Schools in limbo on funding

INDEPENDENT schools will have to wait at least two more months before they know the level of government funding they will receive next year.

INDEPENDENT schools will have to wait at least two more months before they know the level of government funding they will receive next year, with the process of calculating each school's amount described as "incredibly complicated".

While most Catholic and government schools can expect to be informed of their funding as usual next month, Independent Schools Council of Australia executive director Bill Daniels said the figures for his 1100 members would probably not be finalised until late November or even early December.

"The way funding is calculated is in the act but establishing the actual figures is a nightmare because the data is unreliable and unstable," Mr Daniels said.

"The complication is calculating what they got this year from public sources and it's never been part of the equation in the past.

"Government and Catholic sectors can do it once but we have to do it 1100 times."

The new funding model introduced by Labor starts next year and calculates funding for each school based on the individual characteristics of their students, allocating a base level of funding per student plus loadings for various types of disadvantage.

Mr Daniels said that in previous years, independent schools would have been aware of their funding levels for the following year, with the indexation rate released about now telling them how much extra money they would be allocated.

Next year, all schools have been guaranteed as a minimum the amount of funding they received this year plus an extra 3 per cent in indexation.

Government schools in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory will continue to be funded under the old system.

The difficulty is in calculating the level of public funding each independent school received this year from state and federal governments, which forms the starting point for each school's new funding level and the indexation rate it will receive.

To calculate that, the federal education department is using the 2011 financial data published on the MySchool website and updated with the amount of government funding received in other programs, such as national partnerships and targeted funding programs.

A spokeswoman for the federal Education Department said school authorities would receive "a provisional entitlement letter" containing detailed financial information "before the end of the year".

However, some are calling for the school census conducted in August each year, which is used to calculate funding levels, to be held earlier to allow more time for the figures to be collated.

Victorian government schools received their budgets last week, including student-based funding, school-based funding, targeted initiatives and weighted funding for disadvantaged children.