Counting the cost of the education revolution

Updated

These are Australia's 2,800 private schools — both Catholic and independent.

This private school might be in your neighbourhood. (It's a real school but we've chosen not to identify it.)

It receives more public funding per student than this public school five kilometres down the road. Both teach students from similar backgrounds.

In 2009, it received more public funding than 17 public schools around Australia, all teaching similar students.

By 2016, those 17 had become 132.

It's a trend echoed in hundreds of neighbourhoods across the country.

In 2009, fewer than 1,500 private schools received more public funding per student than a similar public school.

By 2016, that number was more than 2,100.

The billions poured into Australian schools since the dawn of the "education revolution" in 2008 carried a vision: to lift student achievement through more equitable funding.

But an analysis of school finance data compiled by ABC News shows that rather than closing the equity gap, the income divide is wider for many schools than at any point in the past decade.

The investigation uses My School data to reveal for the first time how the steep rise in government funding to private schools has left thousands of public schools with less public funding than similar private schools.

The dataset, which has only been released to a handful of researchers, provides a more detailed picture of school funding than any publicly available data.

"If pouring more money into the system actually increases inequity, then that's astounding from a social justice point of view," says Glenn Savage, a senior lecturer in education policy at the University of Western Australia.

"It means we're using public money to continue the reproduction of advantage and disadvantage rather than creating more equality of opportunity, which is a major part of what education is supposed to do."

This is the legacy of numerous concessions to the private schools sector, experts say — the latest worth $4.5 billion.

Private schools, public funding

Average figures tell us Catholic school students receive 84 cents for every taxpayer dollar spent on public school students and independent school students receive 69 cents.

But averages, which lump together vastly different kinds of schools, reveal only a fraction of the story.

Private schools range from small parish schools to prestigious boarding colleges charging fees upwards of $20,000 per year.

Similarly, public schools range from single-classrooms in Indigenous communities to lauded selective schools in major cities. Nearly twice as many school children attend public schools as private schools.

To account for these differences, we've analysed funding gaps between schools of similar socio-educational advantage, size, location and type (which refers to primary, secondary or combined schools).

Schools receiving the same or more funding than the typical similar public school 40% 30% 20% CATHOLIC 10% INDEPENDENT 0% 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 Schools receiving the same or more funding than the typical similar public school 40% CATHOLIC 30% 20% INDEPENDENT 10% 0% 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

In 2016, 35 per cent of Australia's private schools received more public funding than the typical similar public school, up from 5 per cent in 2009.

Most were low-fee Catholic schools.

We've defined "typical" as the median, which means the private school received more public funding than half of similar public schools. This is a conservative way of looking at it.

If we look at the percentage of private schools receiving more public funding than any similar public school, that figure is 85 per cent, up from 58 per cent in 2009.

The gap favouring private schools has grown... Median gap in public funding $1,000 $900 $800 CATHOLIC $700 $600 INDEPENDENT $500 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Where private schools receive more public funding than similar public schools, the median gap has grown by 76 per cent since 2009 to $970 per student.

Where public schools are ahead, the median gap has shrunk by 16 per cent, to $1,730 per student.

...while the gap favouring public schools has shrunk Median gap in public funding INDEPENDENT $2,600 $2,400 $2,200 $2,000 $1,800 CATHOLIC $1,600 $1,400 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Similar public funding for similar schools might make sense if all schools were open to all children or public funding was the only source of income for all schools, researchers say.

But, on average, public funding makes up 95 per cent of the typical public school's total income, compared to 73 per cent for Catholic schools and 43 per cent for independent schools.

(For public schools, most public funding comes from state and territory governments. For private schools, the Commonwealth is the main source of public funding.)

"For many non-government schools, fees are almost icing on the government-funded cake", says Chris Bonnor, a fellow of the Centre for Policy Development and a former school principal.

"But they are not taking an equal share or even a significant share of the responsibilities and obligations that alone belong to government schools … They choose, in a sense, [which families] they serve."

