Some of the neediest Catholic schools in Victoria are still being short-changed by administrators who are shuffling millions of taxpayers’ dollars to schools in wealthier areas, documents reveal.

While the federal government nominally allocates funding for each Catholic school, this is distributed to Catholic education authorities as a lump sum. They then use their own funding model to distribute the money as they see fit.

Money was diverted away from St Stephens in Reservoir. Credit:Paul Jeffers

Previously secret records taking in 14 Victorian schools show that in 2016, several needy schools had up to 37 per cent of their allocated government funding diverted elsewhere.

St Thomas Aquinas School in Norlane, which has a low socio-economic status score of 73, received $600,000 less from head office than the $2.4 million allocated by the government.

That worked out to a loss of about $4000 per student.