterally ended five signed state and territory National Education Reform Agreements on school funding, refusing to budget for and then deliver the final two years of the six-year funding agreement (2018 and 2019). Parliamentary Budget Office costings showed that in 2018 and 2019 the cut to public school funding compared to the agreements was $1.87 billion (85% of the total cuts).
Over 10 years, the total reduction in public school funding denied by not honouring the agreements was valued at over $14 billion. 18
At the same time the Coalition formulated a number of special funds exclusively available to private schools, which resulted in more than $4.6 billion in additional recurrent funding from the Commonwealth to these schools.
Under the guise of a change in the calculation of schools’ socio-economic status as measured by “parental capacity to pay”, and the justification that private schools needed time to transition down to their full funding level under the new arrangements in 2018, Education Minister Birmingham announced “an additional $3.2 billion over 10 years to non-government schools identified as needing the most help from 2020 to 2029”. 19
The Coalition then introduced a “Choice and Affordability Fund”, which allocated a further $1.2 billion “to address specific challenges in the non-government school sector, such as supporting schools in droughtaffected areas, schools that need help to improve performance and to deliver choice in communities”.20 This euphemistically named slush fund, announced as one of the first acts of the Morrison government in September 2018, demonstrated that the former Commonwealth government’s funding priorities were neither needs based nor sector blind – in fact they were needs blind and blatantly favoured the private sector.
While allocating billions of dollars of additional Commonwealth funding to private schools, the Coalition (with the cooperation of all state governments and the Northern Territory) simultaneously sought to undermine the principle of the SRS and ensure that public schools would remain underfunded for the foreseeable future. The five-year National School Reform Agreements (NSRA) and related bilateral agreements with each state and territory signed in late 2018 and early 2019 further entrenched funding inequality. 21 These agreements capped Commonwealth contributions to public schools at 20% of the SRS and allowed all jurisdictions except the ACT to extend timelines to 2027 or 2028 (or 2032 in the case of Queensland) to increase their contribution to 75% of the SRS.
These agreements meant that it was impossible for any public school outside of the ACT to be fully funded.
In addition, during bilateral funding agreement negotiations between the then Commonwealth Treasurer Frydenberg and state and territory treasurers it was agreed that jurisdictions could divert 4% of their SRS contribution away from schools and towards capital depreciation costs, school transport and early childhood education costs. In addition, the agreement allowed governments to include the costs of education regulatory bodies in their recurrent funding of public schools.22 All states and territories except the ACT have taken full advantage of this “additional allowance” at a cost to public schools of over $2 billion per year.
Without urgent action, public schools will continue to be grossly underfunded
The recent report How Schools Funding Fails Public Schools – How to Change For The Better 23 uses the most recent publicly available projections from the Department for Education for SRS and enrolment growth 24 to quantify the impact that failing to meet this minimum standard has on schools and on individual students.
There are two distinct provisions in the current bilateral funding agreements that when combined deprive public schools of $6.5 billion in funding needed to meet the minimum SRS threshold in 2024 alone. If nothing changes, public school students will miss out on at least $6.2 billion each year to 2028 and a total of $31.7 billion in funding over the next five years.
The two components of public school underfunding are described in detail below.
1. The public school funding shortfall from failing to reach 100% of SRS is $4.3 billion in 2024
The frst component of the shortfall results from the impact of the 20% SRS cap on Commonwealth funding to public schools, which, in combination with the individual state and territory funding arrangements set out in the bilateral agreements, means that in no state or territory except the ACT will public schools meet the minimum SRS requirements.
Figure 5 shows Commonwealth and state/territory funding contributions from 2018 to 2023 and shows how, over the past five years, the ACT has been the only jurisdiction in which combined government funding has reached 100% of the minimum SRS. This effectively means that 98% of public schools in the country are not funded to the minimum required standard that governments determined was necessary in 2013, and that there are no guaranteed plans to ensure they reach this standard in the future.
Figure 5. Share of funding for government schools from the Australian and state and territory governments up to the Schooling Resource Standard (2018–2023)25
Section A
Public schools educate students with the highest levels of need
Table 1 shows how under current settings this underfunding will continue through to 2028. If Commonwealth contributions continue to be capped at 20% and state governments continue to only incrementally increase their contribution to 75% by 2027, 2028 or 2032 (in Queensland), there will be a substantial ongoing shortfall below 100% of the SRS in all jurisdictions expect the ACT beyond 2028.
Schools in the Northern Territory have the highest number of students from priority cohorts in the country – 30% of public school students have disability, 49% have a language background other than English and 71% of Northern Territory public schools are in the lowest decile
for socio-educational advantage. Under the 2018 bilateral agreement Northern Territory Government contributions stagnate at 59% of SRS in the current NSRA, and Commonwealth contributions are scheduled to reduce from 21.2% in 2024 to 20% by 2027.
This means that under current settings one in five public schools students in the Northern Territory was effectively permanently unfunded to 2024. A new bilateral agreement has now been signed between the Northern Territory and Commonwealth governments that will increase the Commonwealth’s contribution to 40% and the Northern Territory’s contribution to an ostensible 40%.
Western Australia and the Commonwealth have also signed a statement of intent to a joint commitment to increase funding to the full SRS, and unless this underfunding is addressed for all jurisdictions in the bilateral agreements to be negotiated this year then no other state or territory will ever meet the minimum 100% of SRS.
If nothing changes, the 20% Commonwealth cap and state and Northern Territory contributions below 75% of SRS combine to deprive public school students of at least $4.3 billion in 2024, and a total of $20 billion in funding over the next five years.
At the same time, current settings provide an additional $3.4 billion over and above the full SRS to private schools from 2022 including an additional $2.9 billion in Commonwealth funds above 100% of the SRS over the five years from 2023 to 2028. This overfunding of private schools was made possible through the Coalition’s granting of a 10-year timeline for private schools to transition to a more precise measure of parental capacity to pay fees, called the Direct Measure of Income. This special measure for private schools means that over 90%
of private school students in Australia are funded above 100% of SRS, with total overfunding of private schools totalling over $2 billion in the three years from 2023 alone. As noted by the Expert Panel for the Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System:
“The call to action around reaching full funding for government schools – across all jurisdictions – is all the more urgent because of the full funding arrangements that already exist in the nongovernment sector.” 28
The full impact of governments’ refusal to meet the minimum 100% of SRS for public schools while simultaneously overfunding private schools is shown at Figure 6. In 2024, as a result of the 20% Commonwealth SRS cap and the delay from states and the NT in meeting 95% of the SRS as agreed in the 2018 bilateral agreements, public schools will be underfunded by $4.5 billion in total. Without action to remove the 20% Commonwealth SRS cap, they will continue to be underfunded by at least $3.7 billion every year to 2028 under current settings.
2. The 4% “additional allowance” takes $2.1 billion a year out of public school classrooms
In addition to the SRS shortfalls outlined above, the current extended 2018-2024 bilateral agreements include provision for all states and territories except the ACT to include, for public schools only, “additional expenditure items” such as building depreciation, regulatory costs and transport costs within their SRS contributions. These items were never conceived to be part of the SRS, are not included in national SRS calculations and prior to the 2018 agreements had never previously been included in SRS calculations for states or territories.
The inclusion of these “additional expenditure items” in state and territory SRS contributions was designed by the previous Coalition government to expedite the signing of the agreements. Rorris states that “in order to cajole and incentivise the states and territories into signing up to the agreements, the LNP federal government provided an additional loophole in the bilateral agreements. It enabled states/ territories to avoid fulflling their full funding obligations”.30
The impact of this allowance reduces actual spending in public schools by four percentage points and further reduces the actual effective SRS contribution made by each state or territory. It also undermines the entire concept of the SRS as a benchmark for equitable funding in schools and amounts to a separate capital depreciation tax levied only on public schools. As Rorris notes:
The effect of the ‘capital depreciation charge’ is to apply a segregated rort against public schools. It harms public schools primarily in that it allows state/territory governments to effectively reduce their cash allocations
for public schools, by inserting into their ‘contributions’ towards the SRS the entirely notional figure for capital depreciation. This is an accrual based allocation that does not touch the side of any real classroom or school. It is in effect a capital depreciation tax.
The injustice of the ‘capital depreciation tax’ is magnified because it is only and arbitrarily applied to public schools. No such ‘capital depreciation tax’ is applied to the private sector. Nor are the private schools apportioned (based on their enrolment size) a share of the public costs associated with authorities responsible for education standards and curriculum. 11
Data provided to Senate Estimates in 2021 shows that over the course of the current bilateral agreements from 2018 to 2023 the “segregated rort” of the “additional expenditure” clause deprived public school students of an additional $11.3 billion in recurrent funding. For 2023 alone the deficit was $2.1 billion and it continues to grow each year, reaching $2.5 billion in 2028, by which time every public school student in the country will be deprived of almost an additional $1,000 that was intended for their education each year.
The total underfunding from the Commonwealth 20% SRS cap, the slow progress toward states and territories meeting their 75% commitment in the extended 201824 bilateral agreements and the additional expenditure clause is $6.7 billion this year and has totalled $26.9 billion over the last five years. 14
Of the national $6.5 billion public school funding shortfall in 2024, $2.8 billion comes from the Commonwealth failing to meet 25% of SRS not funded by states and territories due to the 20% cap on Commonwealth SRS contributions, $1.6 billion in underfunding is due to the current bilateral funding agreements allowing states to delay their transitions to the agreed 75% of SRS until 2027, 2028 or 2032 (in the case of Queensland), and approximately $2.1 billion of the shortfall is due to states and the NT being allowed to write off 4% of their SRS contribution.
