Tensions undermining equitable school funding: insights from Australia

ABSTRACT

School funding policy in Australia not only promotes educational equity in some ways but also creates substantial between-school resource inequalities due to its embrace of market ideologies. School funding policies are designed to promote school choice and competition, based on the assumption that they are both a right and an effective lever for improving educational outcomes. School funding is used to create an educational marketplace with varying ‘price points’, leading to the acceptance of a two-tiered system of basic provision via the public sector and enhanced provision for those willing to pay via the private sector. Political commitment to making school funding more equitable has been largely absent. Marketisation is the mechanism by which schooling maintains its capacity to reproduce social inequality without evoking class-based discourse or anxiety.

KEYWORDS:

• School funding
• marketisation
• educational inequalities
• school resources
• Australia

Introduction

This special issue on school finance seeks to examine critically inequities related to school finance and funding in a range of countries. This article examines critical issues related to school finance in Australia, an interesting case study for international readers as it has several features useful for informing theoretical insights. First, it has a very high level of human development, ranking fifth in the world on the latest Human Development Index (United Nations Development Project 2024), the only ‘Five Eyes’ country in the top 10.¹ Its citizens enjoy a very high standard of living and life expectancy, supported by a system of national healthcare and a generous social welfare net. Its levels of income inequality and poverty are moderate, similar to Canada but substantially less than the USA (Perry et al. 2024). Thus, Australia is a prosperous country, which suggests that it has the financial means to ensure adequate financing of all schools. However, between-school funding and resource inequalities are substantial and these are in place either by design, or due to a lack of political will to change the status quo. I argue that both of these forces derive from the same impulse to protect the capacity of schooling to reproduce the educational and social advantage of elites and the professional class. These inequalities and their causes are related to the structure and organisation of Australian schooling, in particular, its embrace of educational marketisation and privatisation. For international readers, Australia provides a cautionary tale of how substantial educational inequalities can exist even in a prosperous country with low levels of poverty and a strong social welfare net, due to policy decisions and ideological orientations. It also provides a cautionary tale about the limits of transparent school funding arrangements and data sharing, suggesting that these mechanisms can hinder educational equity rather than promote it.

In this article, I first describe the key features of Australian schooling (K-12) that are relevant for examining school finance critically. I then describe the theoretical framing related to educational marketisation and its relevance to this study. I then draw on publicly available data about school funding to illustrate patterns in funding inequalities, further expanding on the work by MacDonald et al. (2024). I argue that the adoption of marketisation ideologies has led to substantial inequities between schools and that these inequities further reproduce class-based social inequalities. Publicly available data are useful for uncovering these inequalities but paradoxically, they also provide a mechanism for justifying arguments that work against educational equity in school finance. Finally, the public provision of school finance data is not enough to reverse the reproduction of these inequalities in the absence of political commitment to change the status quo. The reasons underlying this political apathy are discussed.

Theoretical perspectives

This study draws on theoretical perspectives from the sociology of education and educational marketisation. I argue that marketisation is a mechanism by which educational structures and policies often reproduce educational and social inequalities. Drawing on these perspectives, I show in particular how marketisation impacts equity in Australia via school funding regimes. Put another way, I show how marketisation is the mechanism by which schooling maintains its reproductive function without evoking class anxiety. This is important, especially in a country that prides itself as an egalitarian and classless society of equals (Annese 2022).

It is commonly held in the sociology of education that schooling often reproduces social inequalities (Backer and Cairns 2021; Connell 2013a). This happens through several mechanisms. For example, schooling privileges the cultural capital of middle-class and professional households, thereby providing children and youths from these backgrounds an institutional experience that reinforces their status (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). Youths and children from working-class or socially marginalised backgrounds often respond to this misalignment with oppositional attitudes that further entrench their disadvantaged social status (Ogbu and Simons 1998; Willis 1977). Unequal educational experiences and opportunities are often allocated to different social classes, with the privileged classes frequently receiving a greater share of these human, pedagogical and material resources (Anyon 1981; Darling-Hammond 2008; Pokropek, Borgonovi, and Jakubowski 2015). All of these mechanisms reproduce the educational advantage of socially advantaged groups, while also reproducing the educational disadvantage of socially disadvantaged groups.

