Government funding figures for every South Australian school revealed

SA schools receive anywhere between a few thousand dollars and a few hundred thousand in government funding per student, latest data reveals. Find out how much your school gets.

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South Australian schools receive anywhere between a few thousand dollars and a few hundred thousand in government funding per student, latest data reveals.

In 2017, independent primary school St Andrew’s in well-heeled Walkerville received $4270 funding per student, mostly from the Commonwealth.

Families paid $17,768 per child in “fees, charges and other parent contributions”, according to the MySchool website. Another $1176 per student came from “other private sources”, which can include donations, fundraising, bank interest, investment profits and asset sales.

At the other end of the scale was tiny, remote Oak Valley Aboriginal School, which had just four students that year and $280,387 funding for each, mostly from the State Government. Parents did not pay anything, and non-funding income amounted to $157 per child.

While Oak Valley is an extreme case, indigenous and other remote and regional schools with few enrolments understandably dominate the top end of the funding list, as funding is meant to address disadvantage and small schools lack economies of scale.

Of the 100 schools that received the most funding per child, 97 were public, two Catholic and one independent. The three private schools were all regional.

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Among the top 300 best-funded schools per student, all bar 16 were public. The exceptions were mostly Catholic schools.

After St Andrew’s, the schools that received the least funding were other high-fee privates Walford, Seymour, Pembroke, St Peter’s College, Scotch, Wilderness, Prince Alfred College, St Peter’s Girls and Pulteney.

Public funding for private schools across Australia rose twice as fast as for public schools from 2009-17. Debate has long raged over how much taxpayer money private schools should receive, given the revenue they are able to gain from parents.

Private school advocates say they deserve the funding so parents get reward from their investment in fees, and note taxpayers would be slugged billions more if private schools disappeared. Opponents say this widens the disparity between haves and have-nots.

SA Education Minister John Gardner said recurrent schools funding in 2022-23 would be $611 million more than in 2018-19.

Catholic Education SA director Neil McGoran said schools which faced “significant disadvantage, due to factors such as remoteness or socio-economic status, attract higher levels of funding”.

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