Government Funding for Independent Schools Under Threat!

I am writing to share with you my concern over the possible negative impact of recommendations made recently by the National School Resourcing Board (NSRB).

Currently non-Catholic independent schools receive commonwealth funding for each child enrolled Prep-Year 12. The level of funding is determined by a model known as the socio-economic status (SES). As the name suggests, the level of funding is determined by the capacity of parents within an independent school’s catchment area, to pay.  So, the higher the SES score, or capacity to pay, the less government funding.

Although independent, Catholic schools belong to a system, and the system receives bulk commonwealth funding. The Catholic Education Office (at least in Melbourne) distributes money to each school as they choose.   Unfortunately, in lobbying to maintain their funding the CEO has launched an ugly attack against other independent schools, arguing that they are over funded at the expense of the independent Catholic system.

(Government schools are funded by each State government.)

Every independent school in Australia is concerned about the impact the NRSB recommendations may have on them. Westbourne is no exception. Whilst we do not know yet if there has been a change to our SES for both Truganina and Williamstown, we are concerned that our SES might change upwards. This would mean that should the Turnbull government decide to implement the NSRB’s recommendations to recalculate the SES score, fee increases at Westbourne and other affected schools are inevitable.

More specifically, it appears that if the current commonwealth arrangements change, the new funding model may well involve a complex process of data matching based on the individual tax returns of those parents who choose to send their children to non-government schools. If implemented, this may mean external decisions would be made based on someone’s value judgement of a family’s ‘capacity to pay’.

It is widely understood that in seeking to provide the kind of education they want for their children; many families are working two or more jobs in order to pay tuition fees. This is their choice and any decision about how they allocate their private resources should be theirs and theirs alone.

It is particularly important, at this time, that Westbourne families remind their parliamentary representatives – government senators and members of the House of Representatives alike – of their commitment to the principle of ‘school choice’ and of Canberra’s recent assurance that the current funding model will be maintained.

Westbourne’s Board is very aware of this looming issue and are watching developments closely.

Our intention is to lobby all politicians, and to make application to the Turnbull government to honor their commitment that no school will be worse off.