Educational marketisation is based on the ideology of neoliberalism, in which quality, innovation and efficiency are believed to be best promoted via the free market principles of choice and competition (Whitty and Power 2000). According to this line of thought, schooling becomes more efficient and effective because competition incentivises schools to improve their offerings and services (Chubb and Moe 1990). Educational marketisation is growing across the globe and is being promoted by many educational authorities and governments (Harris 2024; OECD 2019).

Despite its growth, educational marketisation is associated with several negative outcomes. Rather than promoting innovation, marketisation can reduce innovation and diversity because schools often adopt similar practices and offerings in their quest to attract the ‘desirable’ students that will benefit their performance on league tables (Lubienski 2009; Lubienski and Perry 2019). Marketisation has been linked with school segregation, which in turn is linked with stunted academic outcomes (Lubienski et al. 2022; Perry et al. 2024). Overall, marketisation in schooling is neither efficient nor equitable (Harris 2024). Rather, as argued by Connell (2013a), it is a mechanism by which schooling reproduces social inequalities, primarily through the unequal allocation of educational goods.

The marketisation processes of school choice and school competition are widespread in Australia. School choice is embedded in the Australian legislature as a right (Australian Government 2004). It is enacted through the ability of public schools to enrol out-of-area students at their discretion; through the establishment of selective programmes in public schools that enrol students based on merit rather than residence within the catchment; and through the large private school sector, which provides school choice options in all localities. School choice through the private sector is further enabled by school funding regimes that provide public funding to subsidise private schools (more about this below). The Australian Government supports the provision of a large and diverse offering of schooling from which households can choose, and the use of public funding to promote this diversity of choice (Australian Government 2011). Australia has one of the highest levels of school competition among member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). With more than 90% of students attending a secondary school that competes with at least one other school for students, Australia has the greatest degree of school competition among OECD member countries other than Belgium (OECD 2019).

The context of Australian schooling

Governance is shared between Australia's seven states and territories and the federal government. Each state/territory (hereafter called jurisdiction) has an education authority, typically called the Department of Education, which funds and oversees all public schools and also sets standards and requirements for private schools. At the federal level, educational governance is directed by the federal Department of Education and its authority, the Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority (ACARA). Because of the significant role played by jurisdictions, it is more accurate to say that Australia has several education systems; on the other hand, these between-jurisdiction differences are smaller compared to differences with other countries, so it is appropriate to consider the Australian education system as a whole (Parker, Guo, and Sanders 2019).

Australia has a national curriculum that comprises learning areas and standards. It is established by the federal government and is required to be taught in all schools. Jurisdictional departments interpret and translate how the national curriculum will be taught in their state or territory. This approach ensures broad consistency across all schools and jurisdictions but also allows individual jurisdictions to tailor the curriculum to their particular needs. The national curriculum is developed and maintained by ACARA.

Sitting alongside its national curriculum is a national testing and reporting regime, called the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). NAPLAN is the only nationally administered assessment of students’ literacy and numeracy skills. It is administered in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 of every school student's career by ACARA. Schools receive individual feedback on their students’ scores, as does each student. School averages on NAPLAN are reported for all schools nationwide on the MySchool website, a website operated by ACARA that provides in-depth details about all schools in Australia. The stated purpose of MySchool is to meet the demands of marketisation, in particular, the values of choice, transparency and accountability:

… support national transparency and accountability of Australia's school education system … ensuring schools and school systems are accountable to parents/carers and to the broader community … My School helps parents and carers have informed discussions with teachers and schools, and make informed decisions about their child's education. However, it should not replace visting schools and speaking to teachers and principals to get an understanding of what each school offers its students.’ (MySchool, n.d.).

Australian schooling is comprised of two sectors: public (government) and private (non-government). Public schools are managed and operated by the state/territory jurisdiction (e.g. the Victorian Department of Education). Private schools are either managed by the local Catholic diocese, or are operated independently. For this reason, non-government schools in Australia are further divided into Catholic and Independent schools. Private schools have a long history in Australia and enrol a substantial proportion of students. In fact, the proportion of students that attend a private school is one of the largest among economically developed countries, with more than a third of all K-12 students attending a private school, and more than 40% attending a private secondary school (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2020).

