As the champagne corks pop at midnight on 31 December this year to usher in 2025, Australia’s public schools are hoping to celebrate something they’ve been waiting a lot longer than 12 months for – a new funding agreement that locks in 100% of School Resource Standard (SRS) funding.
In 2023, Federal Education Minister Jason Clare announced the Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System to advise on what reform priorities should be included in the next agreement. To allow for the Review to take place, the current Agreement was extended for 12 months to 31 December 2024.
The Agreement’s three reform directions focus on supporting students, student learning and achievement; teaching, school leadership and school improvement; and enhancing the national evidence base, but as reports highlight growing disparities between public and private school funding, the teachers’ union says urgent action is needed.
The Australian Education Union is pushing to get all public schools funded to 100% of the SRS by 2028 to allow public schools to reduce class sizes, increase the one-on-one support for students and provide more time and classroom assistance for teachers.
The union’s 2024 State of our Schools survey found that 19% of principals didn’t have enough classrooms at their schools, while 40% said they’d run out of space in the next three to five years.
To address this, the Federal Government has pledged more than $215m in funding for large scale capital works projects in the nation’s neediest schools.
However, Greens spokesperson on Primary & Secondary Education, Senator Penny Allman-Payne called the $215m injection to the public system “paltry”, saying the money was used primarily for basic maintenance and repairs, like repairing decrepit and unhygienic toilet blocks and fixing drainage in playgrounds.
“Labor will provide zero ongoing Commonwealth funding to public schools, but will continue to pour public money into the fee-charging private system, with another billion dollars set to go out the door over the next four years,” Allman-Payne said.
“Under Labor, private schools like the Prime Minister’s former high school, which recently pocketed $5 million from the Commonwealth, will continue to expand their facilities while public school kids cram into freezing demountables.”
Allman-Payne said the Greens will use their numbers in the Senate to make sure the Federal Government makes good on a promise made before the election to ensure public schools had the capital funding they need.
The office of Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has been contacted for comment.