New analysis indicates that wealthy independent schools are raking in millions from the Turnbull Government’s $1.6 billion Students with Disability (SWD) funding, raising yet more questions over Education Minister Simon Birmingham’s policies.

‘At the end of 2016 Senator Birmingham said the so-called Nationally Consistent Collection of Data (NCCD) on SWD results showed “extreme disparity” and that this data “fails a basic credibility test”,’ Catholic Education Commission of Victoria Ltd (CECV Executive Director Stephen Elder said.

‘He then performed a 180-degree turn and announced he would use the NCCD to allocate $1.6 billion in funding for SWD in schools.

‘The Turnbull Government is now going to rely on subjective teacher assessment of students – rather than diagnoses by medical professionals – to fund SWD in schools. Teachers are now effectively deciding how much funding their schools receive for SWD.

‘To top it all off, the Government has not yet explained how it will audit the new dataset – even though there continue to be inexplicable differences in NCCD figures between schools, states and sectors.

To date, the Government has refused to release SWD estimates from the NCCD for individual schools. CECV Freedom of Information requests seeking these estimates have been knocked back by the Department of Education. This contradicts claims by the Minister that his funding model is transparent.

It is in the public interest for this information to become available to the community. So, using publicly available data, the CECV has for the first time provided estimates of the percentage of enrolments in wealthy independent schools that will receive a SWD loading using the NCCD.

‘The number of SWD claimed by some wealthy independent schools, now that SWD funding is based on teacher judgement, is highly questionable. There are only two coherent explanations. Either the new data collection method for SWD is deeply flawed or wealthy independent schools are manipulating it – especially in Victoria.

It is no longer an excuse to say the data collection is new. Most schools have now participated in it for at least 3 years. Yet some wealthy independent schools are still claiming their number of SWD has increased more than 10-fold – and the loading some of these schools receive for SWD will more than triple in 2018.

‘The figures speak for themselves. In Victoria alone, our analysis shows that as part of the NCCD the prestigious Carey Grammar has submitted that at least 14 per cent of its students are eligible for a SWD loading. Geelong Grammar says at least 10 per cent of their students are eligible for the SWD loading. Yet under the previous system, which required independent medical assessments, fewer than two percent of the students at these schools were diagnosed as being SWD.

‘CECV estimates for a selection of top independent schools are shown in the attached table. As the table shows, this pattern is repeated in several top independent schools around the country.

‘All this goes to show that the Government’s Gonski 2.0 “needs-based funding model” is anything but.’

Further information: Christian Kerr, 0402 977 352

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