The school sector in Australia is patterned by student socioeconomic composition. Most students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds attend public schools, whereas most students from high socioeconomic backgrounds attend independent schools (Chesters 2019). The average socioeconomic composition of all schools in each sector is lowest in public schools, middle in Catholic schools, and highest in independent schools (Connors and McMorrow 2015). This does not mean that all public schools have low socioeconomic compositions, nor that all independent schools have high socioeconomic compositions. Academically selective public schools tend to have very high socioeconomic compositions (Rowe and Perry 2022). In the aggregate, however, stratification by socioeconomic status across the three sectors is strong. These school socioeconomic composition patterns are related to the ways in which schools are funded (Connors and McMorrow 2015; Watson and Ryan 2010), which is described in more detail in the following section.

School funding mechanisms

Schools in Australia are funded through several sources. Public schools receive most of their funding from their state/territory jurisdiction, but most schools also receive funding from the federal government. Private schools receive funding from private sources (i.e. fees paid by families of enrolled students), as well as public funding primarily from both federal and but also from the relevant state/territory jurisdiction. Public funds are generated from taxes levied on income, goods and services. Taxes are gathered by the federal government and then distributed to state/territory governments (Parliament of Australia 2014). Per-pupil funding is the main basis for funding schools, and schools are given autonomy to set their budgets within the amount that they receive from their governing body.

The amount of public funding that a school receives is based on the School Resource Standard, a per-pupil allocation which is determined by the federal government. The SRS is currently calculated at $13,557 AUD for primary students and $17,036 AUD for secondary students (Australian Government n.d.). The SRS is considered the minimum amount that is required to provide an adequate educational experience. Schools receive public funding based on the SRS and their enrolment size. Acknowledging that some cohorts of students and schools require additional funding to provide sufficient learning conditions, the SRS of a given school is further adjusted via two school-level (school size and school location) and four student-level loadings (student with disability loading; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island loading; socio-educational disadvantage loading; and low-English proficiency loading) (Australian Government n.d.). This means that smaller schools, schools in rural/remote locations, and schools that enrol larger proportions of underserved students or students with special needs receive additional funding. For public schools, 80% of the SRS is meant to be provided by the relevant state/territory jurisdiction and 20% by the federal government. The split is reversed for private schools (i.e. 80% of the SRS is provided by the federal government). Public funding to private schools is reduced by a school's Capacity to Contribute (CTC), which is based on the private income that a school is able to generate through fees and assets (Australian Government n.d.). The SRS amount for private schools can be reduced by up to a maximum of 80% (Australian Government n.d.). This means that high-fee private schools still receive some public funding, even though their per-pupil funding exceeds the SRS. On the other hand, 98% of public schools are not receiving the full amount of SRS, whereas almost all private schools are (Australian Government 2023).

Australian school funding policy is designed to promote equity in several ways. First, public schools are funded at the level of the state/territory, not the local area, which means that the funding provided to public schools within a given state, at least, does not substantially vary. All public schools within a given jurisdiction receive the same per-pupil funding. Second, by establishing the School Resource Standard (SRS), the federal government has established a minimum funding baseline, calculated as the amount of total funding (from both the federal and state governments) that a school (either public or private) needs to meet the educational needs of its students (Australian Government n.d.). The aim is to ensure all schools are receiving sufficient resources. And third, the SRS is based on the acknowledgement that some schools need additional funding to meet the needs of their students. Taken together, these features of Australian funding ensure that all schools receive an agreed-upon baseline amount that is further adjusted to compensate for school-level and student-level educational disadvantage.

Despite these aims, however, school funding in Australia is inequitable in several ways. In the following section, I enumerate these tensions, drawing on the literature as well as data from the MySchool website.

