The Victorian Education Minister Ben Carroll has grossly muddled the facts on school funding claiming the Commonwealth Government pays $8 in $10 of the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) to non-government schools.
National Catholic Education executive director Jacinta Collins said the fact is that parents in Catholic schools pay a large proportion of the SRS.
“The Minister infers that the Commonwealth is paying for 80% of the non-government SRS, when the truth is that all non-government school families are required by the Australian Education Act to contribute to the SRS through the Capacity to Contribute, reducing the amount governments pay to non-government schools.
“By far the largest number of ‘private’ schools are Catholic schools serving the same communities as public schools. On average, Catholic school parents contribute 23.6% of the SRS, with the Commonwealth contributing 60.7% and the states and territories contributing only 15.6% on average,” Ms Collins said.
“The truth is Catholic schools get more like $7.63 from both state and federal governments, whereas Victorian public schools currently get $9.10 from both state and federal governments.
“If Catholic school students were educated in the public system it would cost another $4.2 billion to taxpayers each year. This does not include the $2 billion in school building projects invested and paid for Catholic school families each year, or the infrastructure we have built and provided for Australian students over 200 years.”
“The Minister highlights that he is a product of non-government schooling, so we would hope he would see the value of his Catholic education and not attack all non-government schools, especially when his figures don’t add up.”
Catholic education is the largest provider of education in Australia outside of government, enrolling one in five, or 805,000 students and employing over 109,000 staff in 1,756 schools.