Report on Governmnt Services 2020 details growing funding gap between public and private schools
The 2020 Report on Government Services (RoGS) showed that non-government school funding per student grew by 3.3 times faster than public school funding per student in the last decade, a gap that has widened further in the last year.
Government funding for public schools has grown by only 11 per cent over the last ten years, whereas government funding for private schools has grown by 35 per cent.
The VET sector fared even worse when it comes to funding. According to RoGS, in 2017-18 total government expenditure on VET fell by $252 million to a total of $6 billion, a decline of 4.0% from the previous year.
In addition, total annual hours of training provided by government expenditure also fell to 36.4 million, a decline of 6.4% from last year and of 30.6% from the 2012 peak.
These findings are extremely concerning for public education in Australia. Public school student enrolments are soaring, yet the Morrison Government continues to ignore the needs of two thirds of Australia’s school students by refusing to provide equitable funding for public schools.
RoGS also demonstrates yet again that the Morrison Government’s agenda is to strip funding from TAFE and privatise vocational education in Australia.
The Morrison Government must commit to providing preschools, schools and TAFE with the funding and resources need to provide a high quality education for all students at all levels.
See Report on Government Services 2020 at https://www.pc.gov.au/research/ongoing/report-on-government-services/201...
Part B, section 4: RELEASED ON 4 FEBRUARY 2020
4 School education
This section focuses on performance information for government-funded school education in Australia.