The ABC news report ‘How the Catholic school system takes from the poor to give to the rich’ is a significant and telling revelation of how Catholic school authorities have used public funding to play rich favourites among their schools. This unacceptable practice has been long standing and far reaching.
The ABC story reveals that millions of dollars in public funding have been diverted from poorer to richer Catholic primary schools. The purpose of this diversion, approved by Catholic bishops in New South Wales, is to keep fees low for families in wealthier areas. In reality, as indicated by respected education policy consultant Peter Goss, it “is designed to avoid the goal of public policy: that parents who choose non-government schools should pay in line with their income”. The ABC report indicates that the practice is not confined to NSW.
Nor is it new, and reports of it just keep coming. Catholic system heads and the bishops have fought long and hard to keep control of the distribution of public funding within their system, but their track record in doing this is badly flawed. As Trevor Cobbold reports, a 2009 audit found that Catholic system allocations of Australian government funding saw students in low SES schools getting less than they would if their schools were directly funded. At least three other reports have indicated the same thing.
The reality stands at odds with the rhetoric. In his autobiography A Bigger Picture, Malcolm Turnbull recounts how “over the years Catholic bishops like George Pell had always insisted the virtue of funding the Catholic schools in one lump sum, as a system, was that they could cross-subsidise the poorer schools at the expense of those in the wealthier suburbs”.
But it seems that all this time, any cross-subsidising has been running in the reverse direction. Turnbull reports on a revealing conversation with the Archbishop of Sydney, in which Anthony Fisher argued that schools in his (Turnbull’s) Wentworth electorate were needier because the parents had bigger mortgages. That’s a novel take on need and equity.
Audits and personal accounts come and go, but it was never possible to hide what was looking like a subsidy of the rich. The highly regarded Brian Croke, who headed up the Catholic Education Commission for years, said that the inconsistencies between the government’s needs-based allocations and the Catholic system’s distribution formula became more obvious over time. This time around, Catholic school authorities have been condemned by their own hand, by the smoking gun of their own internal analyses and proposals, presentations and emails and more, prepared for the 11 bishops of NSW and diocesan offices.
So why have Catholic systems, at great risk to their reputations and to their oft-stated concern for the poor, continued a highly questionable ‘reverse Robin Hood’ practice of shifting resources from the needy to the better-endowed? Commentary points to a number of lame justifications and problems facing the Catholic school system. The ABC report quotes the chief executive of Catholic Schools NSW as saying “the aim is to make the low fee offering as ubiquitous as we possibly can right across NSW”. It’s a long stretch, if that was the intention, to suggest that ubiquitous equates with equity. He also defended the model, saying the amount of money redistributed was a “tiny fraction” of the total funding pool. It’s not hard to imagine the consequences if that logic had been trotted out in relation to child protection.
Apparently one aim is to enable schools in better off areas to compete with government and Independent schools. One document cited in the ABC report indicates how Catholic schools in Sydney “compete closely with government schools and fee levels must be sensitive to this” – in other words, keep fees low and, as it happens, subsidized by the parents of poorer Catholic schools. Is it working? The share of school enrolments held by Catholic schools has continued to fall. It isn’t certain which students are enrolling elsewhere but data from the My School website might provide a clue. Between 2011 and 2018 Catholic school enrolments were increasingly made up of students from the most advantaged families. The Catholic school share of students from the least advantaged families fell over this same period. These trends were more marked than similar trends evident for Independent schools. It suggests that the policy of subsidising higher SES schools could help explain a shift in the socio-educational composition of Catholic school enrolments.
Private schools and systems frequently talk about how they support the poor, claims that are easy to challenge in this data-rich era. Surprisingly though, Cardinal Pell once lamented that Catholic schools “don’t have as many poor Catholics in our schools as I would like” – a confession that now sits oddly alongside funding policies that for years have made it harder for the poor to access Catholic schools. To be fair, this is despite the very real efforts at the school level to support many who cannot pay fees. And the National Catholic Education Commission does say that the distinctiveness of Catholic schools includes “giving priority to educating the spiritually and financially poor”.
There is no better time than now to ensure that the distribution of public funding reflects such a priority.
Chris Bonnor is a former teacher and secondary school principal, a previous head of the NSW Secondary Principals’ Council, co-author with Jane Caro of The Stupid Country and What Makes a Good School, and co-author of Waiting for Gonski. He has jointly authored papers on Australia’s schools in association with the Centre for Policy Development and the Gonski Institute for Education.
Comments
8 responses to “Blessed are the rich … Catholic schools”
Not sure that a couple of documents and some old draft proposals are really a smoking gun. And the redistribution is compliant with funding legislation. Seems the reality is nobody is being condemned by anything.
