Australia Yearbook - 2001

440 Year Book Australia 2001
Over 60% of outlays on education are for schools.
The changing size and distribution of school
enrolments across government, Catholic and
other non-government schools is shown in
table C7.2 for the period since 1963, in which
comprehensive Australian statistics on school
enrolments have been compiled. Government
schools enrolled nearly 80% of students in the
mid 1970s, but since then all the growth in
enrolments has been in non-government schools.
Government enrolments in 1999 are at the level
they were in 1974 and non-government
enrolments are some 60% higher. The growth is
especially in other non-government schools,
which enrolled less than 5% of all students in the
early 1960s but over 10% by 1999.
The growth in school enrolments in the 1960s
was still driven by the postwar baby boom and
was largely absorbed by the government systems,
which alone had access to government funds.
The demographic push eased with the sharp
temporary decline in births in the early 1960s.
The return of government funding for
non-government schools from 1964 and its sharp
increase in the 1970s were factors in the increase
in their share of enrolments. For the low resource
Catholic schools, Commonwealth capital grants
were crucial in allowing them to expand their
provision. The recurrent grants allowed them to
do so with improving resource levels per student.
The growing pattern of public recurrent funding
of non-government schools is given in table C7.3.
As indicated, both the Commonwealth and the
States provide recurrent support for
non-government schools. However, as the States
differ in their form of support, an example for
Victoria is shown. In 1999 a high income
non-government secondary school would have
received the minimum amounts of $832 from the
Commonwealth and $447 from the State, a total
of $1,279 per student. Most Catholic system
schools received close to the maximum or about
$4,500 per student.
The years chosen for the table are of significance.
The figure for 1973 shows the funding
determined by the Gorton and McMahon
Coalition Governments: there was a flat per capita
grant varying only by level of education. The
figures for 1976 are the legacy of Whitlam Labor
Government: it expanded funding very greatly for
low resource, mainly Catholic, schools. The
figures for 1983 show the policy of the Fraser
Government: to expand the funding of the high
income non-government schools proportionately
the most, but to increase the absolute
funding of the low resource schools most of
all.
The 1996 figures indicate the Hawke and
Keating Governments’ policies: in real terms
they cut the grants to the high income
non-government schools and increased them
to the low income schools. The 1999 figures
show the effects of the first years of the
Howard Government: it has relatively
increased its funding of the low resource
schools. However, in 2000 it revised the
method of making grants to non-government
schools, except for the Catholic systems.
Other private schools and systems from 2001
will receive grants based on the
socioeconomic status of the areas in which
the parents of their children reside, rather
than the resource levels of the school. The
total grants for non-government schools will
be substantially increased and the increases
on average will be largest among the high fee
schools. The government funding of such
schools will no longer be affected by the
resources they acquire from fees or
donations. A Liberal spokesman has referred
to the new system as making ‘an historic
correction’ in funding.
The introduction of government funding for
non-government schools was not at least
initially at the expense of funding for
government schools. Table C7.4 summarises
the growth in the government and
non-government sectors in enrolments and
expenditure per student. It also provides
approximate estimates by the authors of the
change in total recurrent expenditures and in
expenditure per student in constant 1998
prices.
The table shows that, over the whole period
from the 1974, expenditure per student has
increased in real terms a little more in
non-government than in government
schools. In both sectors it more than
doubled. The table shows the massive
expansion in the resources in government
schools in the late 1970s—an increase of
nearly 40% in real resources per student in
five years. It is in the period of the 1980s and
especially the 1990s that the
non-government schools increased their
expenditures more rapidly than government
schools. Overall, because of the rapid
expansion of enrolments, the total