Inequalities patterned by school socioeconomic context, size and sector

In this section, ‘Introduction’ presents data compiled from the MySchool website to illustrate how funding is allocated to schools with different socioeconomic profiles and from different sectors. I draw on data from the state of Western Australia, in particular, low- and high-SES schools in Perth, its largest city with more than two million residents, as well as selected regional/rural communities from the state. I restricted the analysis to Western Australia because I am familiar with its major cities and regions and accompanying school markets, thereby ensuring that the schools chosen are representative of larger categories. My analyses are illustrative and indicative. Thus, not all schools in the Perth metropolitan market are included but schools in each sector and socioeconomic composition category are representative of other schools. Similarly, not all regional towns are included in the analyses but several key towns, scattered throughout the state, are shown to illustrate general patterns. After presenting these data from MySchool, I enumerate several tensions that undermine equitable funding.

Both tables show how funding is allocated, at times inequitably, between schools, and how these inequitable allocations are patterned by school characteristics. I summarise these patterns below.

On the one hand, we can see that the most socially disadvantaged public schools receive per-pupil funding amounts that are greater than their high-SES public school counterparts. For example, Table 1 shows low-SES Yule Brook College receiving $21,504 per pupil, compared to $13,595 for high-SES Rossmoyne Senior Higher School. This is a result of needs-based funding formulas that provide extra loadings for traditionally underserved student groups. On the other hand, the total income available to the school is much smaller in low-SES schools than in high-SES public schools because the former tend to be much smaller due to their residualised profile. Yule Brook College, for example, has a total net recurrent income of $6,451,194 per year, compared to $32,384,250 per year at Rossmoyne. Public schools, especially in middle and working-class communities, tend to not reflect the local community socioeconomic profile because middle-class and aspirational families choose a non-local school (Teese 2011). Thus, while the per-pupil funding amount is higher, many if not most low-SES schools still struggle to offer a wide range of curricular subjects (Dean, Roberts, and Perry 2023; Perry and Lubienski 2020), resources (Australian Education Union 2023; Sullivan, Perry, and McConney 2013) and learning environments (Perry, Lubienski, and Ladwig 2016).

Table 1. Metropolitan secondary school characteristics and funding sources, in the Australian dollars.

	Enrolment size	% Indigenous	% Bottom SES quartile	% Top SES quartile	Per-pupil funding – public (state)	Per-pupil funding – public (federal)	Per-pupil funding – private (parents)	Per-pupil funding – private (other)	Per-pupil funding total	Total net recurrent income
Low-SES public schools
Yule Brook College	322	39%	63%	4%	$17,065	$4046	$123	$270	$21,504	$6,451,194
Cecil Andrews College	856	26%	62%	3%	$13,420	$3201	$170	$114	$16,904	$14,470,042
Armadale Senior High School	707	9%	58%	3%	$15,178	$3597	$263	$69	$19,106	$13,890,236
Southern River College	932	10%	58%	3%	$13,367	$3158	$308	$86	$16,919	$15,548,258
Byford Secondary College	1409	7%	40%	7%	$12,271	$2884	$350	$124	$15,629	$22,912,086
High-SES public schools
Rossmoyne Senior High School	2497	0%	3%	54%	$10,381	$2440	$548	$226	$13,595	$32,384,250
Churchlands Senior High School	2564	1%	5%	50%	$10,029	$2350	$726	$206	$13,312	$36,287,214
Shenton College	2693	1%	3%	64%	$9996	$2335	$748	$340	$13,419	$34,647,697
Applecross Senior High School	1772	1%	5%	47%	$10,544	$2476	$784	$42	$13,846	$23,815,814
Perth Modern High School	1460	0%	1%	80%	$11,398	$2655	$1115	$658	$15,827	$22,790,518
Low-fee private schools
Australian Islamic College (Kewdale)	1955	0%	34%	13%	$2915	$10,970	$2170	$1,210	$17,265	$34,564,711
St John Bosco College	777	1%	12%	21%	$2734	$12,911	$2347	$110	$18,102	$10,951,889
Holy Cross College	1142	2%	17%	17%	$3040	$12,452	$3458	$142	$19,091	$20,771,335
Ursula Frayne Catholic College	1390	1%	6%	42%	$3275	$8793	$4,951	$67	$17,087	$23,135,363
Emmanuel Catholic College	1162	2%	18%	16%	$3408	$9209	$5,570	$259	$18,447	$20,549,862
Moderate-fee private schools
Newman College	1734	1%	4%	46%	$3,129	$7773	$7394	$416	$18,712	$32,166,770
Christian Brothers	891	1%	6%	33%	$3,464	$8409	$9448	$174	$21,495	$18,442,602
Iona Presentation College	1228	1%	3%	54%	$3,077	$8407	$11,325	$656	$23,464	$28,250,762
Santa Maria College	1306	0%	4%	49%	$6,428	$3115	$12,018	$157	$21,717	$28,297,691
Trinity College	1262	3%	5%	48%	$3236	$8041	$14,240	$911	$26,428	$33,590,182
High-fee private schools
Methodist Ladies College	987	1%	2%	75%	$2313	$2873	$25,617	$2,078	$32,881	$32,847,904
Christ Church Grammar	1712	1%	1%	75%	$2307	$2,881	$25,633	$2,869	$33,690	$58,014,500
Scotch College	1384	2%	1%	74%	$2220	$3451	$26,199	$988	$32,857	$45,895,153
Hale College	1612	2%	3%	66%	$2300	$4771	$27,076	$701	$34,847	$55,057,668
Presbyterian Ladies College	940	5%	3%	65%	$2205	$3523	$28,400	$821	$34,950	$34,984,450

