Parents must pay if kids to stay

CATHOLIC girls school Genazzano FCJ College boasts a "physically beautiful environment" in which to educate its 1100 girls.

Patricia Cowling

WITH lush grounds in one of Melbourne's leafiest suburbs, Catholic girls school Genazzano FCJ College boasts a "physically beautiful environment" in which to educate its 1100 girls.

The school, which in 2010 was declared overfunded by the Education Department to the tune of $3.36 million, now fears it will be hard hit by any shake-up of education spending that favours state schools, as flagged by yesterday's Gonski report into school funding.

Genazzano principal Patricia Cowling said yesterday she was disappointed that the long-awaited review was not clear on how much her school will receive if the radical changes are adopted, and had "no real sense that Catholic schools will be funded as well as government schools or better funded than they are".

It is schools such as Genazzano that will be the battlefield in the imminent funding wars. The Howard government promised in 2004 that Catholic schools would keep their levels of funding if they signed up to a new model based on students' socio-economic status. Catholic schools got to keep their funding without having to qualify under the SES test, and are now therefore regarded as overfunded.

School Education Minister Peter Garrett has said the arrangement has "reached its use-by date" and review chief David Gonski has described funding maintenance as a historic anomaly that has to be corrected.

Education Department figures show Genazzano is one of the most overfunded schools in the country, with each student receiving $3632 above its SES entitlement, amounting to an extra $3.36m a year. The school charges fees ranging from $13,000 to $20,000 a year in Year 11.

Ms Cowling said parents could face higher fees if there were no real growth in spending for schools such as hers.

"When funding is cut parents always end up being the ones (who pick up the pieces) and that's the case whether it's state or independent or Catholic education," she declared yesterday.

"We will be lobbying both governments all the time for better funding for all schools in all systems and particularly here in the Catholic education system we are firmly of the belief that families deserve much better government funding in order to enable their children to remain in a Catholic school."

She said the school received total public funding of about $4500 per student. "That can't in any way go towards educating a child in this school, so clearly the fees have to be far greater than they are in order to match that."

She says parents had "every right" to be supported in the same way as parents who choose to send their children to state schools.

"I'm pleased about the broad directions (of the Gonski review) as far as indigenous and special need students are concerned," she said.