Labor is entitled to more than a little schadenfreude at the sight of a Coalition government defending its “Gonski 2.0” funding arrangements against complaints from Catholic education systems. Catholic groups should not try to “bully” the government into a special deal to increase funding and loosen allocation requirements, Education Minister Simon Birmingham said yesterday. Coming from the side of politics that reflexively accused Labor of having a “private school hit list” election after election, that’s rich indeed; that the Coalition once fought Labor moves to increase transparency and accountability for Commonwealth funding to private schools makes it all the richer.
The complaints from Catholic educators are also rich — about as rich as the Catholic schools that have been showered with taxpayer money in recent years. Between 1999 and 2007, Commonwealth funding for non-government schools rose by 111% in cash terms, while Commonwealth funding for government schools rose 61% in cash terms — reflecting the Howard government’s fantasy of an Aspirational Australia in which families would be subsidised by taxpayers to use private schools and private health insurance, buy privatised government business shares and be subsidised by taxpayers to invest in property.
That funding disparity didn’t go away under Labor. From 2008 to 2013, Commonwealth funding for government schools rose 7% in cash terms while non-government school funding rose 24%.
But Catholic schools are complaining that Catholic school funding will, under the government’s proposed funding increases, grow in cash terms by 53.5% over 2017-27 compared to 94% for government schools. The difference won’t even go close to denting the $27 billion extra that private schools received under Howard, Rudd and Gillard over government schools, of which Catholic schools received around half.
And as Birmingham correctly noted, Catholic educators were quite happy with the extra funding the government announced in the 2016 budget, intended to get Gonski off the government’s back for the election. This week’s announcement is yet more funding on top of the extra 2016 funding, but is now drawing criticism.
This is, then, hardly a repeat of the great state aid debate of the 1950s and 1960s. That debate was won nearly two generations ago by the Catholic Church and the Liberal Party. Instead, it’s something much more contemporary — the fury of rent-seekers who are already doing very well from government subsidies complaining that their increased subsidy is not going up as quickly as funding for a competing sector — despite enjoying a massive advantage for a decade and a half.
Tony Abbott, ever-eager for an issue on which to undermine Malcolm Turnbull, thinks differently, and is already invoking Menzies as he demands a “fair go for low-fee private schools” and foreshadows party room hostility. But so far he appears to be conducting a lone crusade. And with immaculate timing, the ABC happened upon an internal Catholic schools report from New South Wales that suggested students in the most disadvantaged diocese in the far west of the state have been disadvantaged by funding allocation to other dioceses.
This is the central issue of the whole schools funding debate — targeting funding at disadvantaged students to improve their performance. That’s the basis of the Gonski funding model from 2012: every student gets a set level of funding, but that is weighted to address disadvantage. The Catholic Church’s argument that it should control the allocation of funding, and it should not have to account for that allocation in the same way as government schools, vanishes if it is disadvantaging its own poorer students. Abbott will not so much be defending his alma mater, the luxuriantly appointed Catholic institution of Riverview, as he will a nontransparent and unfair Catholic education system, demanding even more of a no-strings-attached funding increase than it’s already getting.
Still, Abbott is a master of turning the thinnest, least plausible of arguments against sound, well-supported policy into a highly effective negative campaign.
This time Bernard I am in complete agreement. I live in the Wilcannia Forbes diocese, though I work in the public system. I know that a lot of ancillary programs have been cut in the diocese which has areas of immense disadvantage. Somewhat disappointing to see this, but Abbott was raised by this church and obviously like him, they believe in protecting privilege. Menzies originally gave money for important buildings eg Science labs. My recollection is that it was Whitlam who really got the ball rolling and Howard who totally perverted the system. It a mystery to me why the state should fund anything to do with a religious group. My issue with these wealthy schools is they they don’t have to take anyone. They can discriminate in ways that others cannot and as such they should have nothing from the public purse.
