School funding has found its way back into the headlines recently.

Funding, especially for non-government schools, is fiendishly complicated and makes understanding what is really going almost impenetrable for parents (and let's be honest many school and political leaders).

This is what makes recent media stories like the ABC's report  on 'How the Catholic school system takes from the poor to give to the rich' particularly worrying for parents.

The report accused Catholic school authorities, 'with the approval of the state’s bishops, of diverting public funding to keep fees low for families in wealthy parts of Sydney.'

The report was immediately rebutted the report in a media release from the Catholic Education Commission the same day which described the ABC’s ‘analysis’ of Catholic school funding as 'simplistic and inaccurate'.

The National Catholic Education executive director Jacinta Collins said that 'despite the sophisticated-looking graphics, the ABC’s analysis doesn’t grasp the complexity of the funding model for non-government schools, and grossly misinterprets the way Catholic schools in New South Wales distribute funding.

'First and foremost, students in regional and remote NSW Catholic schools receive substantially more funding than students in metropolitan areas and pay less in school fees which acknowledges the particular challenges of these schools.'

'The problem with this type of analysis is that it doesn’t take into account that the amount of funding allocated to non-government schools is based on an arbitrary and moveable measure of what parents should be expected to pay. It doesn’t factor into the equation other issues affecting affordable school choice such as housing stress, financial hardship, the number of children in a family, economies of scale for larger versus smaller schools, learning and teaching needs, and a range of other variable factors,' Ms Collins said.

In the wake of the ABC’s allegations, Catholic Schools New South Wales issued a series of concise ‘Fact Check’ rebuttals to ‘false claims’ on social media – with specific examples.

A further complication to note is that the ABC's analysis was actually based on analysis of funding using a method of assessing parents' capacity to contribute to school fees, which is being replaced. A new direct measure, based on parent tax data, rather than where the school is located, is now being rolled out. You can read more about the new direct measure here. This also comes with extra Federal Government money to help schools through the transition via what's known as 'The Choice and Affordability Fund'.

Many schools are concerned about the impact of the new direct measure, particularly regional and boarding schools, and we are beginning to see specific examples reported in the media - for example 'Bunbury Cathedral Grammar School lowers fees in response to 'unfair' government changes'

Principal Michael Giles says in this article: 'I don't think this takes into account costs associated with living in regional areas and it particularly doesn't take into account costs associated with parents who need to send their children to boarding school.'

The government has already said it will monitor the impact of the roll-out, but getting to grips with what is going on in school funding looks likely to get more even impenetrable and confusing for parents.

And what parents, the community and taxpayers really need is greater transparency on school funding. That's because transparency builds confidence, trust and understanding between family and school, and more generally between different school communities, and different school sectors.