School funding caught in old shemozzle, not driven by evidence

It is astonishing to see Catholic archbishops and school authorities complaining that the Albanese Labor government is letting them down over the Australian Law Reform Commission's report to remove key protections from the Sex Discrimination Act as it threatens to destroy religious freedom and faith-based schools.

The Catholic school sector has about 20 per cent of school enrolments in Australia and the independent sector 15 per cent, most which are also faith based.

What makes this especially astonishing is how those same archbishops and school leaders sided with the Labor Party in 2017 over school funding using robocalls and letters to parents to campaign against the Turnbull Coalition government in favour of Labor candidates at the Longman and Batman byelections over school funding.

Catholic school leaders, no doubt approved by the archbishops, openly boasted that their efforts were crucial in having ALP members elected.

Then ALP leader, Bill Shorten spoke at Catholic schools and promised that Labor if elected, would provide extra $250 million in funding to Catholic schools.

This campaign followed the Turnbull government's success in passing amendments to the Gillard government's Australian Education Act which was full of inconsistencies and special deals especially for Catholic systems.

The Commonwealth Department of Education estimated that these arrangements gave the Catholic sector a billion dollars more than it should have compared to independent schools. it followed decades of special deals for the Catholic sector under successive coalition and Labor governments.

For the first time in the history of federal school funding the successful 2017 amendments put the Catholic and independent schools on the road to a level playing field, increased transparency, at last tackled overfunded private schools, grew funding to public schools faster, required greater state funding especially for public schools and made federal and state funding contributions consistent across the country.

The Turnbull government also made public what each school "attracts" under the legislated needs-based funding model as distinct from what each school received as distributed by the different state Catholic education bodies. It highlighted that many needy Catholic schools did not receive their due amounts.

As most independent schools are not part of any system, they receive exactly what the model stipulates.

This new era of transparency, fairness and equity was short-lived. The Catholic campaigning weakened Turnbull and he was replaced by Morrison in August 2018.

Then education minister, Simon Birmingham was moved sideways.

With an election due in six months, Morrison, was anxious to remove any distractions, so in an act of appeasement announced additional funding for the non-government sector most of which went to Catholic schools thus largely undoing the achievements of the 2017 amendments.

Politics does not drive improved education outcomes. Picture Shutterstock

In the run up to the May 2019 election the new head of the National Catholic Education Commission, the just retired Labor senator Jacinta Collins, not satisfied with the several extra billion dollars Catholic sector had extricated from the vulnerable Morrison government, started campaigning for more for capital works funding.

The primary issue then, as always with the Catholic school sector, was more public funding.

The challenge the Catholic sector has long faced is increasing competition from the independent sector as the latest figures in student growth numbers highlight.

From 2019 to 2023, independent school enrolments grew by 14.1 per cent or 82,319 students compared to an increase of 0.7 per cent students for state schools and 4.8 per cent for Catholic schools.

And let's not let the Coalition off the hook. They failed to stick to their 2017 school funding reforms.

Nor did the Morrison government honour its 2019 election promise to faith schools to introduce religious freedom legislation hence the present standoff in Federal Parliament.

The Coalition has no right at present to take the high moral ground on this issue.

Meanwhile, all these developments combined with the latest actions by the current Albanese government means school funding has returned to the same confused shemozzle based more on political bargaining and with spending more regardless of the evidence as to what really drives improved education performance.