NON-CATHOLIC CHURCH SCHOOLS WORKING THE FEDERAL STATE AID FUNDING :

COPYING  ROMAN CATHOLIC BOTTOM OF THE THE SCHOOL YARD SCHEMES OF TWENTY YEARS BEFORE THEM.

DOGS  predicted in the 1970s that Church Schools would work the State Aid funding machine to enable them to get increased funds from the taxpayers. The Roman Catholic systems were soon working the system as schools were obtaining reclassification at the"most needy"level 

Now the other religious groups are catching on and catching up.

Our predictions were supported by the bureaucrats who bemoaned the behaviour of "religious" men. Dr. ken McKinnon and Mrs Joan Kirner who were on the 1970s Schools Commission had this to say in the 1980s.

Statement of K. McKinnon:     "It (the needs Policy) is not illegal, just slippery....It expected everybody to play the game by the declared rules...It's like income tax- everybody manoeuvres themselves to benefit in the best possible way. "

Dr. K. McKinnon, National Times, 29 August - 4 September, 1982.

Statement of J. Kirner:  "It isn't sufficient to say that we will give aid according to need. We know that the needs policy can be bastardised by even a group as honest as the Schools Commission."

Mrs J. Kirner: Victorian Teacher, 2 April, 1983, p. 13.

DOGS, in the 1980s noted :

"If you lose the capacity to foresee and forestall trouble, you are in difficulties." Albert Schweitzer.

DOGS warned the Australian community of the danger of private schools turning the "needs" policy into the "greeds" policy. They identified the switching of Roman Catholic schools from the non-systemic classification to systemic classification and from lower paying classifications to higher paying classifications. The Catholic hierarchy opened schools which were always in the higher classification.

The Roman Catholic hierarchy woke up early to the weaknesses of politicians and bureaucrats and their lack of will in protecting taxpayers from religious men working the State Aid Machine. None of these workings of the machine are illegal - in the same way as many taxation minimisation schemes are not illegal.

Now, in 2001, we find that the other religious groups are catching up - fast. DOGS have identified schools which have played the system and been re-classified.

Hamilton College, Hamilton, with  Westbourne Grammar School at Hoppers Crossing and the Williamstown Grammar School at Newport have been re-classified from Class 3 schools in 1999 to Class 10 in 2000.

This re-classification game is netting large increases in State Aid for the non-Catholic religious schools - as it did for the Roman Catholic systemic schools before them. In 1999 a Class 3 primary pupil was worth $924.00 in Federal recurrent funding. In 2000 a Class 10 primary pupil was worth $2402 per primary pupil. The corresponding increase for a secondary pupil was $1350 in 1999 to $3509 in 2000.

On the basis of 1999 pupil numbers this means that these three schools cost the taxpayer $1,972,704 in 1999 in Federal per capita grants. By 2000 this had mushroomed to $5,251,506. This represents an increase of 266% !

State Aid started as a trickle. The floodgates have now been opened.

The only way forward - is back, back to the days of separation of Church and State and No State Aid for church schools.