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The Forum > Article Comments > Busting a popular myth on school funding > Comments

Busting a popular myth on school funding : Comments

By Colette Colman, published 30/6/2016

So where do Independent schools get funding for capital works? The answer is, almost entirely from parents. They contribute close to 90 per cent of the cost.

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Yes, and the best possible reason to redirect all federal school funding, plus topped up direct funding via an appropriated GST, (the state's share and responsibility) rolled out as a means tested education endowment that the recipient parents alone control or direct according to their private or public preference!

This pragmatism would eliminate most of the administration costs currently levied by 7 veritable armies of fee demanding double handling state bureaucracies!? Which given the school halls rollout debacle, as a cogent cost adding historical evidential example, could add another 30% to available and pragmatically directed education purpose funds!

It's still the same single bucket of available, if vastly better directed, money!

And sure to make state based pollies and bureaucrats scream blue murder and invent all manner of spurious reasons to continue with the current for them, gravy train, or cost adding counterproductive control? And you won't have to hold your breath!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Thursday, 30 June 2016 11:22:19 AM
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A far simpler solution is for the Fed government to get out of school funding altogether. Let's the state manage it, and there will be less public service jobs duplicated in Canberra.
Posted by Cobber the hound, Thursday, 30 June 2016 1:33:51 PM
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I must take exception to mention of the "school hall debacle", which I know is off topic, but I cannot let this canard pass without refuting it. Across Australia the school halls programme was a resounding success and met all the goals it was intended to achieve.
Every school now has a hall in which the school can assemble, a hall which can be utilised by the school as a money-raiser or as a community centre, a small army of tradesmen was given work, steel and brick and tile construction was maintained and a very large sum of money was pumped into the national economy. At a time when the rest of the world was in either a recession, or depression depending on how you viewed things, Australia's economy stayed buoyant. Every other developed country, except Poland, had 4 or 5 quarters of negative growth.
School hall fiasco!? No way! Inspired forward thinking that avoided double digit inflation and unemployment, last seen when John Howard was a trainee Treasurer, much like Joe and Scott. Let's have NO more of this totally incorrect rewriting of history.
Posted by Brian of Buderim, Thursday, 30 June 2016 1:49:46 PM
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Thanks Collete but to get an appearance on Q & A otr the drum you have to continue to blatant lie that private schools get more funding than public schools. You get the like of Caro who simply perpetuate the myth. The useless hosts never pick up on such nonsense as they want to keep their overpaid positions.
Posted by runner, Thursday, 30 June 2016 2:35:21 PM
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BB: Comparing the cost of private school halls with that of state managed education; the widely reported difference was as high as 30% higher for some states, who just had to cream off their customary management fees? And let's have no more of this dictatorial historical revision by a patent labor stooge? Yawol?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Thursday, 30 June 2016 6:02:34 PM
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So those multi-million dollar Federal Government handouts are just to buy textbooks and not for things like additional boatsheds or the resurfacing of playing fields?

According to My School data, between 2009 and 2014, combined states and federal government annual funding for independent schools rose by $1911 per student, in increase of 30.3 per cent, not adjusted for inflation.

Funding for public schools rose by $1539 per student, an increase of 14.6 per cent.

For Catholic schools, funding rose by $2332 per student, an increase of 30.2 per cent.

Also according to AEU analysis, in 2014 independent and Catholic schools had more resources (recurrent funding) per student than public schools, including fees and other income.

It found there was $17,604 annual funding per student in independent schools, $12,998 per student in Catholic schools, and $12,779 per student in public schools.

I see no reason why taxpayers should have to subsidise what is essentially "a lifestyle choice" for parents to educate their children outside the standard school system.
Posted by rache, Thursday, 30 June 2016 8:19:14 PM
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