Why Are Public School Share of Students Going Up First Time Since 1977

The stats and information are taken out of this Public schools increase share of enrolments, reversing 40 year trend article on SMH. The basic of what is happening is as following

New figures from the Bureau of Statistics show that government schools in 2016 educated 65.4 per cent of all students, up from the historical low of 2014 when it was 65.1 per cent.

Public school enrolments have declined at about 0.4 per cent per year since 1977, when 79 per cent of students went to government schools nationally. The increase appears to be partly at the expense of Catholic schools. In 2016 there was a small decline in the Catholic sector’s share of students (from 20.4 per cent in 2015 down to 20.2 per cent) while the independent sector remained steady at 14.4 per cent.

In terms of raw numbers rather than enrolment share, there were 3,798,226 school students across Australia in 2016, an increase of 47,253 on 2015. Of those, the vast majority (38,672) went to government schools, 1,511 to Catholic schools and 7,070 to independent schools.

In NSW the enrolment share of government school students was at its lowest in 2015, at 65.3 per cent, increasing slightly to 65.4 per cent in 2016.

The most interesting point to speculate is why this is happening. I personally think the cost is the driving factor here. After the prolonged period of stagnating wage and real income growth for most of the last decade since GFC in 2008, this is starting to bite. We may start to see more of the flow towards public school driving by the perception of better value for money, particularly true for the “better” schools. Some parents may also think that money spends on purchasing properties fall within the school catchment of good public schools is a better investment for money compare to sending the kids to the private schools.

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