Are independent schools really just for rich kids?

In the opening pages of her slim new book, public school advocate and fiction writer Jane Caro asserts that Australian governments have, for years, been "pumping money into private education while public schools struggle".

Caro further asserts that whatever money the government gives to public schools it is not enough, and whatever is given to private schools is obviously too much.

The fact that the majority of non-government schools in Australia are faith-based (often chosen because the parents want their children to have a faith-based education) is condemned on two counts: Caro says it undermines the principle of "free, secular and public" education and seeks to "entrench the power and privilege of the church".

If religion is important to parents, says the author, they should send their kids to Sunday school or its equivalent.

Caro sets the tone of her monograph with the title, Rich Kid, Poor Kid. She takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of education funding in Australia, crisscrossing many topics including funding history, funding models, principles, performance trends, and pandemic policies. All this is sprinkled with the author's personal experiences: "When I went to school nobody talked about school choice".

Well, many did then, and many more do now, as increasing enrolments in private schools clearly show.

The important question is, of course, why? Why do so many Australian parents choose private schools?

Is it, as Caro suggests, because of the existing funding system which, in her view, has resulted in "crumbling classrooms", and declining educational performance?

The reader may find that many other explanations skirted over, and the history simplified, with key constitutional funding arrangements not explained. Funding arrangements in Australia are extremely complex, and it would have been useful for Caro, I'm sure, to see the numbers broken down.

Instead, we get unnecessary digressions into peripheral issues, like the performance of Scott Morrison as prime minister during the pandemic, and John Howard's concerns about Anzac Day.

Needed at the beginning of this book was an overview of the Australian school system in terms of enrolments. I can help with that: in 2024, 63.4 per cent of Australian students attended public schools and 36.6 per cent were enrolled in non-government sector (18.6 per cent at Catholic schools and 18 per cent at independent schools).

Readers need these figures to better assess the author's arguments.

Caro states that in 2025-6, the commonwealth contribution to schools – now $33bn – "is carved up unequally between private and public sectors with private schools receiving 62 per cent of the total".

This implies that the commonwealth is the only funder of schools, but actually, public schools receive the most government funding because, under our Constitution, schools funding is a state responsibility.

In 2023-4 public schools (with 64 per cent of students) received from all governments $68bn – that's 75 per cent of total school recurrent funding.

Non-government schools with 36 per cent of the students received $22.8bn or 25 per cent of total funding.

Further, of the $62bn spent by states and territories, over 92 per cent went to public schools. In per capita terms: public schools receive from all governments $26,140 per student, while non-government schools receive $15, 262 per student.

Also ignored is the vast transfer of commonwealth untied and tied grants to the states. Recent federal budget papers show 59.2 per cent of state education spending "was supported by Australian Government payments".

Further, Australian school spending on schools has been growing for decades and according to the OECD, Australia is not a low spending nation. There is no mention of the studies that show many countries spend less than Australia – and they perform better.

Inadequately explained is how federal funding to non-government schools is essentially means-tested. The author argues that this "needs based funding scheme for fee charging schools is the education equivalent of a hunger relief program for the well fed".

She seems not to understand how this process reduces federal funding for schools with wealthy parents.

Also explained inadequately – in less than two pages – is the complex 80:20 per cent split in federal and state funding of the Gonski originated School Resources Standard (SRS) developed following amendments to the Australian Education Act (AEA) in 2017. Readers wanting to understand this complex arrangement, the nature of federal-state financial relations, and the reforms sought – and briefly achieved – will have to look elsewhere.

Caro revisits the debunked claim by Labor that the Abbott government cut "$30 bn cuts" to school funding. This claim has long been disproved, including by the ABC's Fact Check website: there were no such cuts. Not explained is that actual post 2017 federal funding arrangements were embodied in the aforementioned amendments to the AEA, which involved large increases in federal funding with greater per student growth for public schools compared to the non-government sector.

The monograph concludes with eight recommendations to "get the schools that such a rich country deserves". These include plans to "reduce class sizes" to between 10 to 15 students and giving teachers "lots of relief from face to face teaching" which to me seems counter-intuitive. Providing meals, testing eyesight, improving "technological aids", ensuring classrooms are clean and providing vaccinations, are hardly breakthroughs.

Many real, evidence-based ideas, such as direct instruction, receive little coverage, and there is little discussion of phonics, improving teacher quality, tackling classroom disruption, and greater school and principal autonomy, which I guess is the antithesis of the author's support for a single, monolithic, government-run school system. This book is fighting yesterday's battles.

Perhaps the author should have focussed more on the real issue staring her in the face: just why an increasing number of families, including from lower income levels, continue moving at increasing rates to the non-government sector?

That is the question that any good policy analyst should be asking. There must be something those non-government schools are doing right which public schools and their state government masters might consider adopting.

If you want to unravel Australia's complex school funding arrangements and understand the serious future issues facing education, and how they might be addressed, this is not the place to start. The real battle is not for public education for everyone, but for a quality education system that meets the needs of all.