by Tim Hawkes

The educational funding debate is a vexed issue with many of the facts distorted by political opportunism and entrenched rhetoric which is deaf to different points of view. Even amongst Christians there will be sharp differences in opinion and even some bitterness.

An agreement between the Federal Government and the State Government many years ago has resulted in the Federal Government taking the major responsibility to fund private schools, and the State Government taking the major responsibility to fund public schools.

When there is a different political party controlling Federal Government to State Government, a rather predictable war erupts with each accusing the other of the inadequate funding of their schools.

Last year the Labor controlled States and Territories only increased their spending on education by 2.1 per cent on average, and have therefore been criticised for neglecting education. On the other hand, the Federal Coalition has been criticised for giving too much money to affluent private schools and not enough to the poorer ones.

The Howard Government got rid of the old method of funding private schools, which was condemned by both sides of politics as being an unfair and inappropriate method. A “Socio- Economic Status” (SES) model was introduced based on an assessment of the wealth of a school’s parents. This wealth was measured using Census data from all the postcode areas of Australia.

Labor has had difficulty coming up with a better model, but have pointed out weaknesses with the policy. Funding is based on the average wealth of about 200 households, which allows wealthy parents to hide their wealth by living in poorer areas such as affluent farmers enjoying country postcodes and wealthy parents being more successful in tax minimisation.

The Howard government could avoid the criticism by moving to measure actual household wealth rather than average household wealth. It is more cumbersome and may infringe on current privacy laws, but it may be possible.

Studies at The King’s School have indicated that the School’s SES score would be entirely unaffected if it was to move to assessing individual household wealth.  This indicates that this criticism may not be valid in reality.

Another criticism is that it takes little account of the actual resources of the School.  Schools with magnificent facilities clearly need less funding compared to those with poor facilities.

This argument is persuasive except that it is well to remember that many facilities in private schools are there because of self-help initiatives.  To penalise these initiatives with less funding may encourage a welfare mentality which this country can ill afford. Government would also have to apply this policy to all private schools including Catholic schools and this might be politically dangerous.

One of the biggest weaknesses in the Federal Government funding policy was the decision to protect those private schools whose SES score indicated that they were being given too much government funding. The Howard government agreed to maintain these schools at their higher funding level. This weakens its commitment to their funding model.

Just as under-funded schools were gradually brought up to their proper level of funding over four years, the over-funded schools should have been brought down to their proper level of funding over a number of years.

The Federal Labor Party has indicated a reluctance to fund any private school that charges fees greater than the average cost of educating a child in Australia, which is somewhere between $8,000 to $9,000 per annum for a secondary student.  Others would disagree and suggest that Labor’s policy infringes on the right of parents to choose a school, and of the entitlement of all tax paying parents to some share of the educational tax dollar.

These same people would undoubtedly point out that private schools save the government billions of dollars which they would otherwise have to spend educating private school students.  For example, a secondary student at King’s gets only about quarter of the funding received by a student at an equivalent State school.

Labor wants to limit their political target to the affluent private schools.  They must do this for there are a lot of votes to be lost if they were to attack all private schools. The Labor Party is having some difficulty, for many of their rank and file are fiercely against all private schools. The Australian Education Union has launched a $1million fund to fight the funding of private schools.  The NSW Teachers’ Federation is planning a High Court challenge to cancel the funding to any Christian or religious school.

These initiatives have worried some Australians who are not persuaded that Labor and their followers, despite their rhetoric, are not fundamentally anti-private schools.

It can be safely assumed that in your church and in your community, there will be some who, whilst sharing the same faith and the same neighbourhood, will have very different opinions on the proper way to fund private schools.

Dr Tim Hawkes is Headmaster of The King’s School.