Federal funding: The real story
You'd be forgiven for feeling confused about what's going on in school funding. When we hear what's reported in the media we are confused too.
We keep hearing that non-government school students get more 'government' funding than their public school counterparts, but this is misleading.
The reality is that while they do get more federal funding, public students still get more overall. This is because under the current arrangements the feds mainly fund non-government students, and states and territories mainly fund public students.
And the system is actually designed to make sure public students get more overall funding. That's because where public students should get 100% of base funding, the maximum a 'like' non-government student gets is set at 80% of base funding. Additional funding comes from parent contributions.
It also turns out that Federal government funding of public school students has been rising faster than for non-government students.
The Productivity Commission’s Report on Government Services on education, released last week, shows that Australian Government spending per student went up by 55 per cent over 10 years to 2018 compared to 43 per cent for non-government students.
Interviewed in the Austrailian Financial Review Education policy analyst at the Centre for Independent Studies, Blaise Joseph, said the numbers challenged the usual claims about spending on education.
"Recent increases for non-government schools certainly haven’t been at the expense of government schools. There has been a massive, real per-student increase in federal funding for government schools over the past 10 years."