National Catholic Education executive director Jacinta Collins says Catholic schools are not overfunded.
“The ‘aggregate’ funding for Catholic schools is discounted by families’ capacity to contribute, which in some cases is as much as 80 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard,” Ms Collins said in response to the report, ‘How School Funding fails Public Schools’.
“There is no ‘special’ case with respect to the Choice and Affordability Fund which was introduced to partly remedy the Turnbull Government’s attack on Catholic schools that severely tightened the Capacity to Contribute (CTC) test on family income.
“There is also no ‘parity’ in school capital funding with Catholic school families and communities contributing nearly 90 per cent to build and maintain school facilities.
“When both recurrent and capital funding is taken into account, this represents a saving to the tax payer of about $5.6 billion.
“The truth is that public schools are underfunded but not by the federal government,” Ms Collins said. “It’s time the state and territory governments step up and pay their share so we can end the school funding myths.”