Source: myschool.edu.au.

Table 1 also shows that per-pupil funding varies by socioeconomic composition and school fee charges in the private school sector. In low-fee private schools, which tend to have mixed socioeconomic profiles, the per-pupil funding is slightly higher than that enjoyed by low-SES public schools, which enrol a much larger proportion of students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds and/or Indigenous backgrounds. Unsurprisingly, per-pupil funding increases as the amount of school fees increases. Perhaps surprising, at least to someone who is unfamiliar with the Australian context, is the amount of public funding that is provided to very socially privileged and financially exclusive private schools. On average, Table 1 shows that these schools are receiving approximately $5k per student in public funding.

Table 2 compares school funding in a handful of regional/rural communities in Western Australia. Given the large private school sector in Australia, it is noteworthy that most rural towns have both private and public schools. Table 2 shows how public schools in rural communities always enrol a larger proportion of students with an Indigenous and/or low-SES background. Some of these schools, especially those with a high proportion of Indigenous students and that are located in remote locations, receive a much higher per-pupil funding amount than other schools. For example, one school from Table 2 receives more than $44k per pupil. In general, however, private schools in rural/remote communities receive higher per-pupil funding than their public school counterparts in the same community, despite the fact that the public schools almost always enrol a much larger proportion of traditionally underserved students. In some instances, private schools receive more public funding than their public school counterpart. For example, Esperance Senior High School receives $18,169 per pupil in public funding (combined state and federal), compared to Esperance Anglican School's combined public funding of $23,471.

Table 2. Rural secondary school characteristics and funding sources, in Australian dollars

