Jason Clare’s Big Lie on Public School Funding

The Federal Education Minister, Jason Clare, has adopted the “big lie” approach on school funding. He says that special allowances for state funding of the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) of public schools are “part of the SRS”. This is factually incorrect. It is contradicted by official documents, his own previous statements and statements by his predecessor while in opposition who said they are “accounting tricks”.  

The issue concerns the types of expenditures the states can claim as part of their share of funding public schools. The new funding agreements with Western Australian and the Northern Territory governments (and presumably also with Tasmania) for 2025-2029 allow them to claim funding for capital depreciation and school transport up to 4% of the SRS of public schools. They can also claim expenditures on school regulatory authorities such as curriculum and standards bodies.

Clare’s claim these expenditures are part of the SRS is refuted by:

• Guides published by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA);
• His own agreements with the WA and NT governments;
• Previous bilateral funding agreements;
• His own previous comments about the “accounting tricks”; and
• His predecessor in Opposition.

The estimation of the SRS is based on financial data collected by ACARA for the My School website. The measure of income is Net Recurrent Income Per Student (NRIPS). ACARA’s My School: Key Principales and Methodology (2023) clearly defines what is included and excluded from this measure. The exclusions include school transport, depreciation and umbrella costs associated with curriculum standards, national testing and teacher registration. It says: “These funds have been deemed to be outside schools’ recurrent operations” [p.13].

The ACARA guide also states that the inclusions “reflect school income for the preparatory year (year level prior to Year 1) to Year 12” [p. 10]. Therefore, the allowance in the new Western Australian agreement for expenditure on pre-schools as part of the state’s share of funding the SRS of public schools is also a non-SRS expenditure.

This methodology for estimating the SRS based on the NRIPS is long-standing. It was developed by the Allen Consulting Group in a technical report for the Gonski Review of Funding for Schooling in April 2012. This approach has continued in regular updates of the SRS.

Clare’s claim is contradicted by his own agreements with the Western Australian and Northern Territory governments. he Western Australian agreement clearly distinguishes SRS and non-SRS funding:

Consistent with the calculation of the SRS, the Western Australian funding contributions will be measured consistent with the existing Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) financial data reporting methodology for state Net Recurrent Income Per Student (NRIPS) for school years Year 1 minus 1 to Year 12, excluding funding for full fee-paying overseas students, along with the following additional funding types. [Clause 49]

Parts (a) and (b) of the clause state that the additional funding types are direct school transport, capital depreciation, kindergarten (pre-school) up to 4% of the SRS as well as funding for the School Curriculum and Standards Authority and Department of Education’s regulatory functions. The new Northern Territory agreement includes similar provisions.

This distinction between SRS funding and other funding types in Commonwealth-State school funding agreements is not new. The inclusion of non-SRS funding items as part of the state SRS shares of public schools was introduced in the current agreements negotiated between the Morrison Government and the states and the Northern Territory in 2018. The text in the new agreements is virtually the same as that of the Morrison Government agreements. For example, the 2018 Western Australian agreement states:

Consistent with the calculation of the SRS, the state funding contributions will be measured consistent with the existing Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) financial data reporting methodology for state Net Recurrent Income Per Student (NRIPS) for school years Year 1 minus 1 to Year 12, excluding funding for full fee paying overseas students, along with the following additional funding types… [Clause 34]

The additional funding types are the same as in the new agreement that will operate until 2029. Clare is continuing the fraud conjured up between the Morrison Government and the states that have swindled public schools of $13.1 billion in funding.

This is despite his own implied acknowledgment of the distinction between SRS funding and non-SRS  funding types. For example, in response to a question as to whether allowance to claim non-school costs would be removed, he said:

What I’ve said [is] we’ll look at that with all the states and territory as part of negotiating the next national school reform agreement…

Clare’s claim that capital depreciation, school transport and regulatory funding is part of the SRS was rejected by his predecessor in Opposition, Tanya Plibersek, who promised that a Labor Government would scrap “accounting tricks”. Clearly, she understood they are not part of SRS funding.

Clare’s big lie forms the basis another – the claim by he and the Prime Minster that Western Australian, Tasmanian and Northern Territory public schools will be fully funded by 2029 under their new funding agreements. Their claim depends on denying the fraud being perpetrated on public schools.

Far from being fully funded by under the new agreements, Western Australian, Tasmanian and Northern Territory public schools will be under-funded for another five years – by $1.6 billion in under-funding for Western Australian public schools, $ 306 million in Tasmania and $276 million in the Northern Territory. They will be funded at less than 96% of their SRS through to the end of the agreements in 2029.

Public schools in other states will remain under-funded whether or not they sign new agreements. The billion dollar fraud will remain if the current agreements are rolled over and they will be included in any new agreements. The prospect is that public schools across the country will still be under-funded in 2029, 17 years after Gonski proposed full funding.

By contrast, private schools have been over-funded for decades and will remain so until at least 2029 under the current arrangements. Clare’s big lie cannot hide the abominable injustice.