The investment required of the Commonwealth to enable public schools to immediately meet 100% of SRS is $2.8 billion in 2024-25, increasing via indexation and enrolment changes to $3.4 billion in 2029. However, recent media reports state that the Commonwealth has offered states and territories a combined $16 billion in additional funding over the next decade, approximately half of the Commonwealth investment required to finally put an end to the underfunding Australia’s public schools.14
Public schools have already been denied $28.4 billion in funding from 2018 to 2023, and failure to ensure all schools are at 100% of the SRS will deny them a further $20.0 billion in funding from 2024 to 2028.
This equates to every public school student in Australia missing out on $18,915 in funding since 2011 – almost an entire year’s worth of SRS funding for a secondary student. 33
Private schools were overfunded by $806 million in 2023 and will remain overfunded by $2.1 billion over the
In stark contrast to the gross underfunding of Australia’s public schools, under current arrangements private schools will continue to be funded by governments at more than $2 billion above their SRS from 2024 through to 2028.
It is a striking failure of Australian public policy that governments across all jurisdictions (except ACT) have acted in concert through their bilateral funding agreements to deliver divergent outcomes in school funding for the public and private school sectors. 34
Public schools educate students with the highest levels of need
Figure 9. Private schools funding above full SRS 2023–202835
Figure 10. % above or below full SRS by school sector36
Figure 11. Annual funding above/below full SRS 2018–28, public and private schools
The consequence of this persistent annual underfunding will be a cumulative gap in SRS funding over the fiveyear period 2024-28 that will see public schools denied over $30 billion in needed funding. Private schools will be overfunded during the same 2023-28 by over $2 billion.
The end result is that more than a decade on from the promising reforms recommended by the 2012 Review, Australia still has one of the most inequitable and segregated education systems in the world.
As noted by the Independent Expert Panel of the Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System:
“Australian schools have some of the highest levels of social segregation, and this trend has worsened over time. 17 This has a direct impact on outcomes: students from educationally and socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to be behind in learning when enrolled in schools with high concentrations of disadvantaged students than when enrolled in schools with a more diverse student profile. 18 . . . Concentrating students experiencing disadvantage in particular schools also places greater pressure on the educators in these schools. In effect, the current system entrenches educational disadvantage and makes it less likely that other reforms will realise Australia’s longstanding ambition of equity and excellence.” 19
The socio-economic divide in achievement for Australian students is now wider than at any time over the last two decades. The most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022 results starkly demonstrate the growing gap between socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged students in Australia. Although Australian students overall showed greater resilience than the unprecedented decline in results across the OECD, the results show that Australia continues to have one of the most inequitable education systems in the world and confirmed that the substantial gaps between economically advantaged and disadvantaged students has continued to grow since 2018.
PISA 2022 shows that students from low socio-economicstatus (SES) households are highly segregated from their more advantaged peers and up to five years of learning behind them in achievement across a range of measures and subject domains.
The indisputable link between full funding and equity was also strongly asserted by the Independent Expert Panel of the Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System. Its 2023 report Improving Outcomes for All was unequivocal on the need for Australia’s public schools to be fully funded “as soon as possible”. 2 The report states:
“A precondition of ensuring equity in the Australian school system is full funding for all schools. Full funding will ensure schools can offer well resourced and well staffed learning environments, as envisaged in the original Gonski report. Funding schools in accordance with the proportional amounts estimated under the original SRS would inject more funds into government schools, particularly the government schools which have higher proportions of students from priority equity cohorts, and address inequities across jurisdictions.” 3
The investment required of the Commonwealth to enable public schools to immediately meet 100% of SRS is $2.8 billion in 2024–25, increasing via indexation and enrolment changes to $3.4 billion in 2029.
The remainder of this report will examine the extent to which private schools in Australia receive funds from the Commonwealth and state/territory governments in excess of those received by ‘comparable’ public schools, and will compare the number of private schools whose government funding exceeded comparable schools in 2013 and in 2022, a decade later.
It will provide analysis at national, state and territory levels and highlight case studies of funding inequity for neighbouring schools.
Comparable schools are determined through the use of the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage and four school size groupings as determined by the Australian Education Act 2013.
Except where noted all data in Section B of this report is drawn from the following Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) datasets:
1. 2008-2022 School Finance
2. 2022 School Profile
3. 2022 School Location
From these datasets, schools were grouped into “comparable schools”. Comparable schools were determined to be those of the same school type (primary, secondary or combined), those that have an ICSEA value within a defined 50-point range and those within the same school size loading group as defined by the Act.37
The formula used by ACARA to calculate ICSEA is shown in Box 1.
ACARA calculates ICSEA scores to have a median of 1,000 and a standard deviation of 100, and states that “ICSEA values typically range from approximately 500 (representing schools with extremely disadvantaged student backgrounds) to about 1,300 (representing schools with extremely advantaged student backgrounds)”. ACARA usually reports ICSEA in quartiles.
To ensure that the schools compared in this report are very similar in nature, we have reduced the ICSEA range of comparable schools to 50-point intervals, creating 14 ICSEA categories in total ranging from <600 through to >1,200.
Box 1. Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA)38
What is the ICSEA formula?
ICSEA values were frst published on the My School website at the end of January 2010. For the second iteration of the website the ICSEA formula was revised and student-level data, in addition to community-level data, were used to create a stronger measure of educational advantage.
At the request of education ministers, ACARA investigated the possibility of using student-level data, obtained directly from students’ families, to calculate ICSEA, rather than indirect (ABS) census data.
The modelling undertaken indicated that by using direct student-level parent occupation and parent education data, it is possible to obtain a stronger measure of student socio-educational advantage (SEA). In broad terms, that model is based on the following formula:
ICSEA = SEA + Remoteness + Percent Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander student enrolment
What information is used to develop the formula?
The construction of the SEA component of ICSEA for My School uses information relating to parental occupation, school education and non-school education obtained from student enrolment records. These data are referred to as ‘parent data’ on My School
When enrolling a child in school all parents are asked which of the following options best describes their occupation, the school education and non-school education levels they achieved.
In addition to occupying the same 50-point ICSEA group, schools are only considered comparable in this analysis if they are of the same type (primary, secondary or combined) and occupy the same school size loading group (very small, small, medium or no school size loading) as defined in the Act. 39
This means that for the purpose of this analysis, a school is only comparable with another school if it meets all of the following five conditions described in Box 2.
Schools are considered comparable if they are:
1. Within the same 50-point ICSEA range (socioeducational advantage, remoteness, percentage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students). An ICSEA of 1,000 is the median
2. In the same school size loading group (very small, small, medium or no loading as defined by the Australian Education Act)
3. The same type of school (primary, secondary, combined)
4. Not designated by ACARA as a Special School
5. Are in the same state or territory.
The Low English Language Proficiency Loading is not included in this analysis, however, as it applies only to students from a language background other than English where at least one parent has completed school education only to Year 9 (or equivalent) or below. It is partially captured through the parental education component of the ICSEA score.40
In short, this analysis uses the most robust methods of categorisation possible from the available data to determine whether individual schools can be accurately and fairly compared.
This section of the report also details the percentage of students enrolled in both public and private schools for four key characteristics at the national, state and territory levels:
1. The percentage of students in the top socioeducational advantage quarter by school sector.
2. The percentage of students in the bottom socioeducational advantage quarter by school sector.
3. The percentage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students by schools sector.
4. The percentage of students from a language background other than English by school sector.
These comparisons are presented to demonstrate the level of student need present in each sector and are presented alongside funding data to show how funding levels have become disconnected from the level of need in almost every school in Australia.
Data showing the number and percentage of private schools that receive a higher level of government funding than comparable public schools (as defined by the methodology detailed above) are then presented, also at national, state and territory levels. The totals and percentages of private schools funded above comparable public schools is shown for 2013, the year that the postGonski Review Australian Education Act was legislated, and for 2022, a decade later.
This data is accompanied by detailed case studies that examine the individual student cohorts and government funding arrangements of comparable public and private schools within the same local area.
Public schools in Australia educate proportionally 2.4 times the number of students from low socio-educational advantage backgrounds compared to private schools, 2.7 times the number of First Nations students and a higher number of students from a language background other than English than private schools.
Thousands of private schools receive more government funding than comparable public schools
Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Students
Language background other than English
Despite the clear and increasing need of public school students in Australia, private schools across the country will continue to be overfunded by the Commonwealth and state governments by a total of $2.1 billion between 2024 and 2028 under current arrangements, while public schools will be underfunded by $31.7 billion over the same five-year time frame.
Of the total $22,269 recurrent funding per student spent by private schools in 2022, $13,392 is funded by governments. As shown in Figure 13, in 2022 private schools received 79.8% of the Commonwealth, state and territory government funding that public schools received from the same sources.
In 2013, 45% of private schools in Australia received more government funding than comparable public schools. Over the last decade, there has been no improvement or rebalancing of this funding inequity, and in 2022, 56.3% of private schools in Australia got more government funding than comparable public schools of similar size and with similar student populations.
On average, every private school student in Australia will receive $462 above their full SRS in combined state and Commonwealth funding in 2024, while every public school student will be underfunded by $2,509.
Most of the increase in private schools in receipt of greater government funding than comparable public schools has occurred in the upper quartile of the ICSEA range. In 2013 there were 367 private schools funded
higher than comparable public schools with an ICSEA of at least 1,050, and by 2022 this had increased by 65.6% to 608 schools.
In the 1,100+ ICSEA range, which includes schools in the top 15% of socio-educational status, the number of private schools receiving greater government funding than comparable public schools has increased by 72% from 107 to 184 over the last decade.
Across Australia, the ICSEA group with the biggest increase in the number of private schools receiving more government funding per student than comparable public schools over the past decade is the 1,050-1,099 group, with an increase of 164 schools (63.1%) funded higher by governments than comparable public schools. Within this ICSEA group the average combined government funding amount per student in private secondary schools has increased by 56.7% from $10,217 to $14,597 per student over the decade 2013-2022.