	Sector	Enrolment size	% Indigenous	% bottom SES quartile	% top SES quartile	Per-pupil funding – public (state)	Per-pupil funding – public (federal)	Per-pupil funding – private (parents)	Per-pupil funding – private (other)	Per-pupil funding total	Total net recurrent income
Albany; outer regional; 420 km south of Perth; population 35k
North Albany SHS	Gov	827	11%	40%	8%	$14,919	$3,516	$243	$122	$18,800	$15,716,882
Albany SHS	Gov	852	6%	29%	14%	$13,551	$3,192	$282	$83	$17,108	$15,602,227
St Joseph's College	Non-gov (cath)	617	4%	21%	16%	$2891	$11,991	$2,213	$229	$17,324	$10,325,080
Great Southern Grammar	Non-gov (ind)	608	4%	7%	36%	$2783	$11,020	$9,551	$656	$24,009	$16,422,301
Geraldton; outer regional; 420 km from Perth; population 42k
Geraldton Senior High School	Gov	918	31%	53%	4%	$15,219	$3,563	$189	$86	$19,057	$18,160,993
Geraldton Christian College	Non-gov (ind)	372	14%	30%	17%	$2565	$13,478	$3,271	$3	$19,317	$7,649,361
Nagle Catholic College	Non-gov (cath)	1151	8%	22%	16%	$3480	$11,213	$4,356	$1,172	$20,221	$22,121,715
Geraldton Grammar	Non-gov (ind)	518	1%	9%	38%	$2561	$10,695	$7,634	$1,586	$22,476	$12,226,960
Kalgoorlie; outer regional; 600 km from Perth; population 28k
Kalgoorlie-Boulder High School (Y8-10)	Gov	892	28%	59%	3%	$14,148	$3,296	$136	$406	$17,986	$15,018,288
Eastern Goldfields College (Y11-12)	Gov	354	16%	34%	9%	$18,738	$4,417	$402	$405	$23,962	$9,297,174
John Paul College (Y7-12)	Non-gov (cath)	705	4%	27%	16%	$3397	$11,720	$4,721	$661	$20,498	$13,487,792
Broome; remote; 2045 km from Perth; population 15k
Broome High School	Gov	801	40%	39%	10%	$20,430	$4,806	$344	$248	$25,828	$21,901,847
Champion Bay SHS	Gov	759	31%	50%	7%	$16,392	$3,866	$241	$133	$20,632	$15,461,668
St Mary's College	Non-gov (cath)	729	58%	41%	15%	$3581	$24,674	$1,593	$827	$30,674	$22,300,220
Esperance; remote; 730 km from Perth; population 14k
Esperance SHS	Gov	843	15%	41%	9%	$14,702	$3,467	$328	$400	$18,898	$16,660,151
Esperance Anglican School	Non-gov (ind)	210	3%	28%	12%	$3233	$20,238	$2,921	$220	$26,611	$5,535,151
Karratha; remote; 1520 km from Perth; population 22k
Roebourne District High School	Gov	123	99%	86%	0%	$35,523	$8,875	$45	$57	$44,501	$5,357,871
Karratha High School	Gov	1168	27%	40%	6%	$17,069	$4,010	$273	$109	$21,461	$26,397,405
St Luke's College	Non-gov (cath)	428	5%	13%	18%	$3378	$13,174	$6,528	$1,547	$24,627	$9,949,369

Note: School funding including Gonski has focused on disadvantaged schools without seeing them in the larger context of mutually constituted advantaged/disadvantaged; in other words, no effort to seek equity, rather focus is on improving the lowest schools (Kenway 2013).

Source: myschool.edu.au.

Gonski Review also supported the role public funding of private schools as a way to promote diversity of school offerings and school choice; ‘A strength of Australia's schooling system is the diverse range of schools and schooling experiences available to students and their parents across the government and non-government sectors. Arrangements for public funding should foster this diverse provision and allow choice by parents (Australian Government 2011, 150).

Marketisation increases inequality by design, it is not an accidental side effect (Connell 2013b).

Conclusion – equity means equal provision at the minimum, with extra for the more needy; anything less leads to major inequalities, segregation, stratification etc. Not enough to focus on minimum standards; must focus on equal/equitable allocations, at least in terms of public funding. Allowing public funds to support a two-tiered system is only going to lead to inequities and inefficiencies, just like Harris says. Inequities are obvious, inefficiencies are there too – stunted underachievement, oversupply, and bad use of funds (Connor). Schooling isn't a market, so can't expect market principles to work (Harris).

The mechanism by which public funding is provided to private schools is complex. Schools can use public funding for both operating expenses and capital costs. The federal government is the main provider of public funding to private schools. Public funding is needs-based, with private schools receiving funding based on their capacity to meet the federally defined School Resource Standard through fees and other private sources, the number of students they enrol, and the socioeconomic profile of the communities where their students reside (Clark n.d.). While this formula attempts to be equitable, its full realisation has not been achieved, with only 2% of public schools receiving their established School Resource Standard, compared to 95% of private schools (Australian Government 2023). Moreover, federal funding allows high-fee private schools to receive up to three times the School Resource Standard (Goss 2019). Ensuring public schools receive the full School Resource Standard could have a large impact on teaching and learning (Goss 2019).

On the other hand, as funding is provided on a per-pupil basis, schools with larger enrolments enable economies of scale, providing these schools with many more opportunities to enhance teaching and learning. School size is related to school composition in Australia, with lower socioeconomic status schools being much smaller as a result of their residualised status (Connell 2013b; Lamb 2007). In an educational marketplace where families are free to apply for admission to any public school in their state, schools with lower socioeconomic profiles are typically not attractive to middle-class and aspirational families (Teese 2011).

