Funding cuts force Melbourne’s Christian Brothers to lift fees

One of Melbourne’s oldest schools, lauded for its accessibility, has raised fees and made cuts to cope with lost government funding.

CBC principal Gerald Bain-King with students, from left, Botie Chen, Zac Zabarauskas, Liam Taylor and Kelman Chen. Picture: Paul Jeffers

One of Melbourne’s oldest boys’ schools, lauded for its diversity and accessibility, has been forced to raise fees and cut programs to cope with a loss of government funding.

Christian Brothers’ College, known as CBC St Kilda, is one of 28 schools run by Catholic Education Melbourne that have sought to appeal the socio-economic status scores (SES) they have been allocated to determine their level of government support.

The secondary school, whose alumni include businessman Tony Shepherd, media identity Eddie McGuire and former National Gallery of Australia director Gerard Vaughan, lost $500,000 in commonwealth funding this year as a result of recent education reforms.

Facing the prospect of a further cut next year, CBC St Kilda principal Gerald Bain-King shut down a stand-alone campus for Year 9 students.

“This year we increased fees to $8000 but if we jacked up fees much higher we’d have a number of parents who just wouldn’t be able to pay,” Mr Bain-King said. “Our governing body has a commitment to having a mixed enrolment. We have always been that school that enables quality people to get a good education regardless of their background.”

He said the current system of calculating SES scores, based on students’ addresses, meant that low-fee Catholic schools were disadvantaged in areas such as St Kilda, where multi-million-dollar homes stand alongside public housing.

“In one street you might have an architect, a single-parent family and, down the road, a recently arrived refugee. The system assumes that they’re all on the same average income and they’ve all got the same capacity to contribute to school fees, which isn’t the case. We’re being punished for our diversity.”

It is complicated by the federal government’s decision to cease allocating funds to Catholic schools based on a system-weighed average SES score of 101. CBC St Kilda now scores 112, higher than the independent school Haileybury College, which charges more than $20,000 a year in fees, at 111.

Mr Bain-King hopes the school’s score will be lowered substantially on appeal. In the longer term, however, he is banking on a separate government review to make the system more equitable. There has been speculation that a means test of family incomes is under consideration.