Education Funding

The Labor Government has continued to fund Catholic and Independent schools to the tune of $63 billion1 .

The Australian Education Union believes that the funding arrangement delivers one third of the funding to government schools that teach two thirds of all children.

The Secular Party of Australia understands the importance of public education, and to provide effective outcomes our system needs to be adequately and properly funded.  It’s time to move away from funding private schools so directly and instead move to a system of rebates directly to families that choose a private education.  The rebate would be based on the cost of educating students in the public sector.

The Greens are keen to placate the Catholic Schools, backing away from their policy to reduce private school funding 2 and the Catholic Church again shows why we need to separate church and state when it’s director of Catholic Education says that a cut in funding would mean that Catholic Schools would loose the ability to be “catholic”3

Only the Secular Party of Australia has a fair system of private education funding.  We fully accept that some people may choose faith based education over secular education, but only the Secular Party would fund students and not schools, by providing rebates to directly to parents and not to the school, allowing an equitable funding to all.  The religious and independent schools would then need to fund their own school through fees and fund raising, not government handouts.


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  1.  Prime Minister Gillard announced the extension of funding agreements until 2014 SOURCE
  2. School policy fractures Greens The Age 15 Aug 2010
  3. Stephen Elder – quoted in The Age 15 Aug 2010 The Melbourne director of Catholic Education, Stephen Elder, wrote last week that Greens policies would “force school closures, increase fees and change the ability of Catholic schools to be genuinely Catholic”.
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2 Responses to Education Funding

  1. James says:

    Fails education policy 101 – realising that funding is provided by both state and federal governments.

  2. Could you remind me where the state funding comes from?

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