Even reform cash 'will leave us short'

CATHOLIC education chiefs in South Australia have lashed Labor's "broken promises" over funding.

CATHOLIC education chiefs in South Australia have lashed Labor's "broken promises" over funding, saying even if the state signs up to the Gonski reforms it will still take years to address "chronic under-funding".

Catholic Education SA director Paul Sharkey said the sector was bitterly disappointed Premier and Treasurer Jay Weatherill did not in last week's state budget honour a 2010 pre-election promise to increase funding for Catholic schools.

Dr Sharkey said students in non-government schools in South Australia received the lowest state funding in the nation, about $270 less than the national average per student. Each Catholic school student in South Australia receives about $7400 a year in government funding while any student in a public school receives about $14,300.

Dr Sharkey said the government had told the sector its low level of funding would be lifted as Julia Gillard's Gonski school funding blueprint was introduced during the next six years.

However, only NSW and the ACT have signed up to Gonski. The Labor states of South Australia and Tasmania are still in negotiations ahead of the June 30 deadline.

"The (state) budget was silent on the new funding model and gave no indication that next year and the immediate years following there would be any lifting of non-government school funding," Dr Sharkey said.

"Given the education industry has a higher inflation rate than the CPI, many of our schools have reached their limit."

He said they were in talks with the government about a funding boost early in the six-year implementation of Gonski. "We believe the state government needs to put in new money early in the implementation period if it is to keep faith with its 2010 pre-election promise."

In the days before Labor in South Australia won re-election for a third term in March 2010, the government wrote to the Catholic education sector promising to address the "relativity between the South Australian government per capita grant to non-government schools and the Australian average". Federation of Catholic School Parent Communities executive director Ann Bliss said the sector had been stonewalled for the past three years by successive state education ministers and the Premier and Treasurer.

"We've asked them consistently to provide us with a report on the progress of their commitment . . . our schools have missed out on millions and millions and millions of dollars," she said.

But yesterday Mr Weatherill claimed the only commitment was to "work with the Catholic and independent school sectors to address school funding".

"The Gonski school reforms not only meet that commitment but surpass it by creating a new national benchmark for funding for Catholic schools, which the South Australian government will meet," he said.