23 June 2000

Dear Colleague,

You have recently received a letter from the Federal Minister for Education, Dr David Kemp, putting forward Coalition government propaganda on public school funding. Interestingly, he makes no mention of comparable increases to private schools.

In his own post-Budget press release, Dr Kemp claimed that over the next 4 year funding period (2001-2004) Commonwealth spending on government schools will increase by 21% over the previous 4 years (1996-2000) and in private schools by 40%.

Public schools enrol about 70% of the nation’s students.

In 2000-01, public schools receive 30.3 % of the recurrent funding provided by the Federal government. This is projected to fall to 28.78% by 2003-04. This is down from 35% in 1996. That is not reflective of any shift in student numbers between sectors, which has been minimal (around 1 percentage point)

The increase in recurrent funding to private schools will be from $2,648,230,000 per annum (1999-2000) to $3,666,031,000 (2003-04), an increase of $1,017,801,000 – over a billion dollars a year! The increase in recurrent funds to public schools will be $295,576,000, from $1,185,524,000 to $1,481,100,000.

This means that the dollar amount increase to private schools, with one-third of students, is three times that to public school students.

In Paragraph 4 of his letter, addressing GDP increases, Dr Kemp is careful not to distinguish between increases to private and public schools.

It is important to note that expenditure in education does rise every year, but so too do inflation and enrolments. Dr Kemp makes no reference to such factors – he only quotes dollar amounts, and then only for public schools.

With respect to the Enrolment Benchmark Adjustment, it is important to note that this is money taken away from public schools, which they otherwise would be entitled to this year.

This year NSW has 40 students fewer in public schools, yet has lost $16.9 million. Victoria has 3,000 additional students in public schools and has lost $2.2 million. In Queensland, an extra 5,000 students has seen a loss of $5 million. Across Australia, despite an additional 8,300 students in public schools, $26.74 million has been taken out of public schools funding by the federal government.

That is because the EBA is based on proportions of students in each sector – "market share" – to put it in economic rationalist speak. So, if enrolments are growing at a faster rate in private schools, thus increasing "market share", even if there are losses, or indeed, increases in public school enrolments, the EBA still penalises public schools.

We trust that the information conveyed in this letter will help you inform members of your community as to the true situation with respect to the federal government and their ongoing promotion of private schools at the expense of public education.

Yours sincerely