2016-03-10
A new Auditor-General report shows that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars is being handed to non-government schools every year, but nobody can verify how the funds are being spent, Greens Education spokesperson, Sue Pennicuik said today.
“The state government provided more than $624 million in recurrent grants to non-government schools in the audited year – 2014. The report states that “the vast majority of these funds are ‘untagged’”.
The majority of the funding – almost $431 million was allocated to the Catholic Education Commission Victoria (CECV) and the balance to the smaller school system authorities ($31.8 million) and directly to 171 non systemic non-government schools (almost $161.8 million).
The report states that the CECV uses its own methodology to distribute funding to its schools, which varies from the allocation recommended by DET based on Financial Assistance Model (FAM), which considers student family background, equity funding, etc., while other schools followed the FAM allocation. The report finds that this “reallocates funding away from the lower socio-economic schools to schools with a higher socio-economic status” in the Catholic education system.
The report found that ‘there is limited assurance that grants to non-government schools are used for their intended purpose or are achieving intended outcomes’, primarily due to weaknesses in funding agreements and ineffective oversight, monitoring or management of grants and no requirement for non-government schools to demonstrate how taxpayers funds have been spent.”
"This practice has persisted for years under both Labor and Liberal Governments who have done little to require transparency or accountability from non-government schools about how public funds are spent,” Ms Pennicuik said.
The Auditor-General also found that in some cases, the school systems that receive the grant funding and manage the allocation to its schools in effect “oversee themselves” and that no school was able to demonstrate to VAGO the grants were spent in accordance with any agreement.
“Where else are entities in receipt of so much public money so unaccountable for its use?” Ms Pennicuik said.
“This is particularly concerning now that the Labor government legislated last year to guarantee that non-government schools will receive 25 per cent of the total recurrent education funding allocated to public schools.
“The Auditor-General recommended that the Department needs to step up its oversight and accountability measures for the expenditure of public funds in non-government schools.
“This is the very least that should be expected in light of the findings of this audit,” Ms Pennicuik said.
“In light of the findings of this report, the practice of simply transferring large amounts of taxpayer dollars to non- government schools and system authorities with few if any strings attached needs to stop,” Ms Pennicuik said.