For public secondary schools in the same ICSEA group the average combined government funding has increased from $11,987 in 2013 to $16,699 in 2022, an increase of 39.3% in combined government funding.
In addition to receiving increased combined government funding over the last decade, private secondary schools in the 1,000-1,049 ICSEA group now receive $556 more government income on average per student than public schools in the same ICSEA group.
The private secondary school in receipt of the highest combined government funding in this ICSEA group (excluding schools in receipt of size loadings) is Nagle College in Victoria, which received $20,305 per student in 2022. That school received more funding from governments than 139 comparable public secondary schools that, on average, received $15,995 from
governments in 2022 – a funding gap of $4,310 before Nagle College’s fees were included.
In addition to their government income, private secondary schools in this ICSEA group received an average of $4,685 in fees per student in 2022.
Thousands of private schools receive more government funding than comparable public schools
Public schools in New South Wales educate proportionally 2.6 times the number of students from low socio-educational advantage backgrounds compared to private schools, 2.9 times the number of First Nations students and a higher number of students from a language background other than English than private schools.
Figure 15. NSW – student demographics by school sector
Language background other than English
Despite the clear and increasing need of public school students in NSW, private schools in the state will continue to be overfunded by the Commonwealth and state governments by a total of $1 billion from 2024 to 2028 under current arrangements, while public schools will remain underfunded by $8.7 billion over the same fve-year period.
Of the total $22,631 recurrent funding per student spent in private schools in 2022, $13,169 was funded by governments.
On a per-student basis every private school student in NSW will receive $704 above their full SRS in combined state and Commonwealth funding in 2024, while every public school student will be underfunded by $2,345.
Hundreds of private schools in NSW are funded above their level of need, and more than 500 receive greater funding from the Commonwealth and state government combined than public schools of similar sizes and with comparable student populations. In 2013, there were a total of 394 private schools that received more combined Commonwealth and state government funding than comparable public schools. A decade later, in 2022, this had increased to 536 private schools that received greater government funding than public schools within the same 50-point ICSEA range and the same school size loading category.
The majority of the increase in the number of private schools in receipt of greater government funding than comparable public schools has been in the upper quartile of ICSEA ranges. In 2013 there were 139 private schools funded higher than comparable public schools with an ICSEA of 1,050 or above, and by 2022 this had increased to 217 schools.
In the 1,100+ ICSEA range, which includes schools in the top 15% of socio-educational status, the number of private schools receiving greater government funding than comparable public schools has increased by 85% from 44 to 82 over the last decade.
The largest gap is $6,219 per student between two comparable private and public schools within the same 50-point ICSEA range and same school size group.
Overall, the percentage of private schools in NSW that receive grater government funding than comparable public schools has increased from 46.7% in 2013 to 59.6% in 2022.
In NSW, the ICSEA group with the biggest increase in the number of private schools receiving more government funding per student than comparable public schools over the past decade is the 1,050-1,099 group. Within this ICSEA group, the average combined government funding
amount per student in all private secondary schools has increased by 45.1% from $10,556 to $15,321 per student over the decade from 2013-2022.
For public secondary schools in the same ICSEA group the average combined government funding has increased from $11,771 in 2013 to $16,563 in 2022, an increase of 40.7% in combined government funding over the decade.
As a result of greater increases in combined government funding over the last decade, private secondary schools in NSW in the 1,050-1,099 ICSEA group now receive 92.5% of the government income that public secondary schools in the same ICSEA group do on a per-student basis.
The private secondary school in receipt of the highest combined government funding in this ICSEA group excluding schools in receipt of size loadings is Xavier Catholic College Ballina, which received $18,712 per student in 2022. That school received more funding from governments than 35 comparable public secondary schools that, on average, received $16,141 from governments in 2022 – a funding gap of $2,570 before the Catholic school’s fees were included.
In addition to their government income, private secondary schools in NSW in the 1,050-1,099 ICSEA group averaged $4,849 in fees per student.
Thousands of private schools receive more government funding than comparable public schools
The case studies below demonstrate the extent to which overfunding of private schools in comparison to comparable public schools is entrenched across the system in New South Wales. Individual public schools are shown alongside comparable private schools that receive greater government funding within the same local area.
Located in Education Minister Jason Clare’s south-west
Sydney seat of Blaxland, Sefton High School is a public secondary school which opened in 1961. The school has a highly diverse student population reflected in the fact 94% of students had a language background other than English in 2022. While the school’s ICSEA score of 1,022 in that year was just above the national average of 1,000, 31% of students were categorised as being in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage (SEA).
Just 500 metres away, the Islamic school Salamah College educates children from Kindergarten to Year 12. The school in 2022 was slightly larger than Sefton High, with an ICSEA score just below the national average. The proportion of students with a language background other than English was almost identical (95%). In 2022, Salamah College received $750 more per student than Sefton High; once fees and other income were factored in, the difference was almost $3,000 a student. While Sefton High had fewer students per teacher, Salamah had far higher numbers of non-teaching staff (35.5 full-time equivalent, compared to 13.6).
Three kilometres from Sefton High, Trinity Catholic College in 2022 had a similar proportion of students from the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage but a smaller proportion from a language background other than English (87%). The private school in 2022 also received more government funding than Sefton High and, once fees and other income were factored in, had a total income almost $4,000 a student higher. The number of students per teacher at the school was far lower (12.6 compared to 14.5) and the school had twice the number of FTE non-teaching staff. Trinity also received almost twice the capital funding from governments between 2020 and 2022 and spent $35.3 million on new facilities compared to the $2.6 million spent on Sefton High.
Two other Catholic schools in the Blaxland electorate, La Salle Catholic College and Mount St Joseph Catholic College at Milperra, also received more government funding than Sefton High in 2022. Mount St Joseph in 2022 educated a far smaller proportion of disadvantaged students with just 13% drawn from the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage and 72% had a language background other than English.
Rooty Hill High School is a comprehensive secondary school located in the heart of western Sydney. The school has been recognised for its innovative educational approach and received the 2023 Public Education Foundation Award for an outstanding school. Student needs at the school are high and in 2022 half its students were estimated to be in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage. Over half had a language background other than English.
Four minutes’ drive away in Rooty Hill, St Agnes Catholic High School has fewer students but a significantly higher ICSEA score. In 2022, 37% of its students were in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage. Despite the difference in student need, in 2022 St Agnes received $1,260 per student more in government funding per student. That increased to a difference of over $4,400
once fees and other income were factored in. In 2022 St Agnes had 12.5 students per FTE teacher, compared to 14.3 in Rooty Hill High. It also had significantly more FTE non-teaching staff (21.4 compared to 15) despite educating fewer students.
The disparity between Rooty Hill and another nearby Catholic school of almost exactly the same size, St Andrews College, is even more stark. That school has an ICSEA of almost 100 points higher and in 2022 had 16% of its students in the lowest quarter of socioeducational advantage. The private school also had a higher level of government funding, with the income gap $4,500 a student once fees and other income were factored in. The school also had a much lower number of students per FTE teacher at 12.5. Between 2020 and 2022, the school diverted over $500,000 to capital works.
In the Hunter Valley town of Maitland, Rutherford Technology High School is a large comprehensive high school. Student needs are extremely high with 11 support classes for students with disability. A total of 62% of students in 2022 were from the lowest quarter of socioeducational advantage while just 2% were from the top quarter. One in five students was Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander.
Five kilometres across the regional city, All Saints College in 2022 educated fewer students with far lower needs. Just 17% of students were from the lowest quarter of social-educational advantage in 2022 and 19% were from the top quarter. A total of 7% of students were Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. Despite this, All Saints attracted $1,350 more per student in government funding in 2022 and had a 30% higher total income. The private school had 11.8 students per FTE teacher compared to 13.1 at Rutherford and 42 FTE non-teaching staff compared to 26.8.
Thousands of private schools receive more government funding than comparable public schools
Public schools in Victoria educate proportionally 2.2 times the number of students from low socio-educational advantage backgrounds compared to private schools, 3.3 times the number of First Nations students and a higher number of students from a language background other than English than private schools.
Figure 18. VIC student demographics by school sector 2022
Language background other than English
Despite the clear and increasing need of public school students in Victoria, private schools will continue to be overfunded by the Commonwealth and state governments by a total of $365 million from 2024 to 2028 under current arrangements, while public schools will remain underfunded by $7.9 billion over the same five-year period.
Of the total $23,044 recurrent funding per student spend in private schools in 2022, $13,012 is funded by governments.
On a per-student basis every private school student in Victoria will receive $298 above their full SRS in combined state and Commonwealth funding in 2024, while every public school student will be underfunded by $2,611.
Hundreds of private schools in Victoria are funded above their level of need, and more than 500 receive more funding from the Commonwealth and state government combined than public schools of similar sizes and with comparable student populations.
The majority of the increase in private schools in receipt of greater government funding than comparable public schools has been in the upper quartile of ICSEA ranges. In 2013 there were 200 private schools funded higher than comparable public schools in the 1,050+ ICSEA range, and by 2022 this had increased to 263 schools.
In the 1,100+ ICSEA range, which includes schools in the top 15% of socio-educational status, the number of private schools receiving greater government funding than comparable public schools has increased from 59 to 83 over the last decade.
The largest gap is $7,282 per student between two comparable private and public schools within the same 50-point ICSEA range and same school size group.
In 2013, there were a total of 504 private schools that received more combined Commonwealth and state government funding than comparable public schools. A decade later, in 2022, this had increased to 521 private schools that received greater government funding public schools within the same 50-point ICSEA range and the same school size loading category. In 2022, 76% of private schools in Victoria receive more funding from government than comparable public schools.
