A recently published article from Save Our Schools (SOS) focuses on the “accounting tricks” used in the bilateral funding agreements between the Commonwealth and state governments – and shows that they were comprehensively rejected by the Gonski Report.
These accounting tricks involve inclusion of several expenditure items in state shares of funding public schools. They include depreciation, school transport and expenditure on regulatory bodies. The effect of counting these expenditures in state funding shares is to artificially boosts their funding shares and defraud public schools of entitled funding.
These non-SRS expenditures were excluded from original funding agreements that implemented the Gonski funding model in 2014. They were first introduced in the Morrison Government agreements in 2019. They are continued in the new funding agreements between the Albanese and state governments and will continue to at least 2034.
SOS estimates that public schools were defrauded by $13.2 billion in funding over six years from 2019 to 2024 inclusive because of these “accounting tricks. The loss over the ten years from 2025 to 2034 inclusive is estimated at $23.2 billion. And this is an underestimate because Victoria is yet to sign a long term agreement.