Australia has probably one of the most unusual school funding distribution unlike almost any other country in the world. First, you have three different funding source, Federal, State and private channel. Second we also fairly unique that Australia has one of the highest levels of students educated in private sector. The third is that very significant portion of the funding for private schools is derived from Public sources.
Let’s break that down further, State governments in Australia are largely responsible for the majority of the funding for public schools, State governments funding of private schools are minuscule and can be largely discounted. What is more interesting is that most of the Federal government funding model since Howard years particularly looks to be more interested in funding private schools. There are a lot of historical and ideological reason how this came to be, it is not a surprise that the term “Private School With Public Funding” that was circulating everywhere these days.
Even with the new recent passed Gonski 2.0 funding, the Federal government will fund public schools to 20 percent of their SRS which is short for Schooling Resource Standard entitlement and 80 percent of private school SRS entitlement. This is an interesting point to think of.
Also, the funding model requires the States to fund up to 75 percent of the SRS requirement, originally 80 percent before it was reduced during the passage of the bill. This will require most of the States to come up a fair number of additional funding or otherwise endanger their portion of Federal funding. I personally this is terrible, traditionally States are responsible for Education and this should be better consulted and worked with all States to achieve a more suitable and agreeable outcome.
While I think there are positive aspects of the bill, there are also some core issues yet to be resolved and improved upon.
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