Public school advocates have accused the Prime Minister of lying about the future funding of Western Australian public schools following a bilateral agreement to increase funding for all WA schools to 100% of the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) by 2026.
The agreement, signed on Tuesday, formalises the Statement of Intent, signed by both Governments earlier this year.
However, public education advocacy group Save Our Schools says far from fully funding the state’s schools by 2026, the new agreement will deprive them of $1.85bn over the next five years.
“It is a blatant lie to claim that WA public schools will be fully funded under the new schools agreement,” Trevor Cobbold, SOS national convenor, said.
“WA public schools will be funded at slightly less than 96% of their SRS in 2026 and remain so until at least 2029,” Cobbold said. “The WA public school system was a well-funded system five years ago. It is now an under-funded system due to funding cuts by the WA Government.”
However, Cobbold said there are some positives in the agreement.
“The Albanese Government has broken with the arbitrary limit placed on Commonwealth funding of public schools by the Turnbull Government,” he said. “The Commonwealth is no longer restricted to funding only 20% of the SRS of public schools and has agreed to put in an extra 2.5% in this agreement.”
Another positive, says Cobbold, is that the WA Government has agreed to start “clawing back the cuts” it made to its funding share of public schools over the past five years.
“It cut its funding share from 84.4% of their SRS in 2018 to 75% in 2024. Its share will now increase by 2.5% by 2026, but this is still far short of what it was in 2018.”
Cobbold said that the equity targets in the agreement are deficient and could even increase inequity in school outcomes.
“The targets set for Year 12 completion and NAPLAN results by the Heads of Agreement are insufficient to support greater equity in school outcomes,” he said.
“For example, there is no requirement to reduce the proportion of disadvantaged students at the NAPLAN level of Needing Additional Support. This is an extraordinary oversight for an agreement that purports to address inequity in education.”