Private school funding may be decided by parents’ income tax returns

PRIVATE schools would have their federal government funding determined by how wealthy students’ parents are under a newly proposed model.

PRIVATE schools will have their federal government funding determined by how wealthy students’ parents are under a proposed model that would check their income tax returns.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham was coy on the changes which are being considered by the National School Resourcing Board today but said he wanted to ensure funding was distributed fairly, consistently and according to need.

The board has not handed its final recommendations to government yet but Fairfax Media reports school sectors were briefed on the proposed changes yesterday.

Asked about the data matching model today, the Minister would not confirm details beyond saying any possible changes would not tie parents’ incomes directly to their own child’s education funding.

Instead, funding would likely be determined by the average of all parents’ incomes at the school.

“The media reporting talks about this as an average and certainly the approach that we’ve only ever taken in relation to what’s currently called the SES score, the Socio-economic Status Score, is a school average determination, and the media reporting’s only talking about an average determination from what I can see as well,” Senator Birmingham told ABC’s News Breakfast program.

Federal Minister for Education and Training Simon Birmingham. Picture: AAP

“That’s the type of approach I would still expect — that it’s done at the school average level.

“But why do we do this sort of thing in terms of the non-government school sector? It’s to make sure that the greatest support goes to those school communities in non-government schools who have got the least capacity to contribute towards their school fees.”

The proposed test would contribute to how non-government schools are funded under the government’s new needs-based funding model, introduced last year based on the Gonski recommendations.

Minister Birmingham has faced a backlash from the Catholic sector over the model, which it claims will disadvantage Catholic sector system schools.

Sources familiar with the briefings yesterday told Fairfax parents’ capacity-to-pay would be recalculated every year, rather than every three years as previously indicated.

In a sign of how sensitive the changes are, attendees at the briefings were reportedly forced to sign confidentiality agreements.

The proposed model would reportedly be introduced before 2020.

Minister Birmingham is due to be handed the report this month.

In a statement this afternoon, the Independent Schools Council of Australia warned any new model to determine funding would require “significant work to determine whether it would produce accurate and valid information at the individual school level”.

“The current funding methodology took three years to model, trial and validate prior to its introduction and the Independent sector would accept nothing less than the same rigorous process prior to any move away from the current arrangements,” it said.

Originally published as Private school funding may be decided by parents’ income tax returns