In Victoria, the ICSEA group with the biggest increase in the number of private schools receiving more government funding per student than comparable public schools over the past decade is the 1,050-1,099 group. Within this ICSEA group, the average combined government funding amount per student in all private secondary schools has increased by 45.2% from $9,731 to $14,127 per student over the decade from 2013-2022.
For public secondary schools in the same ICSEA group the average combined government funding has increased from $9,903 in 2013 to $14,991 in 2022, an increase of 51.4% in combined government funding over the decade.
As a result of greater increases in combined government funding over the last decade, private secondary schools in Victoria in the 1,050-1,099 ICSEA group now receive 94.2% of the government income that public secondary schools in the same ICSEA group do on a per-student basis.
The private secondary school in receipt of the highest
combined government funding in this ICSEA group (excluding schools in receipt of size loadings) is Catholic College Wodonga, which received $16,673 per student in 2022. That school received more funding from governments than 20 comparable public secondary schools that, on average, received $14,667 from governments in 2022 – a funding gap of $2,006 before the Catholic school’s fees were included.
In addition to their government income, private secondary schools in the 1,050-1,099 ICSEA group averaged $7,162 in fees per student.
Thousands of private schools receive more government funding than comparable public schools
The case studies below demonstrate the extent to which overfunding of private schools in comparison to comparable public schools is entrenched across the system in Victoria. Individual public schools are shown alongside comparable private schools that receive greater government funding within the same local area.
In Werribee, a fast-growing suburb in Melbourne’s southwest, there are two secondary schools 1.6 kilometres apart. Werribee Secondary College is the co-educational public school, delivering a high-quality education to over 1,500 students in 2022. Reflecting the multicultural local community, the school has a diverse student population with 71% of students recorded as having a language background other than English in 2022. The school’s ICSEA score was slightly above average in 2022 with an even proportion of students from each quarter of socioeducational advantage.
Four minutes’ drive away, MacKillop Catholic Regional College is also a co-educational secondary college. Its students were less diverse in 2022 with 37% of students having a language background other than English. The school also had a higher ICSEA score with 17% of students estimated to be from the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage.
But despite being bigger and having lower student need, MacKillop received $1,689 more per student in government funding in 2022. Factoring in all income
sources, the Catholic school was operating with almost 50% more income per student than its neighbour. Its student-teacher ratio was also lower (12.4 compared to 12.9) and the number of FTE non-teaching staff was more than double (75.3 compared to 31.5) the number at Werribee Secondary College.
High levels of government funding allowed the outersuburban Catholic school to divert $6.5 million of income into capital works between 2020 and 2022. The school spent $15.8 million on building upgrades over those three years, while Werribee Secondary College spent $1.9 million. Werribee Secondary College had 23 demountable classrooms in 2023.
Two comparable independent schools in the same federal electorate of Lalor, Al-Taqwa College and the Islamic College of Melbourne, also received significantly more government funding than Werribee Secondary College in 2022. Al-Taqwa had a student to FTE teacher ratio of 10.8 in 2022 and more than three times the number of nonteaching staff as Werribee Secondary College.
Craigieburn Secondary College is located in a suburb of the same name on the northern edge of Melbourne. The co-educational school has a high concentration of students from disadvantaged backgrounds with 61% estimated in 2022 to have been in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage. Two-thirds of students had language backgrounds other than English.
A seven-minute drive away, Kolbe Catholic College was similar in size in 2022 but had lower student needs. Just under half its students had a language background other than English and 43% were estimated to be in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage.
Despite these differences, Kolbe received over $2,300 more per student in government funding in 2022. Once all sources of income were factored in, the advantage was over $6,500 per student – a 35% difference.
The high level of government funding allowed the Catholic school to direct almost $2,000 per student of its recurrent income into capital works in 2022 ($2.1 million). From 2020 to 2022 more than half the $5.4 million it spent on school upgrades was recurrent income. Craigieburn Secondary College spent $1.9 million on capital works over the same period.
While teacher numbers were slightly higher at Craigieburn Secondary in 2022, Kolbe had more FTE non-teaching staff (54.7 compared to 46.7).
In 2022, 76% of private schools in Victoria received more funding from government than comparable public schools.
Thousands of private schools receive more government funding than comparable public schools
In the small Gippsland town of Bunyip, two schools sit 850 metres apart. Bunyip Primary School had 187 students in 2022 and higher than average student need, as judged by its ICSEA score of 991. Almost 40% of students were in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage.
A two-minute drive away, the Columba Catholic school had 227 students in 2022 and a slightly above average ICSEA score of 1,010. A total of 28% of its students were assessed as being in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage.
Despite being larger and with fewer students from a disadvantaged background, Columba received over $1,000 more in government funding in 2022. Fees and other income increased the difference to over $2,000 per student. The staffing profiles of the schools were similar in 2022 but Columba was able to divert $185,258 in recurrent income to capital works that year. Its three-year spending on capital works (2020-2022) was $525,121, compared to $138,403 at Bunyip Primary School.
Located in a semi-rural southern suburb of Geelong, Grovedale College is a public secondary school that educated just over 700 students in 2022. The school has a significant number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, with 39% estimated to be in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage in that year. Just 7% were estimated to be in the top quarter.
Less than five kilometres away, a new Catholic secondary school, Iona College , opened in 2020. It has a significantly different student profile, with 7% of students in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage in 2022 while 26% were in the top quarter. The ICSEA score of the school in that year was 87 points higher than the nearby government school.
Despite the difference in student need, Iona College in 2022 received over $2,600 more in government funding per student – a difference that widened to over $8,000 a student once all sources of income were counted.
While it is not possible to compare capital expenditure given the Catholic school opened only two years ago, it is worth noting that the school received over $15 million in Commonwealth capital funding between 2020 and 2022 from a program designed to benefit schools serving disadvantaged communities. Almost $5 million was also provided by the Victorian Government over those three years.
Every private school student in Victoria will receive $298 above their full SRS in 2024, while every public school student will be underfunded by $2,611.
Thousands of private schools receive more government funding than comparable public schools
Public schools in Queensland educate proportionally 2.7 times the number of students from low socio-educational advantage backgrounds compared to private schools, 2.4 times the number of First Nations students and 34% more students from a language background other than English than private schools.
Figure 21. QLD student demographics by school sector 2022
Language background other than English
Despite the clear and increasing need of public school students in Queensland, private schools in the state will continue to be overfunded by the Commonwealth and state governments by a total of $85.7 million until 2028 under current arrangements, while public schools will be underfunded by $8.3 billion over the five-year period.
Of the total $21,397 recurrent funding per student spent in private schools in 2022, $13,830 was funded by governments. On a per-student basis every private school student in Queensland will receive $439 above their full SRS in combined state and Commonwealth funding in 2024, while every public school student will be underfunded by $3,033.
Hundreds of private schools in Queensland are funded above their level of need, and more than 250 receive greater funding from the Commonwealth and state government combined than public schools of similar sizes and with comparable student populations.
In 2013, there were a total of 158 private schools that received more combined Commonwealth and state government funding than comparable public schools. A decade later, in 2022, this had increased to 272 private schools that received greater government funding public schools within the same 50-point ICSEA range and the same school size loading category.
The vast majority of the increase in private schools in receipt of greater government funding than comparable public schools has been in the upper quartile of ICSEA ranges. In 2013 there were 20 private schools funded higher than comparable public schools in the 1,050+ ICSEA range, and by 2022 this had more than quadrupled to 85 schools.
In the 1,100+ ICSEA range, which includes schools in the top 15% of socio-educational status, the number of private schools receiving greater government funding than comparable public schools has increased from one to 12 over the last decade.
The largest gap is $5,081 per student between two comparable private and public schools within the same 50-point ICSEA range and same school size group.
In 2013, 34.8% of private schools in Queensland received more government funding than comparable public schools. A decade later, in 2022, this had increased to 54%.
In Queensland, the ICSEA group with the biggest increase in the number of private schools receiving more government funding per student than comparable public schools over the past decade is the 1,050-1,099 group. Within this ICSEA group, the average combined government funding amount per student in all private
secondary schools increased by 35.4% from $11,447 to $15,502 per student over the decade 2013-2022.
For public secondary schools in the same ICSEA group the average combined government funding has increased from $11,204 in 2013 to $15,350 in 2022, an increase of 37% in combined government funding over the decade.
As a result of greater increases in combined government funding over the last decade, private secondary schools in Queensland the 1,050-1,099 ICSEA group now receive 101% of the government income that public secondary schools in the same ICSEA group do on a per-student basis.
The private secondary school in receipt of the highest combined government funding in this ICSEA group (excluding schools in receipt of size loadings) is Aquinas College on the Gold Coast, which received $16,868 per student in 2022. That school received more funding from governments than six comparable public secondary schools that, on average, receiving $15,200 from governments in 2022 – a funding gap of $1,668 before fees were included.
In addition to their government income, private secondary schools in the 1,050-1,099 ICSEA group averaged $5,885 in fees per student.
Thousands of private schools receive more government funding than comparable public schools
The case studies below demonstrate the extent to which overfunding of private schools in comparison to comparable public schools is entrenched across the system in Queensland. Individual public schools are shown alongside comparable private schools that receive greater government funding within the same local area.
Brisbane
Located 10 kilometres south of Brisbane’s central business district, Mt Gravatt State High School is a large co-educational secondary college. Founded in 1960, the school has a diverse student population. Just under half the students had a language background other than English in 2022 and one in seven was reported as being in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage. The school’s government funding allowed it to employ just over 95 full-time equivalent teachers in 2022 (12.9 students per teacher).
