It is fascinating to see how Independent schools and their lobby groups now resort to claiming they enrol many students from low income families as justification for their over-generous and ever increasing taxpayer funding. The latest is the claim by Independent Schools NSW that they serve the needs of lower income families. Catholic school organisations also make similar claims.
The facts are that NSW Independent and Catholic schools serve a very small proportion of low income students and only a tiny proportion of schools are disadvantaged. It is NSW public schools that serve the vast majority of low income families and nearly all disadvantaged schools in NSW are public schools. Moreover, public schools are vastly underfunded to meet the learning needs of these students while Independent and Catholic schools are very well resourced to meet the learning needs of their students.
Nearly one-third (32%) of students in NSW public schools are from families in the lowest socio-educationally advantage (SEA) quartile according to data published by the Australian Curriculum, Reporting and Assessment Authority (ACARA) compared to only 10% of Independent school students and 16% of Catholic students [Chart 1]. By contrast, 45% of Independent school students are from the highest SEA quartile compared to 22% in public schools. Also, a higher proportion of Catholic school students (26%) are from the highest SEA quartile than in public schools.
Independent Schools NSW also claims its schools largely serve below-average income families. However, only 27% of its students are from the two lowest SEA quartiles compared to 56% of public schools students. Some 73% of Independent school students are from the highest two SEA quartiles.
Furthermore, 81% of all NSW students in the lowest SEA quartile attend public schools compared to 7% in Independent schools and 12% in Catholic schools.
Disadvantaged schools are concentrated in the NSW public sector. In 2023, 94% of schools with more than 50% of their students in the lowest SEA quartile were public schools [Chart 2]. Only 4% of Independent schools and only 1% of Catholic schools had more than half their students in the lowest SEA quartile.
Public schools also dominate other measures of disadvantage concentration. They account for 93.1% of schools with over 75% of students from the lowest SEA quartile and 89% of schools with 30% or more students from the lowest SEA quartile.
One-third of all NSW public schools are highly disadvantaged with over 50% of their students from low SEA families [Chart 3]. Only 2% of Catholic schools and 8% of Independent schools have such a high concentration of low SEA students. Moreover, 62% of public schools have over 30% of their enrolments from low SEA students compared to 16% of Catholic schools and 21% of Independent schools.
Another measure of the relative burden carried by public and private schools is to compare the ratio of income per student in public schools to that in private schools with the ratios of low SEA enrolments in public and private schools. If private schools had the same disadvantage burden as public schools their low SEA enrolment ratios would be similar to their income ratio.
This is clearly not the case in NSW because there are huge differences between the income and low SEA enrolment ratios. Total income per student in public schools is similar to the income per student in Catholic schools but the percentage of low SEA students is 201% of that in Catholic schools [Chart 4]. This indicates that the disadvantage burden in public schools is double that of Catholic schools.
The burden for public schools is even higher relative to Independent schools. Income per student in public schools is only 69% of that in Independent schools yet the proportion of low SEA students in public schools is 326% of that in Independent schools.
The claim by Independent Schools NSW that their schools mainly serve lower than average income families is false. They serve upper income families with 45% of families in the top SEA quartile and 73% of families in the top two quartiles and only 27% in bottom two quartiles. The burden of disadvantaged students in Independent schools is minor compared to that facing public schools.
The claims by Independent Schools NSW are a classic deflection tactic. They use their small proportion of low income students to defend their overgenerous taxpayer funding for their privileged clientele. NSW Independent schools are overfunded at 102% of their Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) in 2026 according to official figures. These ignore substantial overfunding accrued by major flaws in the method of assessing their need for taxpayer funding that result in substantial overfunding.
By contrast, NSW public schools are massively underfunded at 90% of their SRS after adjusting for “accounting tricks” that allow the NSW Government to claim it is spending more on public schools than in reality. False claims by Independent Schools NSW must not be allowed to defect from the urgent needs of public schools and disadvantaged students in public schools.