While private schools receive public funding, public schools also receive private funding from fees and voluntary contributions paid by parents. Public schools in Australia request parents to pay for stationary, textbooks, excursions, as well as ‘voluntary’ contributions to subsidise capital works and facilities. Voluntary contributions are indeed voluntary, but they are itemised on the school bill and parents are expected to pay them. Reports abound of parents who are harassed by schools for not paying these voluntary contributions (Singhal 2019). In secondary schools, households are also charged fees for particular curricular subjects, which can add up to hundreds of dollars and sometimes even thousands of dollars. Public schools set the amount of fees and contributions that they charge households and the amounts that are charged reflect the perceived capacity of households to pay. The result is that the fees and contributions that are charged by public schools vary substantially by the socioeconomic composition of the school, with high-SES schools on average receiving six times per pupil more than low-SES schools (Rowe and Perry 2020a, 2020b). No jurisdiction regulates these differing capacities to raise private funding, which suggests that education authorities see them as natural products of their differing compositions that should be respected through decentralised, school-based decision-making rather than inequalities to be diminished through policy. School fees and contributions are set by each school's board or council, comprised of the school's leaders, representative teachers and parents. The function of school councils or boards is to contribute to ‘good school governance so that school resources are used efficiently, and community expectations and the school's priorities reflect the needs of students’ (WA Department of Education, n.d.). Other jurisdictions have similar bodies.

Barriers to equitable school funding

School funding in Australia has been characterised as labyrinthine and obtuse (Gonski et al. 2011). In particular, the amount of public funding provided to private schools has been difficult to follow, let alone hold accountable. A mechanism for making public funding to all schools transparent to the public was realised with the federal MySchool website, created by ACARA and initiated by the Australian Labor Party in 2010 (nd 2010). MySchool has been instrumental in making transparent the amount of funding that each school receives, from a range of sources including states/territory authorities, the federal government, private sources, as well as disaggregated into operating and capital costs.

Socially advantaged and financially exclusive schools are receiving public funding that enables them to enjoy an overall per-pupil funding that far exceeds other schools, including public schools that enrol the great majority of educationally underserved students. Public funding is being used to maintain a stratified system of schooling where many schools enjoy much greater funding and resources than others. Even private schools that charge very high fees are receiving thousands of dollars per student in public funding, as shown in my analysis and confirmed by earlier research by MacDonald et al. (2024). This approach uses taxpayer dollars to reproduce the educational advantage of the privileged.

The media frequently draws on MySchool data to show the taxpayer-funded advantage enjoyed by high-fee private schools to fund lavish facilities, as shown, for example, by Duffy (2024), Bagshaw (2016) and Boston (2022). Yet, despite the fact that public data exists are frequently used by journalists to highlight inequities, political commitment to reform school funding policy has been lukewarm at best. As noted by Connell (2013a) and Sinclair and Brooks (2022), both major political parties in Australia support the use of funding policy to support a marketised educational marketplace. This raises the question of why political commitment to change the status quo does not exist.

Public policy from all parties has supported an inequitable distribution of resources to schools. Major school funding reviews, such as the Gonski Review, sought to increase the funding available to public schools and especially low-SES schools, but did not seek to reduce funding disparities between schools (Kenway 2013). In fact, the review explicitly stated from the beginning that no school would receive less funding as a result of any ensuing reviews (Australian Government 2011). Thus, rather than trying to reduce inequalities, school funding reviews have sought to increase the overall size of the pie, not the way the pie is divided (Kenway 2013). Similarly, a recent major federally sponsored review of schooling (Australian Government 2023) has explicitly stated that funding arrangements will not be considered. The Australian Labor Party has focused on ensuring a minimum resource standard for all schools rather than dismantling a system that uses public funds to provide additional resources to already well-resourced private schools (Keating and Klatt 2013).