This has forced public and private schools to compete on a "very uneven" playing field, he says, with one sector funded almost solely by government, and the other funded by both government and parents.

The results are not unpredictable. "Disadvantage is increasingly concentrated, mainly in public schools, increasing their costs and making it even harder to lift student achievement."

This story contains features that are not available on this platform. Tap the image to view the story on the ABC News mobile site or scroll past to keep reading it here. (It really is much better on the mobile site, though.)

Comparing apples with apples

Part of the bedrock of the education revolution was data — specifically, data comparing the performance of similar schools so governments could better target resources.

Yet governments have never applied the transparency of "comparing apples with apples" to individual school funding.

This is how 8,400 schools compare on socio-educational advantage. These schools teach 96 per cent of students.

(We've excluded special schools, very remote schools and schools with no published advantage score. They tend to teach students with the highest educational needs, so it's not really fair to compare them here.)

This advantage index isn't a precise measure of student need but it gives a good indication.

That's because it's based on the factors that have the strongest influence on how students perform at school: parents' education and occupation, Indigenous status and the remoteness of the school.

(It doesn't consider income or wealth.)

These are the medians for each sector in 2016 ("median" meaning half of schools in the sector are above the line and half are below).

Public schools have the lowest median, which means less advantaged students are more likely to attend public schools.

Independent schools, furthest to the right, tend to teach more privileged students, while Catholic schools are in the middle.

This is how it looked in 2009.

The medians are more tightly clustered, which tells us the disparity between sectors has increased since then.

Compare this view to the previous one and you'll see public schools have become more disadvantaged, whereas Catholic and independent schools have become more advantaged.

For all students to have the same opportunities to do well at school, schools teaching students from disadvantaged backgrounds need more resources. This is what the education revolution set out to achieve.

So let's see what it looks like when we compare public funding to educational advantage in 2016.





Schools closer to the top of the chart receive more public funding per student. The diagonal slope of the dots shows that, in general, disadvantaged schools get more public funding.

But this picture also shows that schools teaching similarly advantaged students are divided by substantial gaps in public funding.

Take Greystanes Public, for example, a primary school in Sydney's west.





It is similar in size, location and socio-educational advantage to roughly 300 private schools in Australia.

About half of these private schools received more public funding per student in 2016.





When all income sources are counted Greystanes falls below all but one similar private school.

The smallest income gap is $400 per student; the biggest is more than $23,000 per student.

This is Deer Park West Primary in Melbourne's western suburbs.





It's similar to more than 15 private schools. About a dozen of those received the same or more public funding per student in 2016.

When it comes to total income per student, it drops below all but two similar private schools.

Here, the leading private school is ahead by more than $5,500 per student.

The story is much the same for Eildon Primary in regional Victoria, Griffin State in Brisbane, East Marden in Adelaide and Beecroft Public in Sydney.

Their public funding has failed to keep up with dozens of similar private schools…

… which has left them even further behind when it comes to total income.

Now see how your school compares to similar schools.

Don't forget to switch between "Public funding" and "Total income" to see how its position changes.

This feature does not work on this platform. Tap the image to explore the data on the ABC News mobile site or scroll past to keep reading the story. (We really do suggest you go to the mobile site now...)





Similar schools, different obligations

More than 4,400 public schools — over 70 per cent of the sector — received less public funding than at least one similar private school in 2016.

We've presented national figures but the trend is the same for similar schools in the same state or territory.

In a minority of cases, public funding gaps between private and public schools may be wholly justified — for instance, when a school has a higher proportion of students with disability or from language backgrounds other than English. This analysis doesn't take into account these factors because that data isn't available via the My School website or other public datasets.

But while this affects a small number of individual schools, it doesn't explain the shift for more than 1,500 schools across Australia.

"What is new and exceptional about this analysis — and what should shock all of us — is just how common this situation is," says Peter Goss, director of the Grattan Institute's School Education Program.

