When the Federal and State Government recently announced packages for Catholic and Independent schools, the backlash was swift.

It reignited the age-old debate between public and private school funding over what is fair. So what is fair and how does it all work?

The one thing that is certain when trying to understand school funding is that it’s complicated.

When the Federal Government announced Gonski 2.0 last year it was touted as a measure to “end the funding wars”.

Instead it created another. The Catholic sector raised fears that it would have to double or triple school fees at some Victorian schools.

Victorian Association of Catholic Primary School Principals president, and St Joseph’s principal, Michael Gray said fees at Warrnambool Catholic schools would have jumped between eight to 10 per cent on top of the annual CPI increases.

But the new Federal funding deal announced in September was a win for the parents of the 3000 students that attend Catholic schools in the immediate Warrnambool region.

The extra $4.57 billion for the Catholic and Independent sector was one of Wannon MP Dan Tehan’s first tasks as new Education Minister and will be rolled out between now and 2029.

Mr Gray said the per cent of students in Catholic schools in the Warrnambool area was higher than the state and national average of between 20 to 30 per cent.

My School data from 2017 shows that about 40 per cent of students in the Warrnambool area attend Catholic schools with about 3000 in primary and secondary education, compared to 4500 in public schools.

When the Andrews Government last month announced it would direct $400 million to the Catholic and Independent sector to upgrade and build more private schools – it drew the ire of many supporters of the public school sector.

Premier Daniel Andrews said the state government simply couldn’t educate Victorian kids without the partnership of Catholic and Independent schools. Then last week he announced a $850 million package for 100 new government school.

When South West Coast MP Roma Britnell made an election pledge this month to direct $5 million to Emmanuel College out of a Liberal-National government’s $400m capital upgrades package to non-government schools, it drew the ire of The Standard readers online.

Mrs Britnell promised that if elected she would provide funding for a new wing at Ardlie Street to enable the school to move Year 11 and 12 students onto the main campus and create a dedicated Year 9 campus on the Canterbury Road site.

So whose job is it to fund Catholic and Independent schools and who is responsible for public schools?.

Mr Gray said that traditionally most Catholic schools were started by parishes who purchased land and built schools without any government funding.

But by the 1970s, the Catholic sector started to decline and after having no luck getting assistance from State Government, it petitioned the Federal Government and the Whitlam government stepped up.

Mr Gray said that because Independent and Catholic schools were considered enterprises they have a lot more costs than the state schools.

“For example: we pay rates, the state schools wouldn’t pay rates,” he said. “There’s a lot of ongoing costs that the Catholic and Independent sector bear that a school in the government wouldn’t have.”

Mr Gray said that until now schools had been funded using a flawed method of assessing their socio-economic status based on the school’s geographical zoning.

He said the classic example was Geelong Grammar which was located in a low socio-economic area and was therefore benefiting from its geographical location. 

The new model being introduced will look at the income of parents whose students attend the school.

“The new Federal funding model means it will be based on the taxable income of families,” he said. “There will be winners and losers.”

Mr Gray also said that it was unfair to compare per student funding of smaller country schools to larger ones because they still needed a certain number of staff for fewer students, and therefore the costs per student would be higher.

“That becomes a very expensive exercise, whereas in Warrnambool the economies of scale mean that you are in a sense subsidising that,” he said.

Mr Gray said that some Catholic schools around the world were fully funded and some get no funding at all but Australia, by world comparisons, was pretty well looked after.

He said the argument was that if you didn’t have the Catholic sector students would all be in the public sector and it costs you more dollars.

Mr Tehan said taxes would soar if the Catholic system was abandoned.

He said the non-government sector runs schools at about a quarter of the cost of government schools. 

Mr Gray said the Catholic sector would argue that we live in a democracy and parents were entitled to a choice in the education, and because they are taxpayers would expect some support from the government. To have that choice comes at a cost, he said. “You’re not going to be fully funded,” he said.

About $1.2 billion of the Federal Government’s recent deal includes a Choice and Affordability fund, but details of what that will look like are still being negotiated.

Mr Gray said that if Australia wanted world-class education for students to be competitive in the global world, a significant investment needed to be made in early childhood and primary education.

Save our School president Trevor Cobbold has described the extent of education inequality in Australia as a national calamity. Citing a recent Unicef report, he said that Australia was the second most unequal education system in the developed world and labeled it disgraceful and scandalous.

His assessment of recurrent Warrnambool school funding for 2016 was that Catholics schools dominated the 1050-1099 ICSEA (Index of Community Socio-educational Advantage) band and had a much higher total income than public schools with some also having a higher total government funding.

He pointed out that several Catholic schools received higher total government funding than most public primary schools in the same ICSEA bands even though they have a higher ICSEA score than the public schools in several cases.

Mr Tehan said the aim of the new Federal funding arrangement was to implement a fairer needs-based funding system for recurrent expenditure.

He said that for some schools it would mean that they got more funding from the government, but that would depend on the personal income of the parents.

He said the Federal Government’s funding to the state schools was growing at a faster rate than funding to the Catholic and Independent schools.

Over next four years it would increase spending by 6.5 per cent for government schools and 5.1 per cent for non-government. Mr Tehan said that since 2006, on a per student basis, Commonwealth funding to state schools had increased by 78.5 per cent compared to a 7.7 per cent from states and territory governments.

“One of the things that is absolutely clear from the time I’ve spent as Education Minister is that the states and territories have a responsibility to lift their education spending as much as the Commonwealth is lifting theirs,” he said.

“What has been pleasing for me is that right across Australia there has been a willingness from all governments, no matter what political persuasion, to ensure that schools, whether they be government or non-government, are getting the funding they require.”

Mr Tehan said that more attention and focus needed to be placed on how school funding for repairs, maintenance and expansion was formulated.

Just compiling the data on recurrent funding in south-west schools is sure to stir up even more debate. 

But the truth is that in many cases it is almost impossible to compare.  The My School website that compiled the data even urges caution when trying to make direct comparisons.

While a simple comparison of how much a school gets per student shows a wide variations between schools, in some cases there is more to the story than just the figures. 

For example, the most recent financial data from the My School website shows that Panmure Primary School students get more than double the average student in other schools.

However, principal Mark Antonio pointed out that the data was skewed because in 2016 it was the base school that paid for the mobile library which serviced four small schools in the area as well as a specialist teacher for a number of schools.

To calculate what schools are allocated, governments use what is called the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) which is an estimate of how much total public funding a school needs.

The base amount for primary school students is $10,953 and $13,764 for secondary.

Other factors are then taken into account to adjust the amount up or down. Factors include school size, location, learning difficulties, socio-economic factors, disability, English language proficiency and Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander students.

In a nutshell, the majority of government school funding comes from the State Government while the majority of funding for non-government schools comes from the Federal Government.