School funding policy has focused on student outcomes. The rationale for conducting the most comprehensive funding reviews, the Gonski Review, was to address the declining competitiveness of Australian student outcomes, as measured by international tests such as PISA, as well as address the underachievement of socially disadvantaged students (Di Gregorio 2023). There has been no acknowledgement that students deserve similar resources as an outcome in itself, even by the Australian Labor Party (Sinclair and Brooks 2022). Rather, school resources are seen as a means to an end, i.e. student academic performance and other outcomes. Linking funding rationales with student outcomes is problematic because as is well known in the literature, increasing the educational outcomes of socially disadvantaged groups is notoriously difficult. Publicly available data about the high amounts of per-pupil funding data provided to schools that enrol large concentrations of underserved students are counterproductive because they provide ammunition for the argument that increasing funding to these schools is pointless.

The minimum resource model is similar to Australia's health care system, where national insurance (Medicare) pays for basic services and is free to all citizens and permanent residents, and private health insurance is available for people who seek ‘extra’ settings, such as more flexibility in the choice of a practitioner or setting, reduced waiting times, as well as procedures that are not deemed medically necessary by Medicare. Thus, there is a solid minimum that is provided to everyone, and those who want more can pay extra. The system of schooling in Australia is similar, with public schools funded to a minimum standard and available to everyone, and private schools offering ‘extras’ such as superior facilities, curriculum opportunities, extracurricular activities, and pastoral care. Australia's school funding policy explicitly endorses and supports this two-tiered model where basic services are provided for free through taxpayer contributions and superior services are provided for families willing to pay out-of-pocket (Reid 2015).

The two-tiered model is supported by a range of stakeholders. Most Australian citizens support the idea of fee-charging private schools (Sattin-Bajaj, Stacey, and Thomas 2019). Any attempt to reduce public subsidies for private schools is met with fierce resistance from the private school sector, which is strong and influential in education policymaking in Australia (Kenway 2013; Sinclair and Brooks 2022). Calls for reducing public subsidies to private schools are frequently portrayed as class warfare (Keating and Klatt 2013). And most politicians are themselves the product of private schooling and have benefited from the public subsidisation of their financially and socially exclusive schooling (Featch and Perry 2023).

There are clear equity problems with the use of public funds to maintain a stratified system of schooling that benefits the privileged. So why does this funding arrangement continue to exist? It is likely that the strength of the private school lobbies and their political affiliations play a large role. But just as important are views that educational equity also means that all taxpayers should receive some kind of unofficial ‘rebate’ for their school choices. As all citizens pay taxes, all families are entitled to receive some kind of taxpayer benefit, i.e. through the public funding of private schools. This concept of entitlement has been supported for decades by all governments, state and federal, and by all political parties (Keating and Klatt 2013). According to this entitlement argument, removing public subsidies to high-fee private schools is seen as inequitable because it would lead to an increase in school fees, thus disadvantaging families who are not among the highest echelon of wealth (Connell 2013b).

Critical theory argues that schooling is a component of the superstructure that reproduces the social advantage of the privileged classes (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). Marketisation is a mechanism for enabling the reproductive capacity of schooling. By promoting marketisation, Australian public policymaking has created an educational marketplace consisting of multiple price points that the family consumer can choose from according to their appetite and means. Marketisation masks the reproductive capacity of schooling, cloaking it in neutral terms of choice, accountability and transparency that resonate with many Australians. Moreover, these terms provide a palatable mechanism for excluding families that do not ‘value’ education to the same extent as families willing to pay fees. Rather than blaming education policies, structures and systems for reproducing educational and therefore social inequality, the gaze is turned to the decisions of individuals and their so-called rational choices.

Conclusion

In some ways, school funding policy and its complement of publicly available data about funding provided to schools has worked to increase educational equity in Australia. On the other hand, the fact that it has not led to meaningful school funding reform suggests the limits of data in changing inequitable arrangements. It is likely that school funding reform is so difficult to enact because of the widespread acceptance of marketisation in Australian schooling (Sahlberg 2022).

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laura B. Perry

Laura B. Perry is a Professor of Comparative Education and Education Policy at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia. Her research focuses on educational disadvantage and inequalities, especially as they appear between schools, and the systems, structures and policies that shape them. The aim of her research is to inform policy and practice for improving equity of educational opportunities, experiences and outcomes. Specific research interests include educational marketisation, school segregation and stratification, school funding, and social class and education.

Notes

1 The ‘Five Eyes’ is an intelligence alliance comprising the governments of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.