"Many advocates of school choice claim taxpayers automatically save money when parents fork out to send their child to a private school. This analysis busts that myth."

The likely explanation is that many private schools get more public funding than they're supposed to, whereas nearly all public schools get less, Goss says. That's compared to the amounts determined by the Government's own needs-based funding formula, the School Resource Standard (SRS).

The Catholic schools sector has previously argued that non-government schools "will always attract less funding than a similar government school" because all schools are funded according to the same benchmark and taxpayers fully fund the SRS for all public schools but only partially fund the SRS for each non-government school.

The problem with this argument is that the SRS often doesn't reflect the actual funding schools receive, said Peter Goss.

"All schools — government and non-government — are notionally funded to the same benchmark. But private schools are often funded close to or even above their targets, while most public schools are funded well under their targets," he said.

"If all schools were funded at their SRS target, then yes, government schools would always receive more public funding than similar non-government schools. That is part of the point of needs-based funding.

"That this is not the reality is a legacy of special deals from both sides of politics, the effect of which was that, 'no school will ever lose a dollar'."

Each student at Greystanes Public in Sydney's west receives $1300 less in government funding than each of the students at the nearby Catholic school. When fees are added, the gap between the two schools stretches to more than $3200 per student.

ABC News: Mary Lloyd

These concessions by successive governments mean the redistribution of money from the least to most needy never came to fruition, according to University of WA's Glenn Savage.

"The education revolution has been a failure on many counts when we judge it against its aims," he says.

"It hasn't made schools more equitable, it mostly hasn't improved student results … Many key measures have gone backwards or stagnated."

These declines haven't been lost on parents. Chris Bonnor's research shows those with the means are shifting their children to more advantaged schools, pulling total investment in the same direction and leaving less advantaged children in a class of their own.

"The result is a worsening divide… that leaves schools at the other end facing a greater struggle," Bonnor says.

His findings are backed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Equity in Education report released in October, which found inequity in Australian schools worsened between 2006 and 2015.

It ranked Australia equal fourth for the most class-stratified education system among OECD nations, with disadvantage twice as concentrated as would be expected if social privilege were evenly distributed across all schools.

A National Catholic Education Commission spokesman said there were "too many variables involved from school to school, sector to sector, to draw conclusions about school funding by simply comparing 'per-student' funding data".

"Some of the growth has been due to the changing nature of Catholic school students. Catholic schools now educate a lot more students from disadvantaged backgrounds now than they did 10 years ago," he said.

He also said funding changes legislated last year would ensure all schools would be correctly funded over the next decade.

An Independent Schools Council of Australia spokesman said public funding growth to government schools "has been restricted due to state government funding policies".

"The vast majority of growth in the independent school sector in the last five years is in low-to-medium fee schools. These are the schools that receive higher levels of government funding overall due to their communities' lower capacity to contribute," he said.

Federal Minister for Education Dan Tehan said that since 2006, on a per-student basis, federal funding to state schools had increased by 78.5 per cent, compared to a 7.7 per cent increase in the contribution from the state and territory governments.

"The federal government will increase its funding contribution for state schools to 20 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard by 2023, reflecting the Commonwealth's role as the minority funder of this sector," he said.

"This is the highest level of Commonwealth investment in state schools since needs-based funding was recommended by the 2011 Gonski Review."

This is the first part of an ABC News investigation into school funding. Read part two: Rich school, poor school: Here's how 8,500 schools rank on the income ladder.

Notes about this story

School finance data was compiled from the My School website by ABC News. It was not supplied by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, which runs the My School website

Public funding includes federal and state/territory recurrent funding

Total income includes federal recurrent funding state/territory recurrent funding; fees, charges and parent contributions; and income from private sources

The My School finance data provides comparable income and expenditure data across individual schools. Detailed information about the methodology and limitations can be found on the My School website, under "Technical and statistical information"

Credits

Topics: education, federal-government, federal---state-issues, educational-resources, access-to-education, schools, government-and-politics, australia

First posted