Public school funding is falling behind private schools in part due to the states failing to meet the targets set for them six years ago, spurring calls for a special deal to be struck for the Northern Territory, which has the biggest gap.
In 2017, when the Turnbull government announced education reforms under the banner of Gonski 2.0, the target was for all schools to be funded to their school resourcing standard (SRS) – a needs-based model designed to provide a baseline education to students by 2023.
For public schools, the states were set a 75% funding target by 2023 and the federal government a 20% target. For private schools it was the reverse, with schools receiving funding above their SRS to transition down by 2029.
The federal government has almost met its targets, but the states have not.
This is due to bilateral agreements that were struck in 2018 as part of the reforms, which saw the 2023 target pushed back for some states. Only the Australian Capital Territory, South Australia and Western Australia have reached, or are above, the 2023 target for public school funding, according to a Senate estimates brief by the Department of Education.
New South Wales recently committed to reach its target by 2025, two years earlier than under the agreement. Meanwhile, the department briefing shows Tasmania will reach its target by 2027, Victoria by 2028, and Queensland is projected to reach it by 2032. The NT has no commitment to reach the target.
“We’ve had now an entire generation of students who’ve been to public schools that have not been fully funded to meet their needs,” said Correna Haythorpe, the president of the Australian Education Union.
The AEU is urging the federal government to increase its share of public school funding to 25% in the next schools agreement, given it has greater revenue raising power than the states.
But that figure should be raised further for the NT given it is well below other states in meeting the needs of its students, the union has said.
In the NT, public schools have reached just over 80% of their school resourcing standard, while private schools are at more than 97%, according to a Department of Education internal briefing.
“Effectively you’ve got a whole cohort of students who are missing out on funding in the Northern Territory, yet [there are] huge [and] compounded needs there,” said Haythorpe.
This year the NT government met 59% of the resourcing standard for public schools, and the commonwealth contributed 21.5%, according to the department briefing.
In 2018, the federal government had contributed 23.5% of the NT’s SRS, the highest of any state or territory. But this has been trending downwards since the federal government decided to set the cap at 20% for all states and territories.
“It’s our view that there has to be a special deal for the Northern Territory,” said Haythorpe.
The education minister, Jason Clare, has committed to work with state and territory governments to get their public schools to 100% of their SRS, with a new National Schools Reform Agreement to be negotiated in the next year.
Trevor Cobbold, an economist and the national convener of Save Our Schools, agrees that the federal government should increase its contribution to the NT – as long as the NT doesn’t then reduce its own contribution.
This has happened in the past. From 2013 to 2021, Cobbold said the NT government’s funding to public schools dropped by more than $1,500 per student while federal government funding increased by just over $2,500.
He said several other states also took the opportunity to reduce their funding in real terms after the commonwealth started to increase its recurrent school funding after the Gonski review. This included Victoria, he said, which reduced its state funding per student in real terms from 2012 until 2016.
“In the next agreement the commonwealth has to ensure state and territory governments actually increase their funding,” Cobbold said.
Haythorpe also said state contributions are misleading because most states, under the current agreements, are able to factor in 4% of additional costs not originally deemed part of meeting the school resourcing standard, including school bus costs and in some instances early childhood learning.
According to the department briefing, this was worth more than $2bn in 2023.
“The real cost to the country is actually 4% more than what state and territory governments say they are doing,” she said.
The NSW education minister, Prue Car, said the state government had pledged alongside the federal government to get its schools to 100% of its school resourcing standard.
“The truth is that public schools have been underfunded for far too long,” she said.
A spokesperson for the Victorian government said the state would reach its school resourcing standard as planned by 2028.
The NT government was contacted for comment.
