A new deal means every school in Australia will be fully funded by 2034. Here’s what you need to know
On Monday the prime minister and the Queensland government signed a landmark deal to ensure every public school in that state would be “fully funded” by 2034. Queensland was the final state to sign such a deal, after protracted negotiations, meaning every school in Australia will be fully funded for the first time within a decade.
What is full funding?
In Australia, school funding is tied to the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS), a mechanism devised by the Gonski review in 2012 to estimate how much money a school requires to meet the full educational needs of its students and reduce the impact of social disadvantage on educational outcomes.
It is a fixed baseline amount (currently $13,977 for primary students and $17,565 for secondary students), with additional loadings for priority cohorts – like First Nations students or students with disabilities – as well as disadvantaged schools.
As it stands, only public schools in the ACT have reached it, at the same time 98% of private schools are overfunded according to the SRS.
What will the funding be tied to?
On Monday, Anthony Albanese stood up alongside the Liberal premier, David Crisafulli, to announce a $2.8bn public schools package to be injected into Queensland over the next decade.
The funding will be conditional on schools implementing a series of reforms and a number of completion targets, including early phonics and numeracy checks, catchup tutoring, greater access to mental health supports and the implementation of explicit teaching.
“Today we reach the point for the first time in Australian history where every student, public and private, will be delivered the school funding that they deserve,” Albanese told reporters.
“It isn’t a blank cheque. This money is tied to real reforms … today’s announcement contributes to an estimated $16.5bn in additional commonwealth funding to public schools across the nation from 2025-2026, for the decade ahead to 2034.
“It represents the biggest new investment in public schools by an Australian government ever.”
Why has it taken so long to get here?
The education minister released the commonwealth’s better and fairer schools agreement last July, which sets out how much the federal and state governments provide towards the SRS.
Under current funding arrangements enacted by the previous Coalition government, states and territories contribute 75% of the funding for public schools and the commonwealth delivers 20%, leaving a 5% gap.
The federal education minister, Jason Clare, proposed increasing the commonwealth’s funding share to public schools by 2.5% to 22.5% – and up to 40% for the Northern Territory due to additional need. Jurisdictions would still need to cover the remaining funding gap.
Western Australia, the NT, the ACT and Tasmania signed on to the agreement. But an impasse was reached with the remaining states, until South Australia and Victoria were able to secure a 5% increase from the federal government in January, bringing their total contribution to 25% in order to reach 100% of funding within the next decade.
Earlier this month, New South Wales jumped on to the deal, leaving only Queensland yet to sign up. With days to go until an election is likely to be called, time was running out for Crisafulli to secure the additional funding.
Queensland’s education minister, John-Paul Langbroek, said the deal “hopefully marks the end of the education wars”. “It’s been protracted negotiations but importantly for Queensland schools … this is going to have a real impact in Queensland in education and across the country.”
“There’s nothing that can’t be solved over a bit of common sense and a cannoli,” Crisafulli added. “Two cannolis, and I bought both of them.”
Will the federal Coalition back it?
As with Labor’s major health funding announcements, the shadow education minister, Sarah Henderson, said on Monday a future Coalition government would match “dollar for dollar” all school funding agreements Labor had forged with states and territories.
But she raised concerns that the school reforms were “inadequate” and lacked detail as the bilateral agreements hadn’t been made public.
But Labor and education unions have been quick to call out previous funding cuts made under Coalition governments.
Clare said on Monday the funding was “all at risk” if Peter Dutton won the upcoming federal election.
“In 2013, the Liberals said there’d be no cuts to our schools. That was a lie. As soon as they got in, they ripped $30bn out and they will do the same thing again if they win this year,” he said.
The Australian Education Union federal president, Correna Haythorpe, urged Dutton to say on the record whether he supported full funding of public schools in his home state and nationwide.
“Peter Dutton has never supported the full funding of public schools and the Coalition can’t give a straight answer about what they would do in government,” she said.
“We need to know whether Peter Dutton will commit to delivering the full 25% commonwealth share of the SRS in every state should he take office.”
