The claim that private schooling saves taxpayers money has been shattered by new research from education researchers from the University of Sydney, University of Wollongong and University of Canberra.
Analysing My School website data, these these researchers found that non-government schools are typically funded at the same or higher level as similar public schools:
Some have claimed that saving to be anything up to $8 billion in recurrent funding each year. But the reality, at least in the case of two-thirds of non-government schools, is that government funding produces no savings at all. Why? Because those schools are now funded at the same or higher level as similar public schools.
Since 2011, in fact, governments would have come out ahead if all new school enrolments had gone to public schools. That would have involved capital expenditure, of course, but even the capital savings created by competing school sectors are less than a third of the amounts frequently claimed…
For schools in the 1000–1049 ICSEA range, the median funding figures are $12,046 (per student in independent schools), $12,274 (Catholic schools) and $12,148 (government schools). The public funding differences between the sectors in that ICSEA range all but disappear — to the point where some non-government schools are being funded more per student than are their government counterparts.
But the 1000–1049 ICSEA range represents only a quarter of all students. How similar is the public funding of schools that a majority of students attend?
Schools in the larger ICSEA range of 950–1099 — basically middle-range schools on this measure — enrol just over 60 per cent of students. The average measures for this much larger group of schools reveal that non-government schools in 2017, depending on their ICSEA, received between 83.4 per cent and 104.9 per cent of the public funding going to government schools enrolling students with similar levels of advantage. The median measures show that non-government schools received between 96.9 per cent and 106.9 per cent of the public funding going to government schools enrolling similar students.
Not surprisingly, the public funding of non-government schools since 2011 has increased at around double the rate of increases to government schools. Adjusted for inflation, the public funding differences widen further.
In financial terms, a majority of non-government schools have become “public” — often receiving even more public funding than similar government schools. Hence the question: to what extent does public funding of non-government schools represent any saving to the public purse? And another question: if most Australian schools are publicly funded, shouldn’t they all have the same obligations to the public that funds them?..
What would be the recurrent cost to government if all existing non-government school students were funded at the same level as government school students with similar levels of advantage and needs?..
If the additional non-government school students had enrolled in the government sector, the annual cost to governments over the seven years would have been $460.7 million rather than the actual cost of $581.2 million. This represents an overspend, by governments, of $120.5 million each year. Private schooling cost — rather than saved — taxpayers’ dollars over this period.
With the dramatic increase in public funding, Australia’s elite private schools are engaging in a spending “arms race”, according to the Saturday Paper:
Recent analysis by The Sydney Morning Herald revealed that among Sydney’s elite private schools, a billion dollars’ worth of projects are in the pipeline…
“My first response,” says Grattan Institute school education program director Peter Goss, “is, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of money!’ ” His second response goes back to the intense competition between high-fee private schools. “It is hard for parents to understand which offer the best academic experience, so they are likely to choose based on what they can see, contributing to an arms race among the wealthiest schools,” he says.
But Australian Education Union president Correna Haythorpe sees an additional factor fuelling the private school construction boom: public money. “What sits behind this expenditure is vast inequality for school capital works funding at the Commonwealth level,” she says. “[Scott] Morrison has provided $1.9 billion in capital funding over 10 years to private schools while systematically dismantling any Commonwealth commitment to public school capital works altogether”…
An education research paper published in February by Save Our Schools calculates that, adjusted for inflation, state and federal government funding for private schools increased by $1779 a student over the past decade, while funding for public schools was effectively cut by $49 a student. This has implications not only for the quality of facilities, but also for hiring teachers, determining class sizes and purchasing teaching materials.
The social cost of this funding imbalance was articulated nicely by Crispin Hull:
The government subsidies of private education and private health also have a high incidental cost. They have has resulted in a swathe of articulate, engaged, middle-class, middle-income people leaving the public systems.
When that happens governments can get away with poor service. There are fewer articulate people to voice demands for better service at the cost of votes.
Further, when the articulate, middle-income people are engaged, they improve the public system. In wealthier suburbs, for example, the public primary schools thrive. Parents are engaged in school activities, parent-teacher sessions and in support generally. These middle-class parents can see the education is good in their area and see they can save on private fees.
Of course, come secondary schooling, they opt for private because they know the importance of connections and the old school tie.
But what if the whole of the Australian education system could be like those public primary schools in wealthy suburbs. Well, it could be. Just axe the government subsidies for private schools so only a tiny proportion of people could afford genuine free-enterprise education.
Same with health. Strip away the subsidies and only a very few would be able to afford genuine free-enterprise health.
It would mean a great proportion of articulate middle-income people would come back to the public sector and no government would get away with long waiting lists for elective surgery or starved public schools. They would be thrown out of office.
If people want to send their kids to private schools, fine. But they should be truly “private” and not receive such fat public funding.
