Age Letter on SES Funding

Michelle Green, Chief Executive of the Association of Independent Schools of Victoria, 31 January 2009

The Age editorial (30/1) Schools are still waiting for the real revolution contains an error in your discussion about how government funding is calculated for independent schools. It is not correct that funding under the SES model is allocated according to postcodes.

The SES model allocates funding according to need determined by family income and education based on Australia Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Census Collection Districts.

The socioeconomic profile of the school’s student body determines the capacity of the school’s community to support it. The calculations are clearly defined by linking socioeconomic factors of educational disadvantage with levels of government support.

The ABS data makes the SES model transparent and objective. The federal government funding allocation can be scrutinised by politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and the public. This was not previously the case.

Your editorial also fails to take into account both state and federal government funding. Taken together, average government expenditure on a student in a government school is $11,243 a year but government funding to an independent school student is $5,290 – less than half.

Non-government schools across Australia save taxpayers $5b a year. In Victoria in 2005-06, for example, the Victorian and Australian governments provided combined recurrent funding of $5.56 billion to government schools but only $1.638 billion to non-government schools. In Victoria in 2004-05 thirty-five percent of students attended non-government schools, but received just twenty-three percent of government funding.

Despite the personal cost to the family budget, parents are choosing, not drifting to independent schools. They understand and accept that they are paying fees that free-up governments’ education dollars. They also agree that governments must spend more to educate all Australian children, wherever they go to school.

 

 

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