Totally agree. I too work in the state system (currently on LSL in Melbourne & then to retire). My wife & I currently have care of our twin grandsons. Both were at a state school where they were constantly in trouble (when not in our care). I took them to a Catholic school to enrol them at the beginning of the year. As we pulled up I said to my wife ” Well we’ll soon find out how christian they are – she being Catholic school educated).They were enrolled- no interview, nothing – on the spot as the Principal said – “start tomorrow as it is census time” (for the uninitiated that means count the numbers because the year’s funding depends upon it). They boys attended one day. On the morning of the second day the school rang (as the boys were getting ready for school) and we were told not to bring them as “this school is not the right fit for them and perhaps we should look elsewhere”. I turned and said to my wife “well we just found out how christian they are”. On a happy not they are at a small state school and doing well.
Bernard,
I usually enjoy your articles for their accuracy and analysis. But this one is well below your usual standards. It only tells half the story and thus distorts the truth (fake news comes to mind
It appears that only the first part of my comment got through, so here goes a summary of the rest of it:
The States are primarily responsible for school funding and are the major contributors. Unless and until you include funding for government and non-government schools from both State and Commonwealth sources then you have less than half the story.
Bernard, you can do better than this. We look forward to your next attempt.
Not sure how Keane is being unfair considering no public school is currently funded at 100% of the SRS value.
The public debate that led to wasting public funds on religious schools long preceded Howard. Supplying captive audiences of children for Roman Catholic indoctrination is child abuse by parents and the RC church. Good on Simon Birmingham for applying a much needed touch of the brake – however slight – to this scandalous ripoff. My gloomy prediction is that a backlash by the Abbott/Pell/Santamaria metastases in the government party room will lead to a compromising Malcolm Turnbull throwing Mr Birmingham’s reforms under a bus.
“Supplying captive audiences of children for Roman Catholic indoctrination is child abuse “. I went to a Catholic School as did all three of my children. None of us were “indoctrinated” as you suggest. The fact is that Catholic schools ease some of the burden of the state system because each child at a Catholic (or any private school for that matter) gets less total State/federal taxpayer money than a public school student. That inconvenient fact won’t, of course, prevent the haters from hating.
Well said.
Source?
Religious schools deserve no government funding.
Their holding on to a right to discriminate means they must expect that themselves.
I went to an elite Catholic school, and while academically it was ordinary, our religious and football indoctrination was pretty bloody comprehensive. Graduated with an average TER, a raking left foot, a huge helping of catholic guilt and a sense of entitlement. Dunno if taxpayers should be funding that tbh.
Could you imagine this scenario getting Gov. funding: A group of motorists don’t like our roads and decide that they will build their own highway because it conforms to their beliefs and practices. They then demand Gov. money on the grounds that they are relieving the Gov. roads of a lot of traffic with its attendant maintenance costs. That group would be laughed out of the room!
Archbishop Manix should have been told that if the Church wanted private schools they would have to go it alone. While the schools were run by relatively unpaid nuns and brothers, the fees could be small but in the last few decades the proportion of nuns and brothers in the teacher pool has collapsed and the run of the mill RC schools could not charge the fees to stand alone. Nevertheless I believe that all private schools should not get Government money. If that means the State buying up non viable private schools, so be it. Having been schooled by nuns and brothers I have some sympathy for their situation but from my experience they are indoctrination centres for religion. As was pointed out many years ago the overwhelming religious adherents are those indoctrinated as children. Only a small percentage of religious people enter a religion as adults. Finally, I bet Abbott, Bernardi and co. must squirm when they think about Gov. funding going to Muslim schools!
Abbottrocious is far from “..conducting a lone crusade” on this matter – the usual suspects, Hellfire & Damnation Donnelly, Dame David Flint, Blot & the Poison Dwarf have dusted off their old playbook (can’t they even think of new B/S?) screeching on Hateradio.
Comparisons with private health care seem especially attractive to this bunch – wonder why? – as they claim the “government systems would collapse if they had to cope with those providing for themselves”.
Except that (a) they demonstrably are not providing for themselves but trousering vast quantities of tax payer subsidy
and (b) if that wasted money was available for the state systems there would be no problem.
I won’t even bother with their talk of ‘values & standards’ except to ask how the RC into Child Abuse is going.