As the documents cited by the ABC state, the NSW Catholic Bishops aim to provide a lower fee school alternative than the government’s funding formula allows. The way the formula estimates parental ‘capacity to contribute’ to their children’s education means that some parents in wealthier areas have more limited choice.
Can all parents in higher SES areas really afford to pay more than $8k in Primary School fees? Even the Commonwealth Government has acknowledged the CTC curve is flawed and has agreed to a review in 2026.
“The redistribution looks to be a very small amount. Catholic Schools NSW said they redistribute only 0.7% of the total 2020 funding they received from government. When this is split across the whole state, that’s actually a very small amount.
Catholic Schools NSW have also been pretty clear that only a fraction of the 0.7% actually comes from rural and regional dioceses. Their policy is also to pass through all loadings for disadvantage, as attracted, so what are we really talking about here?”
It seems the funding policy lets the Catholic school system act as a low-fee non-government school option for parents everywhere. Considering the government gives everyone a no-fee option with government schools, then it’s fair that all parents have access to a low-fee non-government school. Catholic schools are often basically a public-school alternative. If they are low-fee Catholic schools, then they are not really competing with high-fee independent schools, but the no-fee government schools.
And Catholic schools themselves have said their funding arrangements comply with the legislation. The National Schools Resourcing Board December 2019 Report: Review of needs-based funding requirements has explicitly said:
“Systems’ needs‑based funding arrangements vary, and the Act provides flexibility to make regional or sub‑regional decisions about the distribution of funding. The Australian Government recognises that Systems have more detailed knowledge of their students and schools and provides flexibility to allow Systems to apply that knowledge to address needs as they see them, according to the principle of subsidiarity.”
So maybe the real headline should be: Catholic schools make slight tweaks to government funding arrangements, with support from the government, to make sure that everyone has the chance to go to a non-government school. Doesn’t sound too controversial to me.
It’s also important to know that school choice is protected and supported by international law. Take the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which says that governments should have respect for parents to choose schools other than government schools. If Catholic schools become unaffordable, then parents don’t really have any choice at all, and governments aren’t fulfilling their obligations under international law.
It’s completely incorrect to say that Catholic school enrolments have been increasingly made up of the most advantaged families. In reality, in 2013, 40% of the Catholic sector’s students were from the bottom two ‘Socio-Educational Advantage’ quartiles. In 2019, it was 41%.
This a much higher proportion than found in the Independent schools referred to above.
And before 2013 a different methodology for calculating the SEA was used. So it’s doesn’t make sense to try and compare figures from 2011 and 2018, as Chris Bonnor did here, since the figures use two different methodologies.
My grandson was denied entry to his local RC parochial primary school because he is/was on the autism spectrum. he attended the loca state primary school where he received impeccable support and assistance, so much so that he gained a place in the local Opportunity Class. Then to complete the picture, he won a first round place to the local Opportunity high School.
State schools are great schools!! It is time to stop government funding to private schools.
Presumably, Chris, the 35 Islamic schools in Australia also enjoy the privilege of allocating Commonwealth funding themselves among their number as they see fit? And the Baptists? and the Anglicans? And….
John,
No systems, government or non-government, have “the privilege of allocating Commonwealth … as they see fit”.
As the Gonski report says, “Likewise in non-government systems, any individual school-based calculation of funding is purely notional since system authorities generally reallocate block funding they receive from the Australian Government or the states and territories in accordance with their own locally adapted and needs-based funding formulas”. (p 181)
Gonski Recommendation 23 says,
“Given the primary responsibility of government and non-government system authorities for the funding and operation of their schools, public funding for systems should be assessed and calculated at system level provided that systems:
• are transparent about the basis on which they allocate any public and private funding to member schools and the purpose for which it is spent
• report publicly when the allocation of total resources to schools deviates significantly from the principles in the schooling resource standard
• continue to report income and expenditure from each source for individual member schools on the My School website.” (pxxv)
In other words, all systems – state government, Catholic, Lutheran, etc – may allocate the funding in accordance with their own policies. The Catholic system is allocating the funding to assist poorer families to attend Catholic schools also attended by well-off families, just as the state governments do to assist poorer families to attend government schools also attended by well-off families.
It seems we are getting a run of articles on school funding that ignore the fundamental irrationality and injustice of the underlying SES funding model in order to attack attempts to ameliorate the ill effect of that model. Rather than repeat myself, I refer readers to my comments on:
https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/rorting-of-school-funding/#more-51662
and
https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/shocking-new-expose-of-catholic-churchs-rorting-of-taxpayer-funding/#more-51697.