The public education advocacy group Save Our Schools has accused the Prime Minister of lying about the future funding of Western Australian public schools. “It is a blatant lie to claim that WA public schools will be fully funded under the new schools agreement”, said SOS National Convenor Trevor Cobbold.
“Far from being fully funded by 2026, WA public schools will be under-funded by about $1.6 billion over the next five years. WA public schools will be funded at slightly less than 96% of their Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) in 2026 and remain so until at least 2029.
“The WA public school system was a well-funded system five years ago. It is now an under-funded system due to funding cuts by the WA Government. The new agreement ensures it will remain under-funded for at least the next five years. Thus, 17 years after the Gonski Report delivered a plan for full funding of public schools they will still be under-funded. It is a scandalous failure of the Federal and WA Labor governments.
“The under-funding is due to two accounting tricks in the new agreement which allow the WA Government to claim expenditures as part of its share of funding the SRS of public schools that are specifically excluded from how the SRS is measured.
“First, the WA Government can claim expenditures on school transport, capital depreciation and kindergarten up to 4% of the SRS of public schools. This trick will defraud public schools of about $1.37 billion in funding over the next five years.
“Second, the agreement allows the WA Government to also claim expenditures on the School Curriculum and Standards Authority and Department of Education’s regulatory functions as part of its SRS share. Public schools will lose about $240 million from this trick over the next five years.
Mr. Cobbold said there are some positives in the agreement.
“The Albanese Government has broken with the arbitrary limit placed on Commonwealth funding of public schools by the Turnbull Government. The Commonwealth is no longer restricted to funding only 20% of the SRS of public schools and has agreed to put in an extra 2.5% in this agreement.
“Another positive is that the WA Government has agreed to start clawing back the cuts it made to its funding share of public schools over the past five years. It cut its funding share from 84.4% of their SRS in 2018 to 75% in 2024. Its share will now increase by 2.5% by 2026, but this is still far short of what it was in 2018.
Mr. Cobbold said that the equity targets in the agreement are deficient and could even increase inequity in school outcomes.
“The targets set for Year 12 completion and NAPLAN results by the Heads of Agreement are insufficient to support greater equity in school outcomes. For example, there is no requirement to reduce the proportion of disadvantaged students at the NAPLAN level of Needing Additional Support. This is an extraordinary oversight for an agreement that purports to address inequity in education.”
Note: The under-funding figure for 2025-2029 has been revised from $1.85 billion as originally estimated to $1.6 billion. The estimated cost of the 4% allowance has also been revised. Revisions were mad eon 8 September 2024