Three kilometres south in Upper Mt Gravatt is Clairvaux MacKillop College . This Catholic secondary school, which was attended by Treasurer Jim Chalmers, had an ICSEA score almost exactly the same as Mt Gravatt State High in 2022 and enrolled 115 more students. But the school was less diverse, with 16% of students from a language background other than English and less than one in 10 of its students was in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage. Despite these factors the school in 2022 received $600 more per student in total government funding than Mt Gravatt State High. With fees and other income, the school’s financial advantage stretched to over $5,000 a student or 30% more total income. This translated to a significant staffing advantage with 113.3 full-time equivalent teachers (11.9 students per teacher). The Catholic school also used
$1.5 million of its recurrent income for capital works between 2020 and 2022.
Everton Park State High School is a medium-sized secondary school located in Brisbane’s inner north. The school’s ICSEA score is close to the national average, although one-third of students were in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage in 2022. The school boasts exceptional teachers and has been rated in the top five schools in Queensland for improvement in NAPLAN results over the past five years.
Closer to the centre of the city and also in the federal electorate of Brisbane is St James College . The school had an almost identical ICSEA score in 2022 but was slightly larger and is a multi-national campus with many international students. In 2018, Everton Park received $4,000 more government funding per student and the total income of the two schools was almost the same. But by 2022, the situation was reversed, with St James receiving almost $4,000 a student more in government funding. The Catholic school’s government funding alone exceeded the total income per student of Everton Park. Once fees and other sources of income were factored in, the Catholic school had 35% more recurrent income to spend in that year.
Rockhampton State High School is the largest and oldest state school in the central Queensland city. The school’s ICSEA score in 2022 was well below the national average at 922 with over half the students assessed as being in the lowest quartile of socio-educational advantage. More than one in five students were Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander and the school has worked to create strong partnerships with local Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander organisations.
A six-minute drive across the city, The Cathedral College is a large Catholic secondary school with significantly less student disadvantage. Just 16% of its students in 2022 were drawn from the lowest quartile of socio-educational advantage and 7% were Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. In 2018, the school received around $300 less per student in government funding than the nearby state high school. But by 2022 the school’s total government funding was higher than Rockhampton State High’s funding and its total income. Once fees and other income are included, the total recurrent income gap is just over $5,000 per student. Between 2020 and 2022, the college
diverted almost $5 million in income into capital works with total spending on buildings and facilities of over $15.3 million. Just over $1.4 million was spent on Rockhampton State High over the same period.
Just across the Fitzroy River, Emmaus College in North Rockhampton is another co-educational Catholic secondary college. This school was close to the ICSEA average in 2022 (997), and student disadvantage was significantly lower than at Rockhampton State High. One-quarter of students in 2022 were assessed as being in the lowest quartile of socio-educational advantage and 11% were Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. The school’s government income per student was almost $2,000 more than Rockhampton State High in 2022 and total income from all sources almost $7,000 a student higher. The resources gap translated to a significant difference in staffing with 12.1 students per full-time equivalent teacher, compared to 13 students per teacher at Rockhampton State High. The school also had 73.8 full-time equivalent non-teaching staff, compared to 41.6 at the slightly smaller state high school.
On a per-student basis, every Queensland public school student will be underfunded by $3,033 in 2024, whilst every private school student will receive $439 above the SRS in combined state and Commonwealth funding.
Thousands of private schools receive more government funding than comparable public schools
Townsville State High School is a co-educational secondary school with a rich history and a diverse school community. Underscoring the high number of students with additional needs, half in 2022 were in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage. One-quarter of the students had a language background other than English and more than one in fve students were Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. The school had just over 71 full-time equivalent teachers or one for every 11 students.
A seven-minute drive away, St Patrick’s College is a Catholic secondary school that educated just over 600 female students in 2022. The college’s My School page says the school campus “boasts an exceptional beachfront location” where “state of the art facilities are set amongst lush tropical gardens”. The school had similar proportions of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students and those from language backgrounds other
than English as Townsville State High in 2022. But the proportion of disadvantaged students was far lower, with 22% drawn from the lowest quartile of socio-educational advantage in 2022. Despite this, St Patrick’s government funding in that year exceeded the per-student funding for Townsville State High School and the government school’s total income per student. Once all sources of income are considered, the private school was operating with a total income that was one-third higher. That allowed it to provide 58 full-time equivalent teachers, or one for every 10.4 students. The high level of government funding also allowed the school between 2020 and 2022 to divert $4.2 million in income to capital works. Total spending on buildings and facilities over those three years was $20.7 million compared to $3.1 million at Townsville State High. The Queensland and Commonwealth governments gave almost twice the capital funding ($6.1 million) to St Patrick’s as was committed to the public high school.
The largest gap in Queensland is a private school funded by government at $5,081 more per student than a comparable public school.
Public schools in South Australia educate proportionally twice the number of students from low socio-educational advantage backgrounds compared to private schools, 3.5 times the number of First Nations students and a similar number of students from a language background other than English than private schools.
Figure 24. SA student demographics by school sector 2022
Language background other than English
Despite the clear and increasing need of public school students in South Australia, private schools in the state will continue to be overfunded by the Commonwealth and state governments by a total of $79.7 million from 2024 to 2028 under current arrangements, while public schools will be underfunded by $1.8 billion over the same fiveyear time frame.
Of the total $22,317 recurrent funding per student spent in private schools in 2022, $14,462 was funded by governments. On a per-student basis every private school student in South Australia will receive $263 above their full SRS in combined state and Commonwealth funding in 2024, while every public school student will be underfunded by $2,003.
Hundreds of private schools in South Australia are funded above their level of need, and almost one hundred receive greater funding from the Commonwealth and state government combined than public schools of similar sizes and with comparable student populations.
In 2013, there were a total of 32 private schools that received more combined Commonwealth and state government funding than comparable public schools. A decade later, in 2022, this had nearly tripled to 94 private schools that received greater government funding than public schools within the same 50-point ICSEA range and the same school size loading category.
The majority of the increase in private schools in receipt of greater government funding than comparable public schools has been in the upper quartile of ICSEA ranges. In 2013 there were four private schools funded higher than comparable public schools in the 1,050+ ICSEA range, and by 2022 this had increased more than six times to 26 schools.
In the 1,100+ ICSEA range, which includes schools in the top 15% of socio-educational status, the number of private schools receiving greater government funding than comparable public schools has increased from two to three over the last decade.
The largest gap is $2,951 per student between two comparable private and public schools within the same 50-point ICSEA range and same school size group.
In 2013, 18% of private schools in South Australia received more government funding than comparable public schools. A decade later, in 2022, this had almost tripled to 48.2%.
In South Australia, the ICSEA group with the biggest increase in the number of private schools receiving more government funding per student than comparable public schools over the past decade is the 1,050-1,099 group. Within this ICSEA group, the average combined government funding amount per student in all private
Thousands of private schools receive more government funding than comparable public schools
secondary schools has increased by 63.2% from $8,635 to $14,095 per student over the decade 2013-2022.
For public secondary schools in the same ICSEA group the average combined government funding increased from $12,222 in 2013 to $15,843 in 2022, an increase of 29.6% in combined government funding over the decade.
Private schools in South Australia have had more than twice the growth in combined government funding that public secondary schools have had over the last decade, and as a result private secondary schools in South Australia in the 1,050-1,099 ICSEA group now receive 89% of the government income that public secondary schools in the same ICSEA group do on a per-student basis.
The private secondary/combined school in receipt of the highest combined government funding in this ICSEA group (excluding schools in receipt of size loadings) is Christian Brothers College in Adelaide, which received $15,900 per student in 2022 from government sources. That school received more funding from governments than five comparable public secondary schools that on average received $15,340 per student from governments in 2022 – a funding gap of $560 before fees were included.
In addition to their government income, private secondary schools in the 1,050-1,099 ICSEA group averaged $9,357 in fees per student.
The case studies below demonstrate the extent to which overfunding of private schools in comparison to comparable public schools is entrenched across the system in South Australia. Individual public schools are shown alongside comparable private schools that receive greater government funding within the same local area.
In Adelaide’s north, Salisbury East High School is a large public secondary school. There is a significant level of student diversity at the school with over a quarter in 2022 having had a language background other than English. There is also a high concentration of disadvantaged students, with 55% estimated to have been in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage in 2022. Just 4% were in the top quarter.
On a neighbouring site in the suburb, Tyndale Christian School is a larger independent school educating students from the frst year of primary school to Year 12. The private school had a similar proportion of students from a language background other than English but much lower levels of student disadvantage. One-quarter of its students were
estimated to be in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage in 2022 and 15% were in the top quarter.
In 2018 Salisbury East High School received over $2,400 more government funding per student. But by 2022 Tyndale was getting more funding per student. This combined with the school’s income from fees and other sources allowed it operate with almost 30% more total income per student in 2022.
While the schools operated in that year with similar numbers of students per FTE teacher, the private school had 95.2 FTE non-teaching staff, compared to 28.9 at Salisbury East High School.
In 2013, there were 32 private schools that received more combined Commonwealth and state government funding than comparable public schools. A decade later, in 2022, this had nearly tripled to 94 private schools.
Thousands of private schools receive more government funding than comparable public schools
Port Noarlunga Primary School is in the historic township of the same name, 30 kilometres south of the centre of Adelaide. The government school has high expectations for students and a diverse and highly skilled team of teachers and staff. In 2022 the school’s ICSEA score was right on the national average although the proportion of students in the lowest quarter of socioeducational advantage was above average (30%).
A six-minute drive north, St John the Apostle is a Catholic primary school with lower student need, as measured by ICSEA. But the school received almost $2,000 more government funding per student in 2022 and had over 25% more total income per student.
A nine-minute drive south, All Saints Catholic Primary school had a higher ICSEA score than the public school and more students. But its per-student government funding was over $2,000 a student higher in 2022 and its total income over $4,000 a student higher.
