School bonus divides as rich reap benefits and poorer private areas miss out

Public school students in rich suburbs will get $400 each to help with learning costs, but their private peers in poorer areas will largely miss out under a government initiative to ease cost-of-living pressures for families.

The news is a double blow to some parents, who also learnt in Tuesday’s budget that their children would miss out on hundreds of hours of free preschool. The Age last month revealed the Best Start, Best Life program would be seriously delayed and that dozens of schools would not get funding for promised upgrades in this budget.

The School Saving Bonus of $400 will be given to all public students for the 2025 school year, regardless of their family income, and to eligible concession cardholders at non-government schools.

The Victorian Catholic Education Authority said the decision to not means-test the bonus for public students meant the government was “handing out money indiscriminately in Melbourne’s wealthiest suburbs” while refusing to help those in the state’s most economically disadvantaged areas.

Under the policy, the authority said parents with a child at a government school in Canterbury, where median house prices are more than $3 million and median family income more than $180,000 a year, would receive $400 per student, while more than 70 per cent of Catholic families in Melton, in Melbourne’s west, would miss out despite their median family income sitting at only $67,000.

“Families in Catholic schools are feeling cost-of-living pressures too, yet the Allan government clearly believes they are not worthy of financial support, solely because they have chosen a Catholic education for their children,” said Bruce Phillips, acting chief executive of the Victorian Catholic Education Authority.

The School Saving Bonus will deliver $287 million to help with school uniforms, camps, sports and other costs. The payments will be delivered through schools to about 700,000 students across the state.

Support will be provided in two ways: as a credit towards the cost of participating in school activities, and vouchers for families to use to purchase school uniforms.

Of the 215,000 students attending Catholic schools in Victoria, 27,500 will be eligible for the bonus. At independent schools, about 17,000 of the 165,000 students enrolled will be eligible.

Independent Schools Victoria acting chief executive Meg Hansen said the bonus was based on the false assumption that parents at private schools were immune from cost-of-living pressure.

Thousands of children in Victoria will miss out on hundreds of hours of free preschool promised during the 2022 election.Credit: Phil Carrick

“The fact is that close to half of high-income earners [families with an annual household income of $195,000 or more] send their children to government schools,” she said. “Only 25 per cent send their children to independent schools.

“This year’s budget will be extremely disappointing to the growing number of parents, many of them on low to middle incomes, who choose an independent school that matches the needs of their children.”

The budget also delays free preschool for thousands of children, pushing back construction under the $14 billion Best Start, Best Life program promised at the 2022 election.

The pre-prep promise, to double the number of government-subsidised hours available to Victorian four-year-olds from 15 to 30 a week, won’t be rolled out statewide until 2036-37 – four years later than planned.

Treasurer Tim Pallas said the program, which he deemed “some of the biggest social reforms” in the state, would require 11,000 extra workers – more than double the current workforce.

The budget listed completion dates for $2.221 billion worth of construction supporting the rollout as “to be confirmed”. Last year’s budget had put the completion date at the end of 2027-28.

The rollout of pre-prep will still begin next year in six regional local government areas: Ararat, Gannawarra, Hindmarsh, Murrindindi, Northern Grampians and Yarriambiack.

Opposition education spokeswoman Jess Wilson.Credit: Eamon Gallagher

The staggered launch will not begin in regional centres Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo until 2032, and 2034 for metropolitan Melbourne, where subsidised hours are now expected to gradually increase to 30 hours by 2036.

The reforms were jointly announced in June 2022 by then-premier Daniel Andrews alongside then-NSW premier Dominic Perrottet to save every family up to $2500 a year per child, and were trumpeted as a win for working women and for the outcomes of Victorian children.

Opposition education spokeswoman Jess Wilson said the delay would mean fewer childcare options for young families and contribute to further uncertainty across the sector.

She said the school bonus did nothing to address Victoria’s already underfunded public schools, and was “another program designed to divide Victorians, designed to make it harder for parents to choose which school to send their kids to, and is not going to do anything to actually improve our schools and improve our learning outcomes”.

“This is a government that purports today to be designing a budget that is for women and is for families, and it is anything but,” Wilson said.

Government-owned childcare centres will also open later than planned. All were due to open by 2028, but now won’t be completed until 2032.

Meredith Peace, the Victorian president of the Australian Education Union, said government-funded TAFE scholarships to train early childhood educators had been successful, and she was disappointed Best Start, Best Life would be slowed.

“We need to see more of that investment to make sure that we have the workforce we need,” Peace said.

“What we need to do rather than slow down is to actually invest, provide the incentives to attract more people to come into the early childhood sector.”

Peace welcomed the $400 support payment for public school children.

The updated Best Start, Best Life reform rollout

2024: Free Kinder for three- and four-year-old children available at participating services across Victoria. Between five and 15 hours a week of three-year-old kindergarten available across Victoria, increasing to 15 hours by 2029.

2025: Pre-prep launches in six local government areas, offering between 16 and 30 hours a week. The first four early learning centres open.

2026: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, children from a refugee or asylum seeker background, and children who have had contact with child protection services can access to up to 25 hours of pre-prep a week, increasing to up to 30 hours a week from 2028. An additional 12 regional local government areas start offering 16 to 20 hours a week between 2026 and 2028, up to 25 hours a week in 2029 and 2030, and up to 30 hours a week from 2031. The next tranche of 10 early learning and childcare centres open.

2027: An additional 12 regional local government areas are added to the pre-prep rollout, offering 16 to 20 hours a week in 2027 and 2028, up to 25 hours a week in 2029 and 2030, and up to 30 hours a week from 2031. The next tranche of early learning and childcare centres also open.

2028: Children across the state who have (or have a parent or guardian who has) a Commonwealth concession card, and children who are a multiple birth child (triplets or more) will have access to up to 25 hours of pre-prep a week, increasing to up to 30 hours from 2030. An additional 15 regional local government areas get access to pre-prep at 16 to 20 hours a week in 2028, up to 25 hours in 2029 and 2030, and up to 30 hours a week from 2031. The next tranche of early learning and child centres open.

2029: Three-year-old kindergarten is available for 15 hours a week statewide. The next tranche of the 50 early learning and child centres open.

2030: The next tranche of early learning and child centres open.

2031: The next tranche of early learning and child centres open.

2032: Bendigo, Ballarat and Geelong get access to pre-prep for 16 to 25 hours a week in 2032, increasing to up to 30 hours a week from 2033. The final tranche of the 50 early learning and child centres open.

2034: All remaining local government areas, in greater Melbourne, start getting access to 16 to 20 hours a week of pre-prep, increasing up to 25 hours a week in 2035 and up to 30 hours a  week from 2036.

2035: Services in Greater Melbourne offer up to 25 hours a week of pre-prep.

2036: All children get access to up to 30 hours of pre-prep.

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