Canberra Catholic schools gearing up to fight funding cuts

So why doesn’t the government just offer to nationalise private schools if they don’t want to fund them? The state has an obligation to educate all its children, and better education and jobs = more revenue, which is great for everyone. I reckon the state should simply pay-per-child and if parents raise extra money for their school, that’s a bonus.

Mysteryman said :

I am a Rabbit™ said :

We shouldn’t be funding private schools at all. .

I disagree with you entirely. Every student should receive funding from the government, regardless of if their parent’s choose to contribute financially to their children’s schooling.

All students at a public school receive funding collectively by way of the school being built in the first place – funded by us, the taxpayers.

The massive fees parents choose to pay to private schools don’t just pay for the teachers and admin, they also are applied to building new facilities and maintaining existing ones.

Most private schools also provide scholarships to some deserving students where the parents cannot meet the full cost of the fees. These means the other parents subsidise the bulk of the scholarship fees and I don’t believe anyone has a problem with that.

The public system used to have something similar called a bursary – not sure if it is still around. This was taxpayer funded.

So, all the checks and balances are already there to meet your claim.

Could I just say this and that is the Gonski scheme is a huge waste of money.

The Catholic Church is one of the wealthiest in the world. How much of Catholic School funding comes from the Church itself?
Private schools fill a necessary role in the community and even though they are funded, they are also a massive saving to the government because less funding is provided to private school students than to public school students.

I have no problem giving money to Catholic schools. Catholic schools were the only schools to get value from the BER while very state school got shafted.

Case in point – Have you seen the cold steel industrial COLA at Evatt Primary school and how it fits in with its surroundings . Go down the road to the catholic school and look at the beautiful new building they got with their BER money.

This is such a complex issues of funding and school performances that it is impossible to answer the problem easily. The Government gives a school extra funding if they have a student from a low Socio Economic ABS SA1 (note that every school students address is geocoded by the federal department to determine this score – I think a school needs roughly 80% of address data to be geocoded to a SA1 level to be able to reliably determine a score and appropriate funding per student).

The lowest 25% of SEIFA Disadvantaged areas are considered low SES. But….. The issue for the ACT is that very very few areas qualify under this model, as SEIFA scores are generally very high right across Canberra. This means that a student from Harrington Ct Kambah or Langdon Ave Wanniassa is roughly funded by ACT & Federal Government to the same dollar amount as a kid from Mugga Way Red Hill or Empire Circuit Yarralumla. Surely people can see the issues with the way this model works for Education in Canberra.

The outcome is that schools in Tuggeranong (both Public and Private system) are performing under NAPLAN and PISA much worse than schools in other parts of Canberra. But these underperforming schools only get limited extra funding per student because only a few kids live in Australia level low SES pockets in these suburbs.

A much better model for Canberra that would help reduce the gap between poor School performances in Tuggeranong & West Belconnen (up to the well performing schools in wealthier areas) would be for the ACT Government to adjust funding based on the 25% most disadvantaged kids at the ACT level (not against the most disadvantaged 25% at the Australia level). This may slightly hurt some well performing public schools in rich inner city Canberra but would certainly help poorer performing schools in struggling areas.

Needs based funding is a fair system at the Australia level (The Greens are right on top of this issue I believe, and good to see they are supporting it), but the vagaries of Canberra socio demographics means the model doesn’t suit the ACT student population properly. I imagine Marist will have more kids from Kambah & Wanniassa than Grammar will but won’t be funded extra for them. I also imagine the parents of many Marist Private school kids from Tuggeranong are more middle class than rich, but don’t want to send their kids to the worst performing public schools in Canberra.

wildturkeycanoe said :

Private schools should not get any government funding, full stop. By definition, private schools should be funded by the parents or whoever funds the running of the organisation running them. Church organizations already get wonderful tax breaks, then they cry out for more! If the parents can not afford the money to keep them in private school when funding stops, why is it my burden to provide their child with a top notch education. They can put up with mediocrity like the rest of us poor people.

When I was at school I was a member of the Melrose Lifting Club. One of the former science labs was a small gym with a few weights and a barbell.

Around ten years ago Marist next door opened the Marcellin Hall and the gym looks like Club Lime with dumbbell racks and a full compliment of gym equipment.

In 2010 Melrose held an open day and reunion and the small gym was gone. There was a new sports building which was just a huge basketball court. I asked the teacher where the gym and weights were and she said “We wanted to put one in but the funding ran out”.

I had to laugh when my year 9 twins got home yesterday and said the only topic of conversation at school was all the kids asking their friends if they were going to be “Gonski” next year.

wildturkeycanoe said :

Private schools should not get any government funding, full stop. By definition, private schools should be funded by the parents or whoever funds the running of the organisation running them. Church organizations already get wonderful tax breaks, then they cry out for more! If the parents can not afford the money to keep them in private school when funding stops, why is it my burden to provide their child with a top notch education. They can put up with mediocrity like the rest of us poor people.

Don’t you understand that if those kids move to public schools, you’ll have to pay more to support their education than is currently the case? Total government recurrent funding to private schools averages only 58% of the amount per student for government schools. On top of that the private school parents/organisations pay for the construction of new buildings.

JessP said :

A small number of schools will be worse off – a majority will be better off. If the schools are already over funded according to the Gonski model why the issue?

I also find the statement “An increase to school fees from 1 January 2018, with fees increasing by approximately $3,000 per student per year by 2027”. I would fully expect that fees would increase by that amount anyway.

This is scaremongering by the Catholic Church and is totally abhorrent. Would they prefer a low socio economic area school who doesn’t have the additional resource of parents able to pay fees to forgo funding so they don’t have to?

Give us a break.

For family spooked by the thought of rising fees – send your kids to the public schools. That’s what they are there for.

Have you had a look at the Dept of Education School Funding Estimator? All but 3 ACT private schools are set to receive less funding in 2027 than they’re receiving now, but only a few are over resourced according to the model. That means that parents with kids in schools that are not over resourced will have to find the reduction in government funding plus the entire increase in costs over the next 10 years. As to parents sending their kids to public schools to save paying fees, that will lead to a massive blow out in state education costs while the feds will save money.

Private schools should not get any government funding, full stop. By definition, private schools should be funded by the parents or whoever funds the running of the organisation running them. Church organizations already get wonderful tax breaks, then they cry out for more! If the parents can not afford the money to keep them in private school when funding stops, why is it my burden to provide their child with a top notch education. They can put up with mediocrity like the rest of us poor people.