Capital works: elite Sydney and Melbourne schools dominate facility upgrade funding
The gap between the nation’s most elite schools and the rest have been laid bare. And while one Territorian teacher wants a funding fix, an independent education chief has slammed the findings.
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Five elite private schools from interstate collectively spent more on facility upgrades in 2021 than all 153 Territory public schools combined that same year, a new report has revealed.
Released last week, the Australian Education Union’s Ending the Capital Funding Divide in Australia’s School report showed the exclusive schools of Cranbrook School, Barker College, and Abbotsleigh College of Sydney, and Caulfield Grammar and Loreto Mandeville Hall of Melbourne, spent a combined $175.6 million on capital works – more than half of the nation’s 6699 public schools put together.
For Territorian schoolteacher Suki Dorras-Walker, the issue is close to heart.
The newly announced NT Greens candidate for Fannie Bay said the funding discrepancy would fail future generations.
“Once again, we see the vast majority of the community missing out on public money – it’s public schools that do the heavy lifting when it comes to students with the highest needs,” she said.
“The report tells us that NT public schools have received just half the capital investment that has gone into private schools over the last decade.
“This imbalance in funding is driving inequality in our community and we’re letting our young people down.”
Among the key findings, the Territory’s private school capital investment was 2.7 times greater than the public school investment per student in 2021.
Between 2012 and 2021, the Territory’s public school per student investment was half the private school investment.
A decade-long teaching veteran, Ms Dorras-Walker maintained improvements in funding would address Territory-specific issues.
“If we are serious about addressing issues like crime, then we need to get school funding right,” she said.
“The NT government needs to direct our public money to the schools that are educating our most vulnerable students – our public schools.”
“Directing investment where it’s really needed is how we keep kids engaged, at school and on track – that’s how we make our community safer, not by stripping our public schools of funding and then punishing kids who fall through the cracks.”
Interstate, efforts to explain the discrepancy have been offered.
Association of Independent Schools NSW chief executive Margery Evans hit out at the report and said there was a misconception around how schools generate funding for capital works.
“(AEU) knows that the vast majority of capital works in non-government schools – some 90 per cent in the independent sector – are largely self-funded by parents and school communities though loans repaid over 20 years,” she said.
Ms Evans said the comparison was “absurd”.
“It is also absurd for the AEU to cherry pick the largest capital works projects of several non-government schools – which were self-funded – and compare them with 3,300 public schools who had little or no capital works projects that year,” she said.
“The total value of the capital works at those five non-government schools was $175.6 million – less than the $250 million spent by the NSW government on upgrades to just one government school (Chatswood High).”
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