Fifty private schools to share in $400 million of ‘excess’ taxpayer funding

Fifty elite private schools will pocket $400m in ‘excess’ federal funding over the next six years while state governments underfund their own public schools, new data reveals.

Brisbane Grammar School is among 50 elite private schools that a public school lobby group claims get too much taxpayer funding. Picture: Liam Kidston

Fifty elite private schools will pocket $400m in “excess” federal funding over the next six years while state governments underfund their own public schools, new data reveals.

Privileged private schools – including Trinity Grammar, Knox Grammar, Haileybury, Geelong Grammar and Brisbane Grammar – have been named in a lobby group’s hit list during the federal election campaign.

Save Our Schools, which advocates for public schools, has calculated that 50 elite private schools will share in $400m of “excess” federal funding over the next six years, and wants the taxpayer funding handed to poorer schools. Save Our Schools national convener Trevor Cobbold, a former Productivity Commission economist, blasted the Labor Party for refusing to immediately strip funding from the private schools.

“Labor has chosen privilege over fairness in school funding. It is a craven capitulation of the powerful interests in private schools (and) denies resources to those most in need.’’

Mr Cobbold said Anthony Albanese had ignored the “dire state of public school funding’’ in his campaign launch. “If Labor still believes in fairness … it must ensure public schools are fully funded within the next five years. It should increase the funding loadings for disadvantaged students and it must immediately revise the commonwealth-state bilateral funding agreements that are defrauding public schools of billions in funding.’’

Federal, state and territory governments have agreed to a new funding model designed to funnel money to students most in need due to poverty, disability or migrant or Indigenous background. Each school is set a “Schooling Resource Standard” (SRS), based on a set amount per student that is increased or cut according to student need.

The federal government has agreed to pay 20 per cent of the SRS for each public school by 2027, with state and territory governments to fund the rest.

Private schools will have 80 per cent of their SRS funded federally, with the rest paid by parents and state governments.

The change means public schools with a lot of disadvantaged students are likely to receive more money over the next six years, while private schools with wealthy students will have funding reduced incrementally.

Mr Cobbold said based on federal Education Department data provided to a Senate estimates hearing, independent schools would be over-funded by $1.4bn and Catholic schools over-funded by $1.3bn over the next six years, by the time the new system is in place.

He calculated public schools would be underfunded by $53bn between 2022 and 2029, due to “massive underfunding’’ by state and territory governments.

The Australian’s own analysis shows federal recurrent funding to state-run public schools has soared 46 per cent, in real terms, over five years to total $8.5bn in 2019-20. At the same time, state and territory governments limited their operational spending on state schools to rise an average of 17 per cent, to total $44m in 2019-20.