Some education executives earning $1m+ as bureaucracy swallows up public school funds
Australia’s education system now employs twice as many executives as a decade ago despite almost no student growth, raising questions about funding priorities.
Education executives have more than doubled in number over the past decade, despite public school student enrolments only growing by 7 per cent, new analysis shows.
Save Our Schools, a lobby group advocating for more funding for government schools, said the nation’s ballooning bureaucracy was “swallowing more of public school funding”.
Their figures show that between 2015 and 2024, non-school bureaucrats grew by 89 per cent, compared to 47 per cent for non-teaching staff in schools, 16 per cent for teachers and 7 per cent for students.
The biggest increase is the number of executives in education departments, which have grown from 635 in 2015 to 1331 in 2024 – seven times the growth in teachers and nearly 15 times the growth in students.
As analysis by News Corp from October showed, teachers are battling for meagre pay increases while bureaucrats enjoy salaries of up to $1m.
The highest-paid education executive is Tony Cook, the secretary of the federal Department of Education, who is paid more than one million dollars – twice that of federal Education Minister Jason Clare.
The Save Our Schools analysis shows teacher salaries increased by 48 per cent between 2015 and 2024 compared to 80 per cent for non-teaching salaries.
The data shows non-teaching staff in primary schools increased by 44.9 per cent compared to 4.3 per cent for students and 15.6 per cent for teachers. Non-teaching staff in secondary schools increased by 51.8 per cent compared to 12.4 per cent for students and 17 per cent for teachers.
Non-teaching staff who were in administrative and clerical roles increased by 50.4 per cent – three times higher than teachers and seven times higher than students.
There was also a significant increase in specialist support staff of 44.5 per cent, a group mainly comprised of teacher aides, learning support staff, counsellors, youth workers and IT support.
“The growth in administrative staff in schools and in central departments has far outstripped the increase in teachers and students since 2015. The most dramatic staffing growth has occurred not in classrooms but in state education departments,” Save Our Schools co-convener Trevor Cobbold said.
Ironically, this increase in non-teaching staff has not reduced the administration load on teachers.
The National Trends Teacher Workforce Report published by the Australian Institute for Teaching and Learning found teachers do at least six hours a week in admin- the fourth highest in the OECD.
“More funding is being diverted from core functions of teaching and supporting the learning and wellbeing of students to administrative and operational tasks,” Mr Cobbold said.
He said the growth of the central bureaucracy comes amid widespread evidence that teachers are overloaded with unwanted administrative tasks themselves.
Mr Cobbold said it was important that funds given to public schools under the ten-year agreement with the commonwealth are not soaked up by administrative funding.
“The funding increase should be devoted to student learning and wellbeing. The growth in bureaucracy must be contained as much as possible to enable more resources to be directed at improving student outcomes and greater equity in outcomes,” Mr Cobbold said.
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Originally published as Some education executives earning $1m+ as bureaucracy swallows up public school funds
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