All Saints directed $326,334 in income into capital works between 2020 and 2022 as part of a total spend of $3.5 million. Just $22,675 was spent on capital works at Port Noarlunga during the same period.
Seaton High School is a comprehensive co-educational public school in the western suburbs of Adelaide. It is one of five designated entrepreneurial specialist schools in South Australia. In 2022 almost one in five students was from a background other than English and 7% were Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. The school’s ICSEA score was just under the national average with 36% of students estimated to be in the bottom quarter of socio-educational advantage.
Less than five kilometres away, Mount Carmel College educates children from the first year of school to Year
12. Students had a similar background with only one point difference in the school’s ICSEA score. One-third of students were from a language background other than English. But in 2022 the school received almost $2,000 per student more in government funding than Seaton High and the total income gap was almost $6,000 a student. The Catholic school in that year had more FTE teachers and non-teaching staff and fewer students per FTE teacher (13.3 compared to 13.7).
Mount Carmel diverted $2 million of its income in 2022 towards capital projects.
Public schools in Western Australia educate proportionally 2.2 times the number of students from low socio-educational advantage backgrounds compared to private schools, 2.7 times the number of First Nations students and a higher number of students from a language background other than English than private schools.
Figure 27. WA student demographics by school sector 2022
Language background other than English
Despite the clear and increasing need of public school students in Western Australia, private schools in the state will continue to be overfunded by the Commonwealth and state governments by a total of $201.7 million until 2028 under current arrangements, while public schools will be underfunded by $1.78 billion over the same five-year period, with $1.32 billion of the underfunding the result of the new proposed agreement maintaining the “additional allowance” accounting trick.
Of the total $20,869 recurrent funding per student spent in private schools in 2022, $13,065 was funded by governments. On a per-student basis every private school student in Western Australia will receive $425 above their full SRS in combined state and Commonwealth funding in 2024, while every public schools student will be underfunded by $1,793.
Hundreds of private schools in Western Australia are funded above their level of need, and more than 80 receive greater funding from the Commonwealth and state government combined than public schools of similar sizes and with comparable student populations.
In 2013, there were a total of 45 private schools that received more combined Commonwealth and state government funding than comparable public schools.
A decade later, in 2022, this had almost doubled to
87 private schools that received greater government funding than public schools within the same 50-point ICSEA range and the same school size loading category. The percentage of private schools that received more government funding than comparable public schools almost doubled from 16.2% in 2013 to 29.5% in 2022.
The majority of the increase in private schools in receipt of greater government funding than comparable public schools has been in the upper quartile of ICSEA ranges. In 2013 there were two private schools funded higher than comparable public schools in the 1,050+ ICSEA range, and by 2022 this had increased sevenfold to 14 schools.
In the 1,100+ ICSEA range, which includes schools in the top 15% of socio-educational status, the number of private schools receiving greater government funding than comparable public schools has increased from one to three over the last decade.
The largest gap is $3,608 per student between two comparable private and public schools within the same 50-point ICSEA range and same school size group.
In Western Australia, the ICSEA group with the biggest increase in the number of private schools receiving more government funding per student than comparable public schools over the past decade is the 1,000-1,049 group. Within this ICSEA group, the average combined
Thousands of private schools receive more government funding than comparable public schools
government funding amount per student in all private secondary schools increased by 31% from $11,612 to $15,209 per student over the decade 2013-2022.
For public secondary schools in the same ICSEA group the average combined government funding has increased from $14,918 in 2013 to $17,276 in 2022, an increase of 15.8% in combined government funding over the decade.
As a result of receiving almost double the increase of public schools in combined government funding over the last decade, private secondary schools in Western Australia in the 1,000-1,049 ICSEA group now receive 88% of the government income that public secondary schools in the same ICSEA group do on a per-student basis.
The private secondary school in receipt of the highest combined government funding in this ICSEA group (excluding schools in receipt of size loadings) is Our Lady of Mercy College near Bunbury, which received $18,129 per student in 2022. That school received more funding from governments than 18 comparable public secondary schools that on average received $16,427 from governments in 2022 – a funding gap of $1,702 before fees were included.
In addition to their government income, private secondary schools in the 1,000-1,049 ICSEA group averaged $5,077 in fees per student.
The case studies below demonstrate the extent to which overfunding of private schools in comparison to comparable public schools is entrenched across the system in Western Australia. Individual public schools are shown alongside comparable private schools that receive greater government funding within the same local area.
In the Perth suburb of Thornlie, two schools sit side by side.
South Thornlie Primary School has been open since 1976 and is a vibrant and diverse school with strong community links. In 2022, 37% of students had a language background other than English. The school’s ICSEA score was slightly below average with 33% of students estimated to be in the lowest quarter of socioeducational advantage.
Over the road, Sacred Heart Primary School had a similar number of students in 2022. Student need was lower, with less than half the proportion of students in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage as at the
neighbouring public school. Thirty per cent of students at the Catholic school were from a language background other than English.
Despite these differences, Sacred Heart’s per-student government funding in 2022 exceeded not only that of the neighbouring public school but also its total income.
The higher level of resourcing is reflected in a lower student-to-teacher ratio in the Catholic school (15.1 students per teacher compared to 16.9 in South Thornlie). Although the school had fewer students, Sacred Heart also had 10 more FTE non-teaching staff.
The largest gap in Western Australia is a private school funded by government at $3,608 more per student than a comparable public school.
Thousands of private schools receive more government funding than comparable public schools
Located in a semi-rural suburb south of Perth, Ridge View Secondary College opened in 2019. The public school has rapidly increased in size and by 2022 had over 700 students. The WA Government’s review of the school last year said parents had praised the college’s approach to meeting the needs of students, including those with disabilities and learning difficulties. The school’s ICSEA score was below average in 2022, with 35% of students estimated to be in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage.
In the nearby suburb of Warnbro, Living Waters Lutheran College educates students from the first year of school to Year 12. In 2022 the school had an above average ICSEA
score with 23% of students drawn from the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage. Despite the lower needs profile and the fact primary students attract less funding than secondary students, the school received more government funding per student than Ridge View in 2022. Once fees and other income were factored in, the difference in available income was $5,788 per student.
This translated into a significant staffing advantage with the smaller private school having more FTE teachers (51.2 compared with 47.2) and far more non-teaching staff (31.8 compared with 20.4). The student-to-FTE teacher ratio at the private school was 11.8 compared to 15.2 at Ridge View.
John Forrest Secondary College is located in the suburb of Morley in Perth, 10 kilometres north-east of the central business district. Named after the first Premier of WA, the school was built in 1961 and has a strong reputation within the local community. The student population is diverse and in 2022 23% of students had a language background other than English. Its ICSEA score was just above average with a relatively even distribution of students across the four bands of socio-educational advantage.
Eight and a half kilometres away, Servite College is a Catholic co-educational secondary school. In 2022 the school had a higher ICSEA score with fewer students in the bottom quarter of socio-educational advantage but
slightly more from a language background other than English (29%).
However, Servite College’s per-student government funding in 2022 exceeded not only the government funding of the public school but also its total income. The smaller private school also had more teachers in 2022 with a student-to-teacher ratio of 13 compared to 14.2 at John Forrest.
Between 2020 and 2022, Servite used $2.4 million of its income for capital works projects, as part of total spending of $11.7 million. John Forrest used $12,394 of its income for capital works over the same period with total spending of $224,137.
Public schools in Tasmania educate proportionally 2.2 times the number of students from low socio-educational advantage backgrounds compared to private schools and 1.7 times the number of First Nations students.
30. TAS student demographics by school sector 2022
Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Students
Language background other than English
Despite the clear and increasing need of public school students in Tasmania, private schools in the state will continue to be overfunded by the Commonwealth and state governments by a total of $19.6 million until 2028 under current arrangements.
Of the total $23,242 recurrent funding per student spent in private schools in 2022, $16,308 was funded by governments. On a per-student basis every private school student in Tasmania will receive $229 above their full SRS in combined state and Commonwealth funding in 2024, while every public school student will be underfunded by $2,206.
Dozens of private schools in Tasmania are funded above their level of need, and many receive greater funding from the Commonwealth and state government combined than public schools of similar sizes and with comparable student populations.
In 2013, there were a total of six private schools that received more combined Commonwealth and state government funding than comparable public schools. A decade later, in 2022, this had almost quadrupled to 23 private schools that received greater government funding than public schools within the same 50-point ICSEA range and the same school size loading category.
In 2013, 9.2% of private schools in Tasmania received combined government funding above that of comparable public schools, and a decade later in 2022, this level had more than tripled to 32.9%.
In Tasmania, the ICSEA group with the biggest increase in the number of private schools receiving more government funding per student than comparable public schools over the past decade is the 1,000-1,049 group. Within this ICSEA group, the average combined government funding amount per student in all private secondary schools increased by 68.8% from $11,019 to $18,595 per student over the decade 2013-2022.
For public secondary schools in the same ICSEA group the average combined government funding has increased from $11,474 in 2013 to $16,151 in 2022, an increase of 40.8% in combined government funding over the decade.
The largest gap is $3,104 per student between two comparable private and public schools within the same 50-point ICSEA range and same school size group.
As a result of a substantially greater increase in combined government funding over the last decade, private secondary schools in Tasmania in the 1,000-1,049 ICSEA group now receive 115% of the government funding that
Thousands of private schools receive more government funding than comparable public schools
public secondary schools in the same ICSEA group do on a per-student basis.
The private secondary school in receipt of the highest combined government funding in this ICSEA group (excluding schools in receipt of size loadings) is Marist Regional College in Burnie, which received $19,258 in government funding per student in 2022. That school received more funding from governments than its
comparison school, Riverside High School in Launceston, which received $16,154 from governments in 2022 – a funding gap of $3,104 before fees were included.
In addition to their government income, private secondary schools in the 1,050-1,099 ICSEA group averaged $4,014 in fees per student.
The case studies below demonstrate the extent to which overfunding of private schools in comparison to comparable public schools is entrenched across the system in Tasmania. Individual public schools are shown alongside comparable private schools that receive greater government funding within the same local area.
Clarence High School is a mid-size co-educational secondary school in Hobart. The school had an ICSEA score just above the national average in 2022 and 24% of students were from the lowest quarter of socioeducational advantage. The school had 44 full-time equivalent teachers that year delivering a ratio of 14.6 teachers per student.
Less than 10 minutes’ drive away, Mackillop Catholic College had almost the same number of students in 2022 and a lower level of student need. Less than one in five students was from the lowest quarter of socioeducational advantage. In 2018, Clarence High School was getting almost $2,000 more government funding per student than the nearby Catholic school. But by 2022 that situation had more than reversed with MacKillop receiving
over $3,000 more public funding per student. When fees and other income were included, the private school was operating with $7,258 more income per student – a 43% difference. This was reflected in the staffing, with the smaller MacKillop College employing over 30% more FTE teachers to achieve a ratio of 10.9 students per teacher.
With such high levels of recurrent funding, the Catholic school was able to divert $4.3 million in income into its capital works budget between 2020 and 2022. It also received almost $1 million in government funding for capital works – more than double the government capital allocation for Clarence High School. In total the Catholic school spent $7.5 million on upgrading facilities between 2020 and 2022, 18 times the amount spent on Clarence High School.
Thousands of private schools receive more government funding than comparable public schools
Burnie High School is a government secondary school located in Tasmania’s north-west region. There is significant disadvantage in the student population with 43% in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage in 2022. A total of 12% of students were Aboriginal and/ or Torres Strait Islander. The school had 43 FTE teaching staff in 2022, creating a ratio of one for every 12.8 students.
Located 3.3 kilometres away in Burnie, Marist Regional College is a larger Catholic co-educational secondary school. The school’s ICSEA score in 2022 was over 50 points higher than the public school, with 22% of students in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage. Despite the difference in student need, Marist in 2018
received more than $2,000 more government funding per student and that advantage had changed little by 2022 when the gap was over $1,600 a student. Income from fees and other sources increased the gap to almost $5,000 per student. The Catholic school in 2022 employed 73.1 FTE teachers, creating a ratio of one to every 10.8 students. It also had 42.1 FTE non-teaching staff, compared to 17.3 at Burnie High School. The high level of government funding allowed the Catholic school to divert over $3 million of income to capital works between 2020 and 2022, making up the majority of the $4.1 million spent during that time. By contrast $361,305 was spent on capital works at Burnie High between 2020 and 2022.
In nearby Devonport, Devonport High School is a small co-educational secondary school that was built in 1916 and recently underwent an $11 million redevelopment. Student need at the school is high, with 52% of students from the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage in 2022 and just 5% from the top quarter.
A five-minute drive away in Devonport, St Brendan-Shaw College is a larger secondary Catholic school. Student need is far lower, with the school’s ICSEA score 81 points higher in 2022 and the proportion of students from the
lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage less than half that of Burnie High. One in five students at the Catholic college was from the top quarter of socioeducational advantage. Despite the differences in need, St Brendan-Shaw’s per-student government funding in 2022 exceeded both Devonport High’s and its total income per student. The Catholic school employed one FTE teacher for 11.4 students, compared to one teacher for 12.8 students at the public school. Over the years 2020 to 2022, St Brendan-Shaw diverted $1.4 million in recurrent income to capital works projects.
Public schools in the Northern Territory educate proportionally 2.1 times the number of students from low socioeducational advantage backgrounds compared to private schools, 1.7 times the number of First Nations students and 1.4 times the number of students from a language background other than English than private schools.
Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Students
Language background other than English
The Northern Territory is the only jurisdiction where private schools are also underfunded. Private schools in the Northern Territory are currently underfunded by the Commonwealth and territory governments by a total of up to $49.8 million each year until 2028 under current arrangements. Despite the clear and increasing need of public school students in the Northern Territory, over the same five-year time period, public school students will remain underfunded due to the maintenance and expansion of the “additional allowance” accounting trick in the new bilateral agreement.
This accounting trick will deny every public school student in the Northern Territory at least $1,400 in desperately needed funding in 2024 and every year through to 2029, at a total cost of $41.5 million in 2024, increasing incrementally each year to $48.9 million in 2029.
Of the total $24,442 recurrent funding per student spent in private schools in 2022, $19,266 was funded by governments. While both sectors are underfunded on a per-student basis, with private school students underfunded by both the Commonwealth and territory governments by $648 each on average, every public school student will be underfunded by 13 times that amount – $8,436 each in 2024.
Dozens of private schools in the Northern Territory are funded above their level of need, and 14 private schools
receive greater funding from the Commonwealth and territory government combined than public schools of similar sizes and with comparable student populations.
In 2013, there were seven private schools that received more combined Commonwealth and territory government funding than comparable public schools. A decade later, in 2022, this had doubled to 14 private schools that received greater government funding than public schools within the same 50-point ICSEA range and the same school size loading category. The percentage of private schools in receipt of greater government funding than comparable public schools increased from 20% to 34.1% over the last decade.
The majority of the increase in private schools in receipt of greater government funding than comparable public schools has been among the lowest ICSEA schools in the Territory. In 2013 there were seven private schools funded higher than comparable public schools with an ICSEA score lower than 750, and by 2022 this had increased to 11 schools.
In the 950-999 ICSEA range, below the national median for socio-educational status, the number of private schools receiving greater government funding than comparable public schools has increased from zero to three over the last decade.
In the Northern Territory, the 950-999 ICSEA group contains three private schools that are in receipt of more government
Thousands of private schools receive more government funding than comparable public schools
funding per student, and this fgure has grown from none in 2013. Within this ICSEA group, the average combined government funding amount per student in all private secondary schools has increased by 50.4% from $13,504 to $20,307 per student over the decade 2013-2022.
For public secondary schools in the same ICSEA group the average combined government funding increased from $16,911 in 2013 to $22,445 in 2022, an increase of 32.7% in combined government funding over the decade.
The largest gap is $4,490 per student between two comparable private and public schools within the same 50-point ICSEA range and same school size group.
As a result of greater increases in combined government funding over the last decade, private secondary schools
in NT in the 950-999 ICSEA group now receive 90.5% of the government income that public secondary schools in the same ICSEA group do on a per-student basis.
The private secondary school in receipt of the highest combined government funding in this ICSEA group and with the small school size loading is the NT Christian School, which received $22.849 per student in 2022. That school received more funding from governments than the comparable public Nightcliff Middle School, which received $21,996 from governments in 2022 – a funding gap of $853 before fees were included.
In addition to their government income, NT private secondary schools in the 950-999 ICSEA group averaged $4,559 in fees per student.
Public schools in the ACT educate proportionally 3.2 times the number of students from low socio-educational advantage backgrounds compared to private schools, 1.9 times the number of First Nations students and 1.7 times the number of students from a language background other than English than private schools.
Figure 36. ACT student demographics by school sector 2022
Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Students
Language background other than English
Despite the clear and increasing need of public school students in the ACT, private schools in the state will continue to be overfunded by the Commonwealth and territory governments by a total of $49.9 million until 2028 under current arrangements.
Of the total $21,022 recurrent funding per student spent in private schools in 2022, $10,382 was funded by governments. On a per-student basis every private school student in the ACT will receive $538 above their full SRS in combined territory and Commonwealth funding in 2024.
The average per-student combined government funding of private schools in the ACT is 58.4% of public school funding, whereas the average across Australia is 79.8%. This difference is not a result of private schools in the ACT receiving less funding than they should – as they are overfunded by almost $50 million over the next five years – but a result of public schools being funded to 100% of the SRS.
Greater funding equity for public schools means that the ACT is the lone example among all jurisdictions where there are not large numbers of private schools in receipt of more government funding than comparable public schools.
The largest gap is $161 per student between two comparable private and public schools within the same 50-point ICSEA range and same school size group. This gap is much smaller than in other jurisdictions and provides a concrete example of the impact that proper funding of public schools has on reducing resource inequity between the sectors.
However, there are still three private schools in the ACT that received more government funding than comparable public schools in 2022. Two of these schools are in the top quarter of ICSEA values of 1,050-1,099 and one is in the top 15% of 1,100-1,149.
The legacy of inequitable distribution of school funding can be seen in comparison with the 2013 data, where there were no private schools in the ACT that received greater government funding than comparable public schools.
In the ACT, the ICSEA group with the biggest increase in the number of private schools receiving more government funding per student than comparable public schools over the past decade are primary schools in the 1,0501,099 ICSEA group. Within this ICSEA group, the average combined government funding amount per student in all private primary schools increased by 78.3% from $7,424 to $13,241 per student over the decade 2013-2022.
Thousands of private schools receive more government funding than comparable public schools
For public secondary schools in the same ICSEA group the average combined government funding increased from $13,931 in 2013 to $16,640 in 2022, an increase of 19.4% in combined government funding over the decade.
As a result of a four-times-greater increase in combined government funding over the last decade, private secondary schools in the ACT in the 1,050-1,099 ICSEA group now receive 79.6% of the government income that public secondary schools in the same ICSEA group do on a per-student basis.
The private secondary school in receipt of the highest combined government funding in this ICSEA group (excluding schools in receipt of size loadings) is St Francis
of Assisi Primary School, which received $14,189 per student in 2022. That school received more funding from governments than Neville Bonner Primary public school, which received $14,028 from governments in 2022 – a funding gap of $161.
It should be noted that the ACT is the only jurisdiction in the country where public schools are currently fully funded to 100% of the SRS, and that the ACT Government does not use the 4% “additional allowance” loophole to reduce its contribution to its public schools. For this reason, the government funding gap is significantly lower in the ACT than in all other states and territories.
The Review of Funding for Schooling was presented to the Commonwealth in November 2011. In 2024, over 150,000 Year 12 students who started school in 2012, just a few months after the publication of the Gonski Report, will complete their schooling having never had the aim of the Gonski Review to “achieve both a high quality and high equity schooling system” come close to being realised. 41
This report has shown in great detail how delay and partial implementation under the Gillard government, followed by nine years of deliberate undermining by the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments, have broken the promise made by the Gonski Review to Australia’s school students.
There are now more than 1,500 private schools getting more government funding than comparable public schools with very similar student cohorts, of very similar size, and in some cases, located so close that they are just around the corner from each other. The “school choice” narrative that is so often used to justify everincreasing funding to private schools cannot explain away the gross inequity now seen in Australia’s school systems and cannot obfuscate more than a decade of inaction on the part of Labor governments and deliberate attempts at destruction by Coalition governments.
In 2024, one in 10 public school students across Australia is effectively unfunded and in the Northern Territory one in five receives no funding. Further, states and territories have been able to further avoid their funding obligations to public school students through what Commonwealth ministers have themselves described as “accounting tricks”.
On 23 May 2024, in a speech to commemorate Public Education Day, Prime Minister Albanese proudly cited “public education as one of our great strengths as a nation” and stated: “Put simply: we need to fund our public schools properly.” 42
The Albanese government now has a rare opportunity to do just that. New agreements that will determine school funding for the next decade are being negotiated between the Commonwealth and state and territory governments right now, and unless all governments across the country cooperate to lift public schools funding to a true 100% of the SRS, we will see yet another generation of students complete the entirety of their schooling without the resources they were promised in the year they first stepped into a classroom.
In order to finally make the promise of a “better and fairer education system” a reality, the AEU makes the following three recommendations to the Commonwealth, and to all state and territory governments:
1. Act on the Commonwealth’s commitment to get every school to 100% of SRS by replacing the 20% cap on Commonwealth SRS contributions to public schools with a 25% floor and ensuring that state and territory governments meet their funding commitments.
2. Remove the 4% “additional allowance” for capital depreciation, school transport and curriculum and registration bodies and other non-school-based costs from the calculation of the SRS contributions of all states and territories so that all jurisdictions fund public schools to their true commitment level of a minimum of 75% of the SRS.
3. Ensure that all school systems have the resources to make the required adjustments for students with disability and that school staff have the resources and time to assess them so that all students are able to access the level of support appropriate to their needs.
1. Gonski, D., Boston, K., Greiner, K, Lawrence, C., Scales, B., Tannock, P., Review of Funding for Schooling—Final Report , 2011, p.100.
2. Gonski, ibid . p.180.
3. Gonski, ibid . p.261.
4. Auditor-General Report No.18 2017–18 found that the Department of Education and Training did not have a sufficient level of assurance that Australian Government school funding had been used by non-government schools in accordance with the legislative framework, in particular the requirement for funding to be distributed to schools on the basis of need. ANAO Report No.18 2017–18 Monitoring the Impact of Australian Government School Funding , retrieved form https://www.anao.gov.au/sites/default/files/ANAO_Report_2017-2018_18a.pdf & The National School Resourcing Board has also made strong comments on the lack of transparency in school funding to approved authorities – Heffernan, M., Monitor calls for greater school funding transparency, The Age , 6/10/2022, retrieved form https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/monitor-calls-for-greater-school-funding-transparency-20220930p5bm9e.html
5. Department of Education Schools – Hot Topics (October 2023) – Group Summary , 2023–24 Supplementary Budget Estimates, p.222.
6. Department of Education Schools – Hot Topics (February 2024) – Hot Topic Briefs p.132.
7. Confirmed in email correspondence with the National School Resourcing Board Secretariat, 28/4/2022.
8. De Bortoli, L., Underwood, C., Thomson, S., PISA 2022: Reporting Australia’s Results, Volume 1: Student performance and equity in education .
9. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/education/schools/latest-release#retention-rates
10. Australian Government Department of Education internal analysis using ACARA schools data (2022) based on the proportion of students in each ICSEA category 2015 to 2017 and 2018 to 2022. Cited in Improving Outcomes for All: The Report of the Independent Expert Panel’s Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System.
11. OECD, cited in Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System , 2023, p.39.
12. Rorris, A., How School Funding Fails Public Schools, How to Change for the Better , 2023, p.8.
13. Rorris, op.cit , p.7.
14. 2024 Report on Government Services, Part B, Section 4, Table 4a.28 & 4a.29. User Cost of Capital excluded from calculation.
15. 2024 Report on Government Services, Part B, Section 4, Table 4a.28 & 4a.29.
16. Budget Paper 3 2014/15.
17. https://scontent-syd2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.18172-8/fr/cp0/e15/q65/18216623_1427103934017061_6634073720458 94964_o.jpg?_nc_cat=103&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=2d5d41&_nc_ohc=X0uvMAQBplIAX_13gbF&_nc_ht=scontent-syd2-1. xx&oh=00_AT-pohzLCVJEQwwg2r331hGO6RhGNSuFYts1KYDb9B5DDQ&oe=620A223E
18. Rorris, A., Scott Morrison’s record on school funding: $6.5 billion every year in public school neglect & $10 billion in private school cash handouts , 2022, p.12.
19. https://www.pm.gov.au/media/more-choice-australian-families
20. https://www.pm.gov.au/media/more-choice-australian-families
21 https://www.dese.gov.au/quality-schools-package/national-school-reform-agreement
22. https://www.education.gov.au/about-department/corporate-reporting/freedom-information-foi/foi-disclosure-log Senate Estimates Briefs April 2023, p.187.
23. Rorris, A., How School Funding Fails Public Schools, How to Change for the Better , 2023, available from https:// www.aeufederal.org.au/application/files/3817/0018/3742/Rorris_FundingFailsPublicSchools.pdf
24. Calculated from Bilateral Agreements and Variation Agreements, retrieved from The National School Reform Agreement – Department of Education, Australian Government and SQ23-000357 Tables 1-10.
25. Department of Education (2023) Internal analysis of agreed government funding for government schools 2018–2023, Department of Education, Australian Government, cited in Improving Outcomes for All: The Report of the Independent Expert Panel’s Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System . p.87.
26. Calculated from bilateral agreements as extended in December 2023 & SQ23-000357 Tables 6-10.
27. Bilateral agreements as extended in December 2023.
28. Department of Education (2023) Internal analysis of agreed government funding for government schools 2018–2023, Department of Education, Australian Government, cited in Improving Outcomes for All: The Report of the Independent Expert Panel’s Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System . p.87.
29. Rorris, op.cit. , amended to reflect changes in extended bilateral funding agreements signed in November/December 2023, p.10.
30. Ibid . p.13.
31. Ibid . p.14.
32. Ibid . amended to reflect changes in extended bilateral funding agreements signed in November/December 2023, p.15.
33. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/education/schools/2022
34. Rorris, op.cit , p.7.
35. Rorris, 2023, p.15.
36. Rorris, 2023 p.15.
37. Australian Education Act, Subdivision C; section 43.
38. https://dataandreporting.blob.core.windows.net/anrdataportal/SBD-Images/guide-to-understanding-icseavalues-2023.pdf
39. Australian Education Act, ibid.
40. Further explanation of SRS loadings is available here ; https://www.education.gov.au/recurrent-funding-schools/ schooling-resource-standard
41. Gonski, p.105.
42. Albanese, A., Public Education Day Address to the AEU , 23/05/2024.
Albanese, A., Public Education Day Address to the AEU , 23/05/2024.
Australian Bureau of Statistics, Schools: Year 7/8 to 12 full-time apparent retention rates by school affiliation, Australia, 2013 to 2023 , 2024.
Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, Guide to understanding the Index of Community Socio-educational Advantage (ICSEA) , 2023.
Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, School Finance Dataset 2023
Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, School Profile 2023
Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, National Report on Schooling In Australia: Schools Students with Disability
Australian National Audit Office, NAO Report No.18 2017–18 Monitoring the Impact of Australian Government School Funding.
Department of Education, The National School Reform Agreement , 201.
Department of Education, Senate Estimates Briefs April 2023.
Department of Education, Schools – Hot Topics (October 2023) – Group Summary , 2023–24 Supplementary Budget Estimates.
Gonski, D., Boston, K., Greiner, K, Lawrence, C., Scales, B., Tannock, P., Review of Funding for Schooling— Final Report , 2011.
De Bortoli, L., Underwood, C., Thomson, S., PISA 2022: Reporting Australia’s Results, Volume 1: Student performance and equity in education.
Improving Outcomes for All : The Report of the Independent Expert Panel’s Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System.
Productivity Commission, 2024 Report on Government Services, Part B, Section 4, Table 4a.28 & 4a.29
Commonwealth of Australia, Budget Paper 3: Australia’s Federal Relations 2014/15 , 2024.
Rorris, A., Scott Morrison’s record on school funding: $6.5 billion every year in public school neglect & $10 billion in private school cash handouts , 2022.
Rorris, A., How School Funding Fails Public Schools, How to Change for the Better, 2023
Senate Standing Committees on Education and Employment, Questions on Notice, Budget Estimates 2022-2023 , Outcome: Schools, Department of Education, Skills and Employment. Question No. SQ23-000357 Attachment A Table 1: Estimated Commonwealth Share of SRS & Attachment B Government Schools: Funded Enrolment Projections 2023 – 2029.
Senate Standing Committees on Education and Employment, Questions on Notice, Budget Estimates 2022-2023, Outcome: Schools, Department of Education, Skills and Employment. Question No. SQ22-000248 Attachment